21times |
Alolan Raticate
(Sun & Moon, 77/149) comes out of the most recent
Sun & Moon expansion and is a 120 HP Stage 1
Pokemon.
Alolan Raticate
has an unusual attack -
Evil Orders. For two
colorless energy, you may search your deck for a number
of cards equal to the number of Pokemon on your bench.
Important to note here is that you may search for
any card you want.
Special energy, Pokemon, Item, Supporter, anything you
want, no exclusions, no exceptions.
If you have five Pokemon on your bench, you can
go grab any five cards you want out of your deck.
Double colorless?
No problem.
Evolution Pokemon?
Yep.
Lysandre?
Sure.
Stadium?
It’s yours.
Any card you want, any amount of cards up to the number
of Pokemon on your bench.
Also important to note: you do not have to take
that number of cards, you can choose to take less.
I remember seeing this card and
thinking, “Wow!
This is going to change the game.”
I have still not come across
Alolan Raticate
yet, however, in now almost two months of play since
SUM’s release.
I haven’t tried to put it in a deck yet either,
so this review provided an excellent opportunity to do
that.
I have tried it in a couple of
different versions of
Tauros GX (Sun
& Moon, 144/149).
In one I tried to pair it with
Herdier (Sun
& Moon, 104/149), but I only went 4-6 with that
version.
I’ve tried Tauros GX also just with a 4-4 line of
Alolan Raticate, making Evil
Orders the focus – going for that first and
foremost, and then attacking with
Tauros GX and
hammering the heck out of my opponents.
I’m struggling with that as well, however, going
only 2-4 with it.
I have also tried it with
Darkrai EX (Breakpoint,
118/122), but I only went 2-3 with that version.
This has frustrated me a little
– this seems very similar to
Dragonair’s
(Sun & Moon,
95/149) Dragon’s
Wish. In
my mind, I should be having a lot more success with
this.
Getting any five cards you want out of your deck should
give you a HUGE advantage!
Somehow, for some reason, it’s just not working
the way I want it to.
I’m not sure exactly why, not sure what
adjustments I need to make, but this is DEFINITELY worth
pursuing.
Rating
Standard: 3 out of 5
Summary
There’s a deck out there for
Alolan Raticate.
There’s a deck out there that will be very good
and Evil Orders
will drive that deck’s success.
Maybe the card or cards that will have the
perfect synergy with
Alolan Raticate
don’t exist yet, but I’m betting that at some point
Alolan Raticate
will be an integral part of a very good deck.
I just can’t give it more than a 3 out of 5
because I can’t figure out what that deck is.
Just a quick post-script to the
above: Alolan
Rattata (Sun & Moon, 76/149) is the basic
evolution of
Alolan Raticate, and it’s not bad for a stepping
stone basic.
Although its 40 HP are frighteningly low, it has a free
attack (Gnaw)
for 20 damage, and it has the always popular free
retreat.
Also, I should mention that
about half of the times that I played
Evil Orders, 5
times in 11 plays, my opponent played
N (Fates
Collide, 105/124) and sadly whisked away all of the
cards that Evil
Orders had brought me.
Oh I wish for a moment that there were a card
that would prevent the effect of
N on my hand…
but then I remember that I did a study on
N that showed for every time my opponent played
N and it
reduced my hand count there were twice as many times
where he increased the number of cards in my hand,
thereby almost certainly improving my standing in the
game.
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Otaku |
Alolan Raticate
(Sun & Moon 77/149) is a Darkness Type Pokémon,
which would be more impressive except long-time TCG
players are already used to the idea thanks to Dark
Raticate (EX: Team Rocket Returns 17/109).
In fact, I am too used to the idea, since I had
to check to make sure they never made Raticate part
Dark-Type (in the video games) because it seriously
feels like a natural fit. Getting back to the TCG,
being a Darkness Type isn’t great for Weakness or
Resistance: only some Psychic Types are Darkness Weak
while all Fairy Types are Darkness Resistant.
Darkness Type support is fantastic in terms of fellow
Darkness Type Pokémon having valuable effects, whether
Abilities, attacks, or both. There are some tricks
based on just the [D] Energy Type, but most of the
Darkness (Pokémon) Type-specific effects aren’t as
impressive as they once were… save for Dark Patch,
in Expanded. There are Darkness Type counters, but
as usual, they were too niche to prove practical, even
when Darkness Types have been and currently are strong.
Yeah, even though really only good because of the
capabilities of the actual Darkness Type Pokémon, which
often (but not always) need to be in at least a
partially Darkness Type deck, they are so good that it
lifts up the entire Type: good for Alolan Raticate.
Being a Stage 1 is
adequate, as it isn’t too slow or cumbersome to ruin a
card, but it isn’t a big help either since Basic Pokémon
still set the competitive baseline. 120 HP is not
enough to reliably soak a hit once a deck gets going,
but it isn’t crippling, either, except perhaps when the
Fighting Weakness comes into play (making it an
effective 60 HP). Psychic Resistance might
actually be important given the HP is so borderline; -20
could be the difference between hanging on or being
KO’d. That chunky Retreat Cost of [CCC] means
you’ll need more than the average amount of alternatives
or assistance when it comes to retreating. Which
brings us to this card’s attacks two attacks, “Evil
Orders” and “Endeavor”. The former costs [CC] and
allows you to search your deck for a number of cards
equal (or less than) the number of Pokémon you have on
your Bench. For [DCC], Endeavor does 60 damage,
then has you flip two coins where each “heads” is good
for another 30 damage. While being able to snag
cards from your deck is an important, timing
matters. So do the full requirements.
If you don’t use Wally and go second, both
players have already had at least one turn to set up.
For many competitive decks, this means they have already
begun to deal out damage or are about to do just that.
To search for more cards, you need to fill your Bench.
With Sky Field, you could get up to eight cards…
but not only can your opponent force you to shuffle it
all away with a simple N (that fairly frequently
used Supporter), but to use an attack that aids
in setting up you… have to set up. I get it; this
will help an even more elaborate setup, but how
often do such decks work? It will help with
maintaining your field presence but how long
before you or your opponent trash your own hand?
Endeavor isn’t too
bad for powering up, especially in Expanded: a Dark
Patch plus a Double Colorless Energy from
hand takes Alolan Raticate from zero to Endeavor
in one turn, provided you can then promote it from the
Bench. Two coin flips mean four possible outcomes,
but two result in the same amount of damage so we are
looking at 25% being 60, 50% being 90, and 25% being 120
damage. For three Energy, 90 is decent, so long as
the rest of the card is worth it; 120 is solid, while 60
is bad. Put it all together, and if the rest of
Alolan Raticate was better, this could work… but it
isn’t, so I don’t think it does. Maybe Alolan
Rattata (Sun & Moon 76/149) helps? It
is a Basic Darkness Type Pokémon with 40 HP, Fighting
Weakness, Psychic Resistance, a free Retreat Cost, and
the attack “Gnaw” for [0] doing 20 damage. That…
is actually not bad. A free Retreat Cost is as
good as it gets while being able to attack for 20
without Energy required and Psychic Resistance has some
merit. Too bad Evolving doesn’t just cost you the
free Retreat but nearly inverts it, with a Retreat Cost
of [CCC] being the second highest printed on currently
legal cards, and the 40 HP making it so you need
to Evolve ASAP. It begs the question; do the two
really complement each other, save that there either
could have been much worse and there isn’t something
irritating like having two different Energy
requirements?
So yeah, not seeing
a good use for Alolan Raticate in Expanded or
Standard play. This kind of attack really wants to
be used on your first turn, where the current first turn
rules halve your chance of pulling it off even if you go
to the effort of using a card like Wally to
immediately Evolve Alolan Rattata into Alolan
Raticate. You need to actually invest quite a
bit for Evil Orders to serve up enough cards to be worth
just giving up an attack with a Stage 1 that has two
Energy attached. If we get some massive wall of a
Pokémon, especially a Basic, that can effectively copy
the attack, then maybe it would work. Probably
not, though; consider how Pokémon Fan Club can
snag two Pokémon from your deck at the cost of your
Supporter for the turn but using it to get one
Basic plus either Hoopa-EX (XY: Ancient
Origins 36/98, 89/98; XY: Black Star Promos
XY71) or Shaymin-EX (XY: Roaring Skies
77/108, 106/108). Both of those Pokémon are used
in competitive play, the latter rather heavily, but
when they are used as a combo, people just use Ultra
Ball. If they want an attacker that searches
out stuff, we’ve got Talonflame (XY: Steam
Siege 96/114); odds may not be great you’ll actually
open with it, but it does work splendidly in certain
decks, and a major mark in its favor is you use it for
setting up, and not just for further setup after filling
your Bench and Evolving. It only gets two cards,
but it gets two cards, and for just [C], while
being a Stage 2 you can open with via its “Gale Wings”
Ability. Alolan Raticate and Alolan Rattata
can sink their teeth into Limited play, where almost
everything good about them becomes better while almost
everything lacking is at least less lacking, maybe even
a little bit good.
Ratings
Standard:
1.75/5
Expanded:
1.5/5
Limited:
4/5
Conclusion
Alolan Raticate
wishes it came out about 10 years ago… or possibly in
the future. No, nothing about a specific future
release. This card seems to have been designed
while ignoring that using attacks for setting up is
slow, even slower than it used to be because of the
first turn rules and needing to Evolve to access the
attack, forgetting that it requires you to largely be
set up already, and that there is a high likelihood that
your opponent can force you to shuffle away everything
you just wasted all that effort to search out with a
commonly played card (N).
I will allow the
possibility, especially due to decks which
effectively lock down Items or Abilities, that just
maybe some quite complex deck will emerge that
needs a massive card investment so that having to
dedicate space to filling your Bench and quickly
Evolving into Alolan Raticate to perform further
set up becomes a good deal. Not sure what it would
look like, just theorizing about what it might be like
if it were to happen. That or something with an
effective way of copying Evil Orders, in a way that
addresses most (if not all) of the above issues.
We have cards that can copy the attack, like Mew-EX,
but it doesn’t actually solve the other problems (and
actually adds to them, since now you’ve got 120 HP
target worth two Prizes up front).
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