Otaku |
Clocking in at 18th
place is M Gardevoir-EX (XY: Steam Siege
79/114, 112/114). We first looked at this Pokémon
here
and to save time I’ll just let you read what I wrote
here… except that is one of two reviews I missed that
week, so time to remedy the situation.
M Gardevoir-EX
is a dual Type: Fairy/Psychic. Both Types offer
some useful pieces of support spread out in various
manners. Of those that focus purely on Pokémon
Type, the big winner is Dimension Valley from the
Psychic Type. A bit of an issue because the Fairy
Type offers Fairy Garden and when you see
the attack, Sky Field is going to make a lot of
sense as well. Xerneas (XY 96/146; XY:
Black Star Promos XY05; XY: Steam Siege
81/114) and Xerneas BREAK are useful pieces of
[Y] Energy support. Fairy Weakness is only found
on Dragon Types past the BW-era, while Psychic Weakness
is found on many Fighting Type and Psychic Type cards;
it isn’t the largest combined Weakness group but it is
solid. Fairy Resistance isn’t a thing, but nearly
all Darkness and Metal Type Pokémon have Psychic
Resistance; good thing Resistance is just -20 damage.
The other aspects of being a Fairy/Psychic Type aren’t
particularly important so we’ll move onto something that
is: this is a Mega Evolution. Yes, the name makes
that obvious but we’ll need to remember that this card
gives up an extra Prize when KO’d, has to deal with
detrimental effects targeting Pokémon-EX in general and
Mega Evolutions specifically, beneficial effects
excluding Pokémon-EX, and the Mega Evolution rule ending
your turn (barring Gardevoir Spirit Link).
The good news is
that this card has better attributes and effects than it
would as a regular Gardevoir card and there are
pieces of Mega Evolution support like Mega Turbo.
None of the regular Gardevoir (or even
Gardevoir-EX) received the dual Type treatment.
While being a Mega Evolution means it takes a little
time and effort to hit the field (especially without
ending your turn), that is much easier than being a
Stage 2 like the normal versions of Gardevoir.
Its 210 HP is on the small side for a Mega Evolution
but it is still enough to usually survive a hit
and exceeds any regular Gardevoir by a
sizable margin. Metal Weakness and Darkness
Resistance reflect the Fairy half of its heritage; no
Weakness is good but there are a few worse to have right
now than Metal Weakness, while Darkness Resistance may
be the most useful at present. Its Retreat Cost of
[CC] isn’t good, but it isn’t bad either; if you must
you can probably afford to pay it and the two Types
bring additional options for dealing with it (Fairy
Garden and Mystery Energy), though both may
have other issues. The solitary attack on M
Gardevoir-EX is “Despair Ray” for [YC], doing
110 damage with the option of discarding as many of your
Benched Pokémon as you wish for an extra 10 damage per.
If you dare sacrifice your entire Bench, that’s a 160
damage, but with Sky Field Despair Ray can hit
190 before other effects. The 110 per turn is
solid already thanks to the low cost, and with the
effect 2HKOs are reliable while OHKO’s are possible.
M Gardevoir-EX
must Evolve via Gardevoir-EX (and preferably
Gardevoir Spirit Link). Gardevoir-EX (XY:
Primal Clash 105/160, 155/160; Generations
RC30/RC32) and Gardevoir-EX (XY: Steam Siege
78/114, 111/114, 116/114). Both are Basic Fairy
Type Pokémon-EX with 170 HP, Metal Weakness, Darkness
Resistance, Retreat Cost [CC], and two attacks. XY:
Primal Clash 105/160 can use “Life Leap” for [Y] to
do 20 damage while healing itself by an amount equal to
the damage done, or “Shining Wind” for [YYY] to do 100
damage while negating its Weakness during your
opponent’s next turn. XY: Steam Siege 78/114 has
“Link Blast” for [YC] to do 30 damage, plus another 70
(100 total) if it and the opponent’s Active Pokémon have
the same amount of Energy attached to them. For
[YYC] it may instead use “Luminous Blade” to do 120
damage, but must discard an Energy from itself.
Neither Gardevoir-EX is great, but also neither
is bad; these are solid stats and decent attacks, and in
some situations you might be better off with one or the
other… so run both. There is also M Gardevoir-EX
(XY: Primal Clash 106/160, 156/160;
Generations RC31/RC32) to consider; other than being
a mono Fairy Type it has identical stats to today’s M
Gardevoir-EX (XY: Steam Siege 79/114,
112/114). It does have its own attack and that is
“Brilliant Arrow”, which costs [YCC] to do 30 damage per
[Y] Energy attached to all of your Pokémon. We
looked at this card
here
and made it our #2 pick for the set. I recall it
saw some success, but don’t remember it being a major
player, at least for long. Fortunately it can play
nicely enough with today’s M Gardevoir-EX, giving
it a second chance.
As this is a look
back, I don’t have to guess how to run M Gardevoir-EX
(XY: Steam Siege 79/114, 112/114). As the
year winds down we’ve seen it not win anything major,
but still give a decent showing at multiple events…
until the Dallas Texas Winter Regional, which gets us
into 2017 as it was a two day event beginning on
December 31, 2016 and ending January 1, 2016. Not
only did Xander Pero win the event with M Gardevoir-EX,
but three others made the Top 8. Having half a Top
8 feature any deck is pretty impressive. Xander’s
list is pretty straightforward, and I don’t have a link
handy to it yet (the official tournament results weren’t
up yet
here
as of writing this), but the short version is he focused
on just M Gardevoir-EX (XY: Steam Siege
79/114, 112/114). Sky Field made room on the
Bench for Dragonite-EX (XY: Evolutions
72/108, 79/108), Hoopa-EX (XY: Ancient Origins
36/98, 89/98; XY: Black Star Promos XY71), and
Shaymin-EX (XY: Roaring Skies 77/108,
106/108). Hawlucha (XY: Steam Siege
97/114) and Rattata (XY: Evolutions
66/108) added some extra tricks to assist in KO’s.
Another interesting inclusion is Fairy Drop for
some extra healing. I wish I could explain more
but this is not the M Gardevoir-EX deck
that has been giving me problems on the PTCGO.
Well, disregarding a lot of good and bad luck which has
been skewing my results across the board.
On the PTCGO I’ve
been alternating between M Scizor-EX and
Yveltal-EX decks, both backed by Garbodor (XY:
BREAKpoint 57/122) for Standard and mostly just
sticking with Maxie’s Yveltal decks for Expanded.
The M Gardevoir-EX deck that has been plaguing me
follow two alternate paths. Thanks to how broken
Weakness is as a mechanic, the M Scizor-EX deck
doesn’t have a problem either way (though when I keep
slamming into Volcanion-EX...) but what surprised
me is Darkness Resistance being a significant factor.
The HP on M Gardevoir-EX means a OHKO is
difficult, especially with today’s M Gardevoir-EX
being able to attack for just two (or even one if
Dimension Valley is in play!) Energy. Some of
these builds also used Fairy Drop, but others
used Max Potion as these variants focused on
reliable 2HKOs. Either they used Dimension
Valley to do 110 (plus the occasional bonus from
Bench sacrifices) for one Energy or they even
went with Fairy Garden and the full on Fairy deck
so that they either would retreat, bring up a spare
attacker. Either cards like Xerneas (and its
“Geomancy” attack) or Max Elixir (prior to Mega
Evolution) set up multiple attackers ahead of time, or
Mega Turbo used before or afterwards, including
refueling the same M Gardevoir-EX that turn.
Also some of these use Xerneas BREAK and the
other M Gardevoir-EX if you can’t prevent
them from filling their side of the field with [Y]
Energy.
If you’re going to
a tournament, I’d favor Xander’s list but that is
because this deck kind of caught me off guard. So
yeah, it nearly missed 2016 but M Gardevoir-EX (XY:
Steam Siege 79/114, 112/114) finally made good, and
could be one of the stronger decks next year if
Yveltal-EX remains strong. I think the deck
looks better for Standard than Expanded play, though
Battle Compressor might assist in its setup.
For Limited play, it looks very good, provided you pull
both and it doesn’t take too long to show up.
Ratings
Standard:
3.75/5
Expanded:
3.65/5
Limited:
4/5
Summary:
So I just spent nearly three pages explaining how M
Gardevoir-EX was finally coming into its own but in
the end, I didn’t even give it a full four out of five
in either Standard or Expanded play. I believe a
large part of its success is that it frustrates
Yveltal-EX and other Darkness Type attackers that
are currently popular. Same for any deck that
can’t secure a OHKO against it, which is a good deal of
the current metagame. That doesn’t describe the
entire metagame, however, so if Yveltal-EX
and company slip again we are left with… a still fairly
solid deck unless the Metal Type is the one to rise to
the top.
M Gardevoir-EX
also only received a single voting point, but with its
recent performance I went ahead and broke the tie
between it and
yesterday’s
Ninja Boy in its favor. It also tied
tomorrow’s
subject but I’ll wait until then explain why that card
managed to take 17th place.
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