aroramage |
Man, could you have a card with a
more pompous sounding name? I PLAY THE STADIUM AETHER
PARADISE CONSERVATION AREA, NOW PROTECTING ALL MY
POKEMON!! Now go take care of the gardens, you will not
be needed here, PEASANT!!
...I feel like I'm forgetting
something-oh right the review.
The Conservation Area isn't as
conservative as its name would imply. It does provide a
shielding of 30 damage from opposing attacks...provided
your Pokemon are Electric or Grass. Now Grass decks, for
the moment, might not want to indulge with the
Conservation Area right now while Forest of Giant Plants
is in the format, but Electric decks I'm sure will love
to use it. I mean, tacking on an additional 30 damage
more that the opponent needs to deal in order to OHKO?
Or at the very least make it harder for 2HKOs to happen!
There's certainly a spot for it in decks.
It's hard to tell for now though
what impact the Area's gonna have on the game. It might
not be an immediate splash, but it might be the go-to
choice for anyone running Vikavolt or perhaps Tapu
Koko-GX even! Only time will tell how great the
Conservation Area will be.
Rating
Standard: 3.5/5 (preventing damage
is still a pretty crucial effect to have)
Expanded: 3.5/5 (since it forces
the opponent to play around it more)
Limited: 4/5 (I'm sure it'll be
something that appears on occasion)
Arora Notealus: Man, how would you
even abbreviate this? APCA? Just Area? Conservation
Area? Aether Paradise? Although I dunno if you could do
that, they might come out with some other Aether
Paradise Stadium...hmmmm...
Next Time: So much Poison for such
a quaint GX.
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21times |
Aether Paradise Conservation Area (Guardians Rising, 116/145) is the
second Stadium card we have reviewed from the
Guardians Rising expansion set that was released
last month.
This Stadium card benefits both Grass and Lightning
types, reducing damage done to them from attacks by
thirty points.
Unfortunately, this is a defensive stadium card –
meaning that your opponent will always have the
opportunity to knock it off the board by playing either
Field Blower (Guardians
Rising, 125/145) or a stadium of their own.
Therefore, if you choose to play this Stadium, I
have little doubt that it will only benefit you a part
of the time you actually get to play it.
For a reduction of only thirty points, this seems
hardly worth it to me.
Considering it will probably be a “dead” much of
the time you play it, it doesn’t really provide much of
a benefit.
Also, Grass types almost
universally run the Stadium
Forest of Giant
Plants (Ancient Origins, 74/98), and it’s
hard to commit more than four of your sixty cards to
Stadiums.
Also, Lightning types benefit from the Stadium
Rough Seas (Primal
Clash, 137/160), which, if you hold it until your
turn, guarantees that it will see at least one use
and provides
thirty points of healing to all of your Lightning
Pokemon. To
me, both of these Stadiums would take preference over
Aether Paradise
in most situations.
Rating
Standard: 1.5 out of 5
Conclusion
Aether Paradise Conservation Area has the misfortune of being a defensive
Stadium in an era where almost every deck plays at least
a couple of Stadiums and / or other Item cards that will
discard this Stadium from play before you can see the
benefit of it.
It also is clearly inferior to other Stadiums
that would provide more value to Grass and Lightning
Pokemon, and I would not recommend running this Stadium
in any of your decks.
Plus, if you’re taking it to a tournament, you
have to actually write out the full name.
At thirty characters,
Aether Paradise
Conservation Area is
worse than
Battle Compressor
Team Flare Gear (Phantom Forces, 92/119)
which has 29 characters.
|
Otaku |
We begin the week
with our 20th place finisher, Aether Paradise
Conservation Area (SM: Guardians Rising
116/145). This is a new Stadium that reduces the
damage Basic Grass-Type and Basic Lightning-Type Pokémon
take from opposing attacks by 30, before Weakness
and Resistance. Helping out Basic Pokémon is… a
surprisingly neutral trait. As far as Pokémon
Stages go, being Basic is best because they require
minimal deck space, can be directly played to the Bench,
can function as your opening Active, and tend to make
use of certain forms of general support better directly
because they are Basic Pokémon. To clarify the
latter, search out a Basic Pokémon and you’re done but
search out an Evolution and you’ve only got one piece of
the puzzle, or bounce a Basic and you can probably Bench
it again right away, but bounce an Evolution and you’ll
need Evolution acceleration or a ready-to-Evolve copy of
its lower Stage already in play. So how can this
be neutral? Basic Pokémon already have a decent
amount of things going for them, but especially when the
entire deck is not an Evolution, adding in Basic
support can be a very inefficient use of space.
Right now, I’m not
100% certain about how beneficial it is focusing on the
Grass- and Lightning-Types; Raikou (XY:
BREAKthrough 55/162), Tapu Bulu-GX, and
Tapu Koko-GX are a few of the appropriately-Typed
Basics it can benefit, and have seen some competitive
success (though I don’t think they have in the same
deck). They also tend to have some Evolutions
supporting them in the places where I have seen them
place in the Top 32, further diminishing the return.
So is -30 damage worth it? That’s a decent dent in
damage done, but remember changes in damage done only
matter if the shift the number of turns it takes for a
KO or the (relatively rare) triggering of certain
effects. This is really going to vary based on the
specific matchup, but if you can keep Aether Paradise
Conservation Area in play, repeatedly soaking
30 damage, that -30 becomes -60 maybe even becomes -90,
and those numbers should matter.
Regrettably, it does not apply to self-damage; as
the Lightning-Type has a long history with that sort of
drawback, it becomes well worth noting. Finally,
it applies after Weakness and Resistance.
The former is definitely a concern; while you’ll still
soak 30 damage that otherwise would have hit, with the
damage being doubled beforehand it is less likely to
save your Pokémon from being quickly KO’d. The
latter is a benefit, though more for Lightning-Types
than Grass-Types, as the latter typically have Metal
Resistance; -50 damage, even in a specialized match-up,
is appreciated.
In the beginning, I
intentionally glossed over this being a Stadium; why
deviate from my normal pattern? Being a Stadium at
this point really hurts this card. Not that it
should be something else, just that the-powers-that-be
really must want to make Stadium cards weaker.
As one Stadium card discards another, they are all
counters to each other. This is something I rather
like, and how I wish some other TCGs I played - like
Yu-Gi-Oh! - would approach the matter. The
more “other” methods of discarding them, the more potent
they have to be as they are less likely to last.
Right now, we have Delinquent, Field Blower,
and Paint Roller for additional, Trainer-based
methods of discarding Stadium cards from play. Delinquent
includes a vicious three-card discard from your
opponent’s hand, Field Blower can hit a Tool at
the same time or two Tools instead of a Stadium, and
Paint Roller lets you draw a card; the first two are
quite competitive and combined with your opponent’s own
Stadium, means you need Stadium effects that
benefit you on your turn. If it works at
another time, there is a good chance you won’t be able
to claim the benefits. It isn’t absolute, if you
can avoid them getting hit at the same time, sometimes
the best way to combat removal effects is to just have
too many targets to efficiently remove. So this is
a nice option to have for Standard and Expanded play,
but don’t expect it to be the
Grass/Lightning-equivalent of Rough Seas.
It is harder to deal with in Limited, and it provides a
way to deal with your opponent’s Stadiums, so even if
you can’t use it, you still might need to run it there.
Ratings
Standard:
3.25/5
Expanded:
3.15/5
Limited:
3.75/5
Conclusion
Preventing damage
is better than healing, and only working on Basic
Grass-Types and Lightning-Types makes it less likely
you’ll accidentally help your opponent, but the
timing means that Aether Paradise Conservation Area
can’t try to live up to something like Rough Seas.
Which does not make it bad, it just makes it
decent… and decent means you’ll want it in case
you figure out a killer deck that uses it. As
opposed to wanting it because there already is a killer
deck utilizing it.
Aether Paradise
Conservation Area took 20th place with one less voting point than last Friday’s
Brooklet Hill and tying tomorrow’s 21st place
finisher. The tie was broken by rolling off if you
were wondering. Aether Paradise Conservation Area
didn’t make my own Top 15 list. Or my Top 20.
I never got around to carefully ordering past that
point, so it technically clocks in as my 36th place pick
just base on how my greatest to least filter placed it.
If this card had released even a few expansions ago, I
think it could have shocked us, maybe even flourished.
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