aroramage |
Casual Slap, more like Casual I
don't really care for this vanilla 2-for-30 Slap.
This is the other Oricorio in the
set, and this one likes hula-dancing to its Ability,
Vital Dance. Basically, when you play this Oricorio,
you'll get to add 2 basic Energy cards from your deck to
your hand. Now normally, I would say this
Ability's...okay. Yes, it does thin your deck out, and
it'll make it less likely that later on you'll hit a
dead draw from getting the Energy card when you really
need that one Supporter, though I don't know how often
that situation comes up anyway. But you still will need
to take 2 turns to play both of those Energy cards, so
at least one of them is just sitting in your hand
doing...not that much.
Then I thought, "Say, wouldn't
Volcanion decks like this?"
So there's a thought. Try it in
something that would want the Energy in hand, like
Volcanion or Greninja BREAK. Otherwise, you could
probably just dump it with a Supporter into the discard
and go from there...but then you could do that anyway if
you just draw through everything.
Rating
Standard: 2.5/5 (not a bad option,
but I guess...not really a necessary one?)
Expanded: 2.5/5 (I think only
Volcanion and Greninja could really take advantage of
Vital Dance)
Limited: 3.5/5 (possibly M
Gardevoir-EX as well, mainly for discard fodder for her
own attack)
Arora Notealus: Pink hula dancing
bird is pretty nice. I should grab me one of
those......I should just start playing Sun and Moon
again.
Next Time: BONK
|
21times |
Oricorio
(Guardians Rising, 55/145) comes out of the
Guardians Rising expansion set.
The version we are covering today is the Psychic
type with the ability
Vital Dance
which allows you, when you play this card from your hand
and put this Pokemon on your bench, to search your deck
for two Basic energy cards and put them into your hand.
It’s basically a
Professor’s
Letter (Breakthrough, 146/162) as an ability.
And that’s why it sees no use.
If it were able to get a Special energy (even
just one!) or if you were able to attach those two Basic
energies, it would be fantastic and see a LOT of play.
But to take up a space on your bench only to put
two Basic energy in your hand?
No thanks.
Plus, there’s a
Ribombee
coming out in Burning Shadows that lets you grab
two Basic energy every turn, not only when played.
Rating
Standard: 1 out of 5
Conclusion
I just don’t think that this card adds any value.
Taking up a bench spot for only two Basic energy
is just not going to increase your win percentage.
|
Otaku |
Time to review Oricorio (SM: Guardians Rising
55/145). It is a Basic, Psychic-Type Pokémon with
90 HP, Psychic Weakness, no Resistance, Retreat Cost
[C], an Ability, and an attack. The Ability is
“Vital Dance”, which triggers when you Bench Oricorio
during your turn. Simply put, it acts as a
Professor’s Letter, allowing you to search your deck
for up to two basic Energy cards and then add them to
your hand. For [PC] it can use “Casual Slap” to do
30 damage. Being a Basic is the best and means
this card is easy to run as a single, maxed out, or
anything in between. Being a Psychic-Type is
probably not going to matter for this card, though if
you have a reason to use it with Psychic-Type support it
will benefit slightly. 90 HP means it is a probable
OHKO, even more so when its Psychic Weakness becomes a
factor; most Types have multiple “budget” attackers that
make any Weakness dangerous at 90 HP. Lack
of Resistance is typical so moving on, the Retreat Cost
of [C] is good (though not great); you won’t want to pay
it over and over, but once or twice shouldn’t be too
bad. Vital Dance is okay; it doesn’t do a lot, but
it’s easy enough to trigger one time unless Bench-space
is at a premium. Casual Slap is blatant filler;
with Dimension Valley or similar help it becomes
a mediocre attack; most of the time you’ll just be using
it for the Ability or not at all.
There are already three other Oricorio cards, and
as we may not get to all of them, I’m going to indulge
and run through them really quick. We have SM:
Guardians Rising 14/145, SM: Guardians Rising
46/145, and SM: Guardians Rising 56/145 (also
released as SM: Black Star Promos SM19).
All are Basic Pokémon with 90 HP, Retreat Cost [C], and
two attacks. SM: Guardians Rising 14/145 is a
Fire-Type with Water Weakness and no Resistance.
For [R] it can use “Passionate Dance” to search your
deck for up to three Fire-Type Basic Pokémon and play
them directly to your Bench. For [RR] it can use
“Kindle” to do 30 damage and… that wording is a bit
confusing. The attack requires you discard an
Energy from “this Pokémon”, and then you discard an
Energy from your opponent’s Active. I can only
assume the “If you do…” clause is there in case some
combo exists (or will exist) that would let you use the
attack sans attached Energy on the attacker. The
stats are somewhat relevant, but the attacks are what
could make or break this card. Both have solid
potential, though Passionate Dance is a bit slow and
Kindle is a bit pricey, if you can spare the time or
spam “Steam-Up” (via Volcanion-EX), they can be
helpful. What is more, Fire-Type decks sometimes
need to add Energy to hand, so it is possible that they
might want to run both today’s SM: Guardians Rising
55/145 and SM: Guardians Rising 14/145.
Then again, I doubt you’d want to run four of each, so
they still don’t truly clash.
SM: Guardians Rising
46/145 is a Lightning-Type with Fighting Weakness and
Metal Resistance. I’m not sure how useful being a
Lightning-Type will prove, and while the Fighting
Weakness should ensure a OHKO against that matchup,
while Metal Resistance might still manage to
prove helpful (but probably not too often). Both
of its attacks cost [L], so they are nice and
inexpensive. We’ll be reviewing them in reverse
order for a reason that should quickly become apparent:
“Pom-Pom Punch” does a so-so 20 damage while using
“Feather Dance” places an effect on itself that raises
the base damage of Pom-Pom Punch to 100. Doing 100
damage over two turns, even for a single Energy, is
unimpressive, if not downright weak, and the “combo” in
question is so fragile it seems unlikely it will
actually work. There are just too many ways to
remove the effect, even if you can add other
factors to somehow make the damage output worthwhile.
That means this version is not going to combo with or
be a threat to today’s, so we’ll move onto the last one.
SM: Guardians Rising
56/145 is another Psychic-Type but this time with
Darkness Weakness and Fighting Resistance, which again
are deadly and (possibly) handy. Both of its
attacks cost [C]. “Supernatural Dance” allows you to
place an amount of damage counters equal to the number
of Pokémon in your opponent’s discard pile on any of
your opponent’s Pokémon, distributed between them all as
you see fit. “Revelation Dance” does 30 damage, but
only if you have a Stadium in play. Supernatural
Dance potentially makes this Oricorio into
a super-sniper, especially against classic decks like
Night March that put a lot of Pokémon into their own
discard pile and have several low HP targets in
play all at once. Revelation Dance is filler, but
at least there are decent odds a Stadium will already be
in play; I actually found myself slapping a Choice
Band onto this Oricorio during a match
against a Psychic Weak Pokémon-GX for an expendable
attacker that was doing 120 for one Energy. Again,
you’re probably not maxing out on this version, so no
harm in running them together should your deck actually
need both. We already reviewed SM: Guardians
Rising 56/145
here;
based on my limited usage I am already tempted to reduce
its scores in Standard and Expanded to a flat
three-out-of-five but like I said, it was very
limited usage. As for Oricorio (SM:
Guardians Rising 55/145), I didn’t get to try it out
in Standard or Expanded, but being a way for Pokémon
search to ultimately get basic Energy means it might
have a chance. Besides decks with high basic
Energy (in hand) needs, it also can be another warm body
for Sky Field decks. It should be quite
useful for Limited play, as you can probably spare the
deck and Bench space and will probably need help
getting specific basic Energy in hand. This
Oricorio shows up in the “Steel Sun” Theme Deck,
where it’s good but not great.
Ratings
Standard:
2/5
Expanded:
2/5
Limited:
3.75/5
Theme:
3.65/5
Conclusion
Oricorio
(SM: Guardians Rising 55/145) is basically a
Professor’s Letter that gets around Item lock but
eats up a Bench slot and has to deal with Ability
lock. Still, as I’ve seen some players make good
use of Steven because of Item lock, I’m not going
to rule out niche usage, or possibly mainstream if Item
lock becomes thoroughly dominant again. While I
credit it for not helping Garbodor (SM:
Guardians Rising 51/145) and its “Trashalanche”, it
runs afoul of Garbodor (XY: BREAKpoint
57/122) and its “Garbotoxin”, so that’s a major
archetype where Oricorio just can’t win.
|
