aroramage |
Weavile's a pretty neat card.
Naturally, it's not for his 2-for-40 Slash attack that's
sub-optimal in terms of damage output, given that it's a
vanilla hit, but there's another reason to take a look
at Weavile.
Tear Away is his Ability, giving
you the Ability to take off any Tools attached to your
Pokemon and put them into your hand. It's one of those
effects that's pretty useful...provided you messed up
somehow in attaching Tools to Pokemon. Honestly, I can't
think of too many scenarios where you'd want to run Tear
Away in your deck, but to give an idea of what I did
come up with:
-it can be used to retrieve a Tool
from a Pokemon that's about to get KO'd
-you can grab a Tool to reuse it on
another Pokemon, such as with Spirit Links
-...and that's about all I've got.
Really there aren't too many things
I can think of to use. Maybe if your Pokemon's got a
Status that needs Sparkling Robes? Or you want to boost
a Pokemon with Fighting Fury Belt? But yeah, Tear Away
just isn't enough of an Ability on its own to justify
running a whole Stage 1 line-up, in my opinion. Maybe
he'd do well as a tech 1-1, but then again wouldn't
those two cards be better suited towards your main
strategy?
That, and you could just not
misplace your Tools.
Rating
Standard: 1.5/5 (very niche
scenarios are what I imagine using Weavile in)
Expanded: 1.5/5 (very, very niche
scenarios)
Limited: 1/5 (the set he comes in
barely has any Tools anyway, and the ones it does
have...are Spirit Links!)
Arora Notealus: Weavile may have
potential, but a lackluster attack and lack of utility
with his effect ultimately will keep him bound to the
card binders of the world. Or some ridiculous Tool will
come out that will make him get crazy good all of a
sudden. It could happen!
Next Time: Poke your poison!
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Otaku |
Weavile
(XY: Steam Siege 61/114) is a Stage 1 Pokémon,
which means that it’s slower than a Basic but still
quite viable in competitive play. As a Darkness
Type Weavile will enjoy striking Weakness when
attacking certain Psychic Types. That’s it.
When it comes to Resistance I believe all Fairy Types
(well, technically not the BREAK Evolutions) have
Darkness Resistance. There are some anti-Darkness
Type effects but they aren’t very good and I’m trying to
keep this moving, so we’ll discuss the varying forms of
Darkness Type support. Dark Patch is still a
pretty great card in Expanded, and one side of
Reverse Valley offers a nice +10 damage bonus, but
that’s about it for the good support specific to
Darkness Type Pokémon. Darkness Type Energy offers
a few decent tricks, but I think they mostly (if not
all) tie into the formidable stable of Darkness Type
Pokémon including (but not limited to) Darkrai-EX
(BW: Dark Explorers 63/108, 107/108; BW: Black
Star Promos BW46; BW: Legendary Treasures
88/113), Darkrai-EX (XY: BREAKpoint
74/122; 118/122), Yveltal (XY 78/146;
XY: Black Star Promos XY06; Generations
RC16/RC32; XY: Steam Siege 65/114), Yveltal
(XY: BREAKthrough 94/162), Yveltal BREAK,
Yveltal-EX, and Zoroark (XY:
BREAKthrough 91/162). The strength of these
Pokémon means even in Standard play, where there is no
Dark Patch, the Type remains a formidable
presence on par with Types better supporter in other
ways.
Weavile
has 90 HP; this is not enough to survive a hit
from a complete setup unless the deck is focused
on something other than attacking your Active Pokémon…
unless it is focused on hitting your Bench in which case
your opponent wouldn’t even have to burn a Lysandre
on a Benched Weavile. This is however
enough that an indirect assault will take two or three
turns, and keeps Weavile within search range for
Level Ball. I’m not saying I wouldn’t love
a precedent violating Weavile with record setting
HP, just that 90 might still prove functional. The
Fighting Weakness is deadly, though less so than it was
prior to rotation. Fighting Types no longer have
Korrina to smooth out their set up, but at the
same time other Types were doing pretty good without
her, so still expect a OHKO in most Fighting matchups.
In fact the Weakness only matters because it saves these
decks needing quite as much setup to do the deed.
Psychic Weakness won’t mean too much on just 90 HP, but
it is still appreciated just for being there, and might
even come in handy on rare occasions. The Retreat
Cost of [C] is good; easy to pay and usually easy to
recover from having paid, but at the same time I could
see this one getting a free Retreat Cost and not being
overly good for it.
Weavile
has both an attack and an Ability. The Ability is
“Tear Away” and it allows you to take a Pokémon Tool
attached to one of your in play Pokémon and return it to
your hand, as often as you want before you attack.
This is a renamed “Tool Reversal”, the Ability found on
Masquerain (BW: Plasma Blast 2/101).
Pokémon Tools can have some very impressive effects, and
several of them are much better when you don’t have to
be stuck with the same one all the time. Without
Startling Megaphone, Tool Scrapper, or
Xerosic, most of your Tools will be safe in play;
you can thus keep handy things like Float Stone
on one card, only to transfer it to your Active
immediately before you need to retreat it; you can have
other Tools attached until then, plus switch something
else to it after. This is actually a pretty good
Ability! The mixed blessing is that the Tool goes
to your hand; if it just moved around your in play
Pokémon, you would have the risk of something useless
cluttering up the field, but as is Item lock is still a
problem. The attack is “Slash” for [DC], doing 40;
subpar filler, but not totally useless either.
You have five choices for which Sneasel to Evolve
into Weavile: BW: Next Destinies 69/99,
BW: Plasma Freeze 65/116, XY: Flashfire
50/106, XY: Flashfire 51/106, and XY: Steam
Siege 60/114. All are Basic Darkness Type
Pokémon with at least 60 HP (BW: Plasma Freeze
65/116 has 70), Fighting Weakness, Psychic Resistance,
Retreat Cost [C], no Ancient Traits and no Abilities. BW:
Next Destinies 69/99 has two attacks: for [D] it can
use “Corner” to do 10 damage while preventing the
Defending Pokémon from retreating until the end of your
opponent’s next turn,while for [CC] it can use “Scratch”
to do 20. BW: Plasma Freeze 65/116 can use
“Quick Attack” for [DC] to do 20 damage plus a coin
flip; “tails” is just the base 20 while “heads” means
plus 20 (or 40 total). It only has this one
attack. XY: Flashfire 50/106 brings back Scratch
but this time it costs [C] and does 10 while its “Flash
Claw” costs [DC] and forces the opponent to discard a
card from hand (opponent’s choice). XY: Flashfire
51/106 may use “Icy Wind” for [D] to leave the
opponent’s Active Asleep or can use Scratch (yet again),
with this version costing [DC] but still doing 20
damage. XY: Steam Siege 60/114 is the only
Standard legal option and it… is… adorable! It
only has one attack, but its “Nyan Roll” does 10 damage
while having you flip a coin; if “tails” it still does
the 10 damage, but if “heads” it also prevents
all effects of attacks including damage done to
Sneasel during your opponent’s next turn.
The cost is just [D], so unless you’re running
Sneasel totally (or almost totally) off Type, this
is the version; its only job here is to Evolve and while
nothing helps directly, not being KO’d while
Active is a good start.
So what about the other versions of Weavile?
We have three to evaluate: BW: Next Destinies
70/99, BW: Plasma Freeze 66/116, and XY:
Flashfire 52/106. All have the same Stage,
Type, HP, Weakness, Resistance, Retreat Cost, and lack
of Ancient Trait as today’s card, but all lack an
Ability and instead have two attacks. The first
attack on BW: Next Destinies 70/99 is “Dark
Penalty” for [D], hitting for 90 damage, but only if the
opponent’s Active has a Pokémon Tool attached.
This isn’t a bad bit of damage for the Energy involved,
but it means leaving a Tool attached you might otherwise
want gone... possibly multiple Tools as Startling
Megaphone isn’t selective in the discard.
Overall it actually is a good attack, but not good
enough to make a Stage 1 with 90 HP. Just
to be clear, it does no damage if there is no
Tool. The second attack is “Fury Swipes” for
[CCC], flipping three coins good for 30 damage per
“heads”; this also is not good enough but in this case,
it’s actually a bad attack as you are paying almost
enough (even at the time of this card’s release) for 90
damage and only getting that with three “heads”!
This card is better than when it first released thanks
to Pokémon Tool F cards, but it still isn’t worth
running.
BW: Plasma Freeze
66/116 is a Team Plasma Pokémon, allowing it to access
Team Plasma support but also leaving it vulnerable to
Team Plasma counters like Silver Mirror.
Its first attack is “Hail” with a cost of [C] and doing
10 damage to each of your opponent’s Pokémon. As
this is doing damage and not placing damage counters,
there are a couple extra cards which can block the
spread, but that does mean something like Silver
Bangle or Muscle Band can increase how much
is being done to the opponent’s Active. Not a
great attack, but a good one I think. For [DC] it
can use “Vilify”, which has you select as many Pokémon
from your hand as you like, discard them, then do 30
damage for each discarded. This is a great
attack, though specifically because of Exeggcute
(BW: Plasma Freeze 4/116; BW: Plasma Blast
102/101). Exeggcute has an Ability allowing you
to add it to your hand from the discard pile before you
attack. Technically it is a once-per-turn effect
but it has been ruled that moving from one zone to the
other like that resets it, so functionally it is
unlimited… at least until you attack. This plus a
few other tricks lead to Weavile [Plasma] decks
being a competitive deck for a time in Standard, and has
it among the top decks in the Legacy Format. Baby
Mario and virusyosh reviewed the card
here,
but this was before it enjoyed its 15 minutes of fame.
XY: Flashfire
52/106 can use “Call for Family” at a cost of [C] to
search your deck for up to two Basic Pokémon and Bench
them. [DCC] pays for “Claw Rend” which does 60 damage,
plus another 30 if the opponent’s Active has any damage
counters already on it. Like with Fury Swipes
earlier, you’re already paying for the 90 damage Claw
Rend only yields under conditional circumstances, and
Call for Family is an iffy proposition on an opening
Basic anymore and so not something you want to see on a
Stage 1. Surprisingly this received a review
here.
It scored poorly, and frankly we were too generous. None
of these older Weavile are Standard legal, and
only Weavile [Plasma] offers potential
competition or combo partnership. So… how should
you use Weavile (XY: Steam Siege 61/114)?
In Expanded you could try to insert it into a Tool Drop
deck built around Trubbish (BW: Plasma Storm
65/135) but I don’t think those are particularly
effective, plus it would just be to replace
Masquerain [Plasma] (see above). In a Standard
format without any convenient Tool removal but
with some strong Pokémon Tools, this might be a
Bench-sitter to consider.
The big concern is of course Garbodor (XY:
BREAKpoint 57/122); it brought “Garbotoxin” back,
and without a card like Tool Scrapper,
Startling Megaphone, or even Xerosic to
relieve it of its Tool, it already seems to be shaping
Standard. Not quite the shape some expected;
either we are going to get into a cycle of where
Garbodor usage chases after Ability usage going up
and down, or we’ll enter a format where it is all pretty
steady, but Ability Reliant Deck > Ability Lacking (or
Light) Deck > Ability Denial Deck > Ability Reliant
Deck. I am not aware of any killer decks
that need this Weavile but a lot could
benefit from bouncing Tools around. Assault Vest
out of the way if it becomes clear your opponent can
avoid Special Energy. Float Stone on demand for
when you need a free Retreat. Exp. Share while
on the Bench but get rid of it once the Pokémon in
question goes on the offensive. Spirit Link
cards can be ditched for anything else once a Basic
Pokémon-EX has already Mega Evolved, and that also means
you might get by running fewer copies of said Spirit
Link. These aren’t going to be game breaking,
but as they also aren’t likely deck making you shouldn’t
suffer too badly when running into Garbotoxin (or any
other effect that shuts down Abilities). Just mind
Item lock and some of the other effects capable of
discarding Pokémon Tools.
You shouldn’t need a thick line for this; a 1-1 or 2-2
ought to be sufficient. Give it a try in Standard.
In Expanded your Tools are relatively easy to discard so
it’s a lot less appealing, even though Eco Arm
can help you recycle up to three Tools per copy. Masquerain
[Plasma] wasn’t seeing play so this Weavile isn’t
going to either. In Limited play I am only seeing
Spirit Links and Klefki (XY: Steam
Siege 80/114) for Tools; as such this almost
certainly just going to function as a Darkness Type
Stage 1 that only needs one actual [D] Energy for its
mediocre attack. Still might be decent deck filler
if your other pulls are lacking or if you
happened to get some of the great Darkness Types in this
set. Plus Sneasel (XY: Steam Siege
60/114) is both adorable and decent for stalling.
Ratings
Standard:
3/5
Expanded:
1.5/5
Limited:
3/5
Summary:
Weavile provides an almost surprisingly useful
effect that won’t make a deck, but will enhance it.
This means losing that Ability won’t ruin the deck
either, just diminish it. Right now we have some
very good Pokémon Tools, but that also aren’t good all
the time. Bouncing them allows you to move them
around (barring your opponent’s card effects),
maximizing opportunities and minimizing drawbacks. Garbodor
is the better Stage 1 Bench-sitter for a lot of decks,
but this is a nice alternative, especially if you notice
the rest of the metagame shifting away from
Abilities. You would likely barely have to alter
your deck; both Stage 1 Pokémon need room for some extra
Tools, so swap the Evolution lines then tweak the Tool
assortment!
Keep an eye on this one, unless we get something like
Startling Megaphone again.
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