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Pojo's Pokémon Card of the Day

aroramage	Boy oh boy, I've...I've missed out on a couple of days, huh? It's alright, though, VS Seeker being #1 shouldn't be as surprising as me forgetting to consider it for my own list. It's a pretty useful card that allowed for Supporters to put in as tech one-ofs and reusable, which is nice and makes it widely versatile depending on the card pool. And then there's Olivia from yesterday, who has potential with retrieving the newly popular GX cards that came out, though we may have to wait and see where that plays out - whether she becomes an essential part of GX decks or just a tech card in her own right.  And what better deck to think about than a Necrozma-GX deck?  [Nice transition~]  Necrozma-GX is...well, he's not one of the Ultra Beasts or the Tapus, but he is a special legendary in his own right. In the video games, you have to complete the Ultra Beasts side quest from Looker and the gang, which will reveal the presence of people who attract their presence, there's a moment where Looker sees Necrozma flying through the air, and eventually you fight him in a meadow. It's quite a leap, but there does seem to be a connection between it and the Ultra Beasts...come to think of it, the armor on Ultra Solgaleo and Ultra Lunaala does look familiar...  Anywho, Necrozma-GX has an Ability, an attack, and a GX move of course. The Ability is an interesting one - Light's End completely absorbs the damage from all Colorless Pokemon. It's a simple effect, but...it's hard to say if it'll see use? It's a rather niche Ability, perhaps thematically appropriate with Necrozma's ability to refract light in such a way that gives its prismatic body a black sheen, but in application it doesn't seem like it'd be that hard to work around.   Then there's Prismatic Burst, a 3-for-10 move that's completely Colorless but also benefits WAY more from having Psychic Energy. Kinda make you wonder why make it Colorless anyway, but I digress. You're forced to discard all Psychic Energy from Necrozma-GX, but you get the benefit of adding on 60 more damage for each Psychic Energy discarded this way. If you only throw out 1, that's 70 damage, 2 gets you 130 damage, and 3 gets you the 190 damage that'll KO most things outside of Mega-EX or Stage 1+ GX. Although I'm not aware of any recent Psychic Energy recyclers in the game, it's still a decent attack in its own right, I suppose.  But the attack that I think turns everyone's head is Black Ray GX, which for the same cost as Prismatic Burst will deal 100 damage to all opposing EX and GX. On its own, it won't KO anything, but as for setting up, it's a lot easier to take on something that's 110 HP or 150 HP than at 210 or 250. It's a stepping stone to KOing easier with Prismatic Burst, as well as helping out with all your other Pokemon and getting them into the right damage range.   It's hard to say what impact Necrozma-GX will have on the TCG, but there is some optimism towards its utility. Perhaps there will be a perfect partner for it that will bring it out to surprise us, or maybe it'll become the standard tech to defeat the threat of a particularly powerful Colorless Pokemon. Whatever his usage may be, Necrozma-GX is certainly not one to overlook.  Rating  Standard: 3.5/5 (he's a bit niche in my own opinion)  Expanded: 4/5 (but if he's got Energy acceleration, he can keep KOing Pokemon with Prismatic Burst)  Limited: 3.5/5 (which is pretty good, all things considered)  Arora Notealus: I nicknamed mine Diamante. If you get the reference, congrats~ ;) And no, it's not because he looks like a black diamond.  Next Time: Soaring in to disrupt the sound barrier!
21times	Necrozma GX (Burning Shadows, 63/147) comes into the meta as a brand new Pokemon from the Burning Shadows expansion set released about a week and a half ago.  A 180 HP Basic Psychic Pokemon, Necrozma has two attacks and an ability.  Its first attack, Prismatic Burst, does 10 + (60x) damage where x = the number of Psychic energy attached to Necrozma.  It also has a minimum of three Colorless energy to activate this attack, so if you have, for example, one Psychic and two Metal energy attached to Necrozma, this attack does only seventy damage.  Unfortunately, all Psychic energy attached to Necrozma must be discarded immediately after this attack (non-Psychic energy would not be discarded).  However, considering the preeminence of Gardevoir GX (Burning Shadows, 93/147) and Tapu Lele GX (Guardians Rising, 60/145), discarding energy off your active Pokemon actually works to your advantage in these matchups. Necrozma’s other attack, its GX attack Black Ray-GX, does one hundred damage to each of your opponent’s EX or GX Pokemon in play.  With the popularity of GX Pokemon right now, this attack could spread several hundred damage across the board in one fell swoop.  Finally, Necrozma has an ability (Light’s End) that prevents all damage done to this Pokemon from Colorless Pokemon.  Note that this ability does not prevents effects of attacks, so Drampa GX’s (Guardians Rising, 115/145) Righteous Edge, even though it would do no damage, would still discard a Special energy card attached to Necrozma. Necrozma does have the misfortune of having Psychic weakness, a very significant liability in today’s meta as it would only take five Item cards in your discard pile to allow Garbodor (Guardians Rising, 51/145) to OHKO Necrozma.  Therefore, a very logical pairing for Necrozma GX is with Metagross GX (Guardians Rising, 85/145).  In matches where you face GRI Garbodor, Metagross GX alone would fight against Garbodor, and you simply don’t bench Necrozma.  Metagross also has the ability to return the Psychic energy discarded back to Necrozma so it can attack again next turn. OK, you say, but Metagross can already do this to himself.  Why does he need to use Geotech System for a different Pokemon?  This seems like a waste of a couple of card slots. The answer is very simple: Giga Hammer does 150 damage, 180 with a Choice Band (Guardians Rising, 121/145).  Prismatic Burst can actually do up to 250 damage, which will OHKO anything in the game.  I’m not saying that it’s easy to get four Psychic energy on Necrozma, but it’s possible – I’ve done it in my testing.  Plus, you now have a non-Fire weak attacker that’s also a Basic Pokemon so you don’t have an autoloss to Glaceon EX (Fates Collide, 20/124)… and - without giving any spoilers for a review we’re doing next week – that’s definitely something you’re going to have to be wary of in the future!  Since we’re talking about deck diversification, Just a quick thing to mention is that you may want to leave a Metang (Guardians Rising, 84/145) unevolved if your opponent plays Alolan Vulpix (Guardians Rising, 21/145) as the new Alolan Ninetales (Burning Shadows, 28/147) can only be damaged by non-EX and non-GX Pokemon.  Metang hits it for weakness and one shots it, thereby countering Alolan Ninetales’ Luminous Barrier ability.  I have seen the new Alolan Ninetales a number of times in the past week and a half – I’m sure we all have.  It’s becoming very common to tech one into whatever deck you might already have Alolan Vulpix in to use its free Beacon attack to search for two Pokemon.  Between Alolan Ninetales, Glaceon EX, and Jolteon EX (Generations, 28/83), we are all going to have to diversify our decks in order to assure that we don’t have any autolosses from these Pokemon. Rating Standard: 3.5 out of 5 Conclusion In my testing for Necrozma, I went 10 W 6 L.  I had Necrozma at ten on my list, I had downgraded it because of its Psychic weakness and I was skeptical as to how well it would actually interface with Metagross GX.  The Psychic Weakness remains a significant issue, and the deck takes several turns to develop – I don’t know if any deck in the meta today takes longer to get rolling than this one.  Against what I would call “Meta” decks – top tier decks – I went 3 W 5 L.  Here’s the list I used: * 4 Beldum GRI 83 * 3 Metang GRI 84 * 4 Metagross-GX GRI 139 * 2 Necrozma-GX BUS 63 * 2 Tapu Lele-GX GRI 60 * 4 Alolan Vulpix GRI 21 * 4 Professor Sycamore STS 114 * 2 Rescue Stretcher GRI 130 * 2 Choice Band GRI 121 * 4 Rare Candy SUM 129 * 1 Brigette BKT 134 * 2 Guzma BUS 115 * 4 Ultra Ball SUM 135 * 1 Olivia BUS 119 * 4 Field Blower GRI 125 * 4 N NVI 92 * 4 Max Potion GRI 164 * 4 Metal Energy SUM 163 * 5 Psychic Energy SUM 162 I used a post-rotation decklist but played most of my competition on the ladder, so many of the decks I played used cards that will leave the format in two weeks.  That might have distorted the win percentage a little bit.  Overall, Necrozma makes this deck better, and it was already a good deck.  The potential to hit 250 damage is very significant as with the prevalence of Max Potion, Acerola (Burning Shadows, 112/147), and Super Scoop Up (Burning Shadows, 124/147), the ability to OHKO anything gives you a strong advantage in this new meta. I had also tested Necrozma in a spread deck with Tapu Koko (SM Promo 31), Weavile (Burning Shadows, 86/147), and Meowstic (Generations, RC15).  However, I found that I was using Weavile so much that I just couldn’t put Necrozma on the bench as Weavile does sixty to him as well.  Therefore, I would not recommend running Necrozma in a spread deck with Weavile… and I would not recommend running a spread deck without Weavile (seriously, if I knew how good Weavile’s Rule of Evil attack would be, I might have put it in my top ten).
Otaku	Note: Though very late, my review for yesterday was posted sometimes yesterday, at least by local time.  Feel free to give it a look for my thoughts on Olivia, particularly as I didn’t score it quite like the others.  Necrozma-GX (SM: Burning Shadows 63/147, 134/147, 153/147) is a ninth place pick from the new set; let’s break it down and see why folks are so excited, and whether or not they actually should be.  The bad of being a Pokémon-GX includes giving up an extra Prize when KO’d, being excluded from certain beneficial effects, and being targeted by other detrimental ones.  So far the list of benefits includes access to support specifically for Pokémon-GX, being excluded from certain detrimental effects, better-than-normal stats (usually HP), and possessing three effects (one of which is a GX-attack).  Looks like these are starting to feel a bit different from Pokémon-EX (and old-school Pokémon-ex) at last.  Necrozma-GX is a Psychic-Type, a reasonably promising Type; in terms of Weakness it hits a good chunk of the Fighting-Type and fellow Psychic-Types for double damage, but it also means dealing with almost universal Resistance among Darkness-Types and Metal-Types.  I still think the best Psychic-Type explicit tricks are found in Expanded, most notably Dimension Valley as it can shaving [C] off their attack costs, but we’ve still got some decent fellow Psychic-Types that can still lend support, some Psychic Energy based tricks like Altar of the Moone, and the basic Psychic Energy card support that’s going to figure prominently into this review, the “Geotech System” Ability of Metagross-GX.  I don’t recall any explicit anti-Psychic-Type counters, and most Type-specific counters aren’t all that great anyway.  Necrozma-GX is a Basic Pokémon, which is the best; minimum time and space requirements, Basic Stage support, a natural synergy with many effects, even some perks from the core mechanics of the game like functioning as your opening Active, with the only drawback being anti-Basic Pokémon effects.  Necrozma-GX has 180 HP, which is typical of many competitive Basic Pokémon-GX and Basic Pokémon-EX; while it has been years since this was a difficult to OHKO amount, your average deck is still unlikely to score those OHKO’s rapidly, reliably, and repeatedly.  One of the three is all but guaranteed now, though, and two of the three is becoming more and more common; some decks will manage all three but (thankfully) have other drawbacks because of it, or are exploiting Weakness.  In this case, Necrozma-GX has the iconic Psychic Weakness of TCG Psychic-Types; an effective 90 HP is going down fairly easily, though the silver lining to this cloud is that more than a few Psychic-Types are not focused on doing straight damage; they tend to be more effect-based, and the designers have more than a few like Tapu Lele-GX where the big and/or only damaging attack does not apply Weakness.  The lack of Resistance is typical; I find it a bit more annoying on bigger Pokémon like this, where it might have a chance to do some good, but I won’t dock Necrozma-GX for it.  The Retreat Cost of [CC] is big enough to potentially be a pain; without some help, you can probably afford to pay it once, maybe even twice, but you’ll be hurting for it. We’ll begin with the Ability of Necrozma-GX: “Light’s End” prevents all damage that would be done to this Pokémon by attacks from [C] Pokémon.  Type-specific counters are usually more miss than hit, and decks that rely on more recent Colorless-Type heavies like Tauros-GX and Drampa-GX can get around Light’s End by shutting down Abilities or shifting to an alternate attacker.  If you’re going to mess with a Type, the Colorless-Type probably has the best long term chance of proving significant; and sometimes forcing your opponent to shift to an attacker of a different Type is enough.  “Prismatic Burst” is the card’s first attack, and it costs [CCC], or rather that is the printed cost; the real cost is as many [P] Energy at you can spare because the effect of the attack discard all attached Psychic Energy from “this Pokémon”.  The payout?  10 damage plus 60 per card discarded in this way; an Energy card that provides [PP] or more still only adds 60 damage.  Gardevoir (BW: Next Destinies 57/99; BW: Dark Explorers 190/108) just can’t catch a break, eh?  The attack is awful with no [P] Energy to discard, underwhelming with just one, good with two, and great with three or more.  Fueling Prismatic Burst with even just [PPP] results in a OHKO against most cards; Mega Evolutions, Stage 1 or 2 Pokémon-GX, and a few oddballs are the only ones that survive.  So what about the GX-attack?  For [CCC] once again, and this time for real, you can use “Black Ray-GX” to hit each of your opponent’s Pokémon-X and Pokémon-GX for 100 damage.  Against a single target, this is underwhelming as a GX-attack; 100-for-three is okay, otherwise.  Against multiple targets, it just gets better and better but it can be tricky to capitalize upon that damage.  There are no other versions of Necrozma-GX (wonder how long that will hold true?), so let’s get to the main use I see for this card.  I already gave it away earlier; this is the new attacker in Metagross-GX decks.  You thought it was already great slamming folks with “Giga Hammer” turn after turn?  As long as you can make sure you’ve got a decent amount of both basic Psychic Energy cards and basic Metal Energy cards, you’ll have a Metal-Type capable of slamming opponents for 150 damage - likely important because of Gardevoir-GX - and a Psychic-Type doing 130 or 190 most turns.  Why not just stick with Metagross-GX?  While its 250 HP is more likely to survive a hit, it is still your main Energy accelerator and thus something you don’t want to risk.  Plus, it is a Fire Weak Pokémon, while Necrozma-GX is Psychic Weak; this means you can use them to cover each other’s bad matchups.  Since we are talking about making Metagross-GX decks better, this gives you something a little safer to throw against Volcanion-EX decks.  Other uses are much more speculative; Necrozma-GX is waiting for a strong Colorless-Type attacker to rise up, and there might be a damage spread deck just waiting for someone to spot all the pieces and put it together.  This applies to both Standard and Expanded play, I think.  In Expanded, I’ve heard rumblings about it partnering with Trevenant BREAK to give that deck some needed oomph.  For the Limited Format, this is a really nice card to have; there are some good Colorless-Types in this set, at least for Limited play plus Necrozma-GX may be good enough to run as your only Basic Pokémon.  Include both basic Psychic Energy cards and Energy of at least one other Type as 70-for-three (with a discard) with the occasional bigger hit should prove pretty strong.  All of this is conjecture on my part, sadly.  Ratings  Standard: 3.35/5  Expanded: 3.35/5  Limited: 4/5  Conclusion  Necrozma-GX has several nice pieces, but I don’t know of a deck that effectively unites all three.  Fortunately, its regular attack looks should allow it to serve well in Metagross-GX decks.  It isn’t a total zero (or should I say one-out-of-five) as a generalist, as the Ability and GX-attack could prove useful in almost any deck, but probably not especially good.  There might be some more specialized decks that can really capitalize upon the GX-attack, especially if people are careless with Tapu Lele-GX usage and/or fail to stagger their Evolved Pokémon-GX.  Breakdown  Necrozma-GX nailed ninth place with 13 voting points, beating out yesterday’s Olivia by five and missing tomorrow’s eighth place pick by the same amount.  Necrozma-GX made three out of five individual Top 10’s, and was my personal third place pick… but I don’t remember why I placed it that high on the list.  Maybe I’ll remember (or we’ll all see) why I would rank it third out of this set, so I’ll just be glad it even made the group list at all.
Vince	Hello readers! Vince here, and I previously jumped ahead to some cards that I saw in PokeBeach. However, I can do one card at a time, so I will talk about our 9th place finisher, Necrozma-GX. This card would eventually be released probably in the Burning Shadows set (I might be wrong). So why talk about a card that isn't even out yet? Well, the information's here so looking at it now may give some sort of clue if this card would revolutionize the meta or not. Necrozma-GX is a psychic type, tapping on some support such as Dimension Valley, which makes attacks cost one [C] cheaper, Mystery Energy lowering the retreat cost by 2, Gardevoir (BW Next Destines) doubling basic Psychic energy from one unit to two units of psychic energy. It can hit other Psychic and some Fighting types for weakness, but most dark Pokémon takes 20 less damage from psychic Pokémon. Being a GX means giving extra prizes when KOed, as well as having a combination of three attacks or an ability and two attacks. Since you can only use one GX attack in a game, it faces even more competition from other fellow GXs if you put multiples of them in your deck. Some cards can benefit or penalize you for using an GX attack. Having 180 HP is making players work on the old 2HKO tactics. Being weak to Psychic is ok, I suppose, as it can create mirror matches. And a retreat of 2 is neither good nor bad; Mystery Energy makes it a free retreat. Necrozma-GX has an ability and two attacks. It's End of Light prevents damage from any Colorless Pokémon by both players. This could be the end to Colorless attackers, especially Mega Rayquaza and Lugia-EX, since they both focus on dealing huge damage for strategic OHKOs. This could also stop Drampa GX from running rampant since I think Berserk doing 150 for CCC is quite overwhelming to me. Two attacks cost Colorless, but the effect of some attacks may suggest using that type for a desirable output. Prismatic Burst cost CCC for 10 damage and forces a discard to all psychic energy attached to this Pokémon and it will do 60 more for each psychic energy being discarded this way. This could range from 10, 70, 130, or 190 if you go by the minimum attachment for meeting the cost. This can be scaled so if you decided with 4 energies, then it can swing for 250, enough to KO anything. There's not much acceleration for psychic energy except for Metagross-GX with its ability Geotech System which retrieves a psychic or metal energy to your Pokémon. Having four Metagrosses can break even, getting four psychic energies back to Necrozma to constantly do 250 (enough to OHKO anything), but you'll devote 20% of your deck space for that 4-4-4 line. It's GX attack is Black Ray which costs CCC and does 100 damage to each of your opponent's EX and GX. This attack's damage isn't affected by anything whatsoever (weakness, resistance, or any other effects of the defending Pokémon). This GX attack can range from useless to amazing; for decks that don't use EXs or GXs, this attack won't do anything; for decks that have EX/GX only, then it could do as much as 600 total damage! If you're going to land KOs, however, you'll need other Pokémon that can do spread damage to the point where the damaged EX/GXs have 100 or less HP. Trevenant BREAK might be the best option. It's silent fear attack places 3 damage counters on each of your opponent's Pokémon, so it might take 3-5 turns to place damage to the point where Black Ray could actually win you the game due to more than 3 EX/GXs being KOed. There are some problems trying to play to its strengths. Abilities that are shut off makes it impossible to recover discarded energies and get attacked by Colorless attackers, and 3-5 turns could be too long that the opponent can bounce their damaged Pokémon and deny the KO. However, Necrozma can still OHKO Garbodor if it's brought to the active due to weakness and have a basic Psychic and a DCE. So we have a Pokémon that: Blocks all Colorless attackers, a scalable attack similar to Ninetales BREAK, and a not too specialized GX attack (EXs and GXs are frequently used) (better than Starmie BREAK's Break Star). I think this will see play, but probably be in a few decks where it'll help capitalize on Necrozma's attacks. In limited, it walls against Colorless attackers, but Prismatic Burst is much harder to use there, making you attack once every three turns (or 4 if stage 2 GXs!) via manual attachments, and Black Ray won't do much in Limited because of decks with just one GX and 39 energies. Ratings: Standard (pre-rotation): 3.2/5 Standard (post-rotation): 3/5 Expanded: 3.2/5 Limited: 2.5/5 Summary: You might be wondering why I score somewhat low for a Pokémon that's based on its own Japanese expansion. Necrozma-GX looks like it should be one of the top attackers of the game. I suspect that the fire weakness of Metagross GX is keeping them from helping Necrozma-GX. It might get a chance to shine later when certain decks that focus on a Pokémon or strategy faces some decline. As such, I may have lowballed it too much. I didn’t have this on my top 10 list.