aroramage |
And now for something completely
different.
Oranguru.
So yeah, he comes ready with that
classy Psychic move - 3-for-60 and does 20 more damage
for every Energy, yadda yadda yadda, seen that all
before - but he also comes with a unique Ability in
Instruct! In the game, though, it's an actual move
Oranguru uses, so let's see how they retool it into an
Ability.
You get to draw until you've got 3
cards in hand once per turn.
...well then, that's pretty good!
Not too bad, not ridiculously powerful, but a good
start. It's like a weaker version of Shaymin-EX's
Ability that can be used every turn rather than just on
coming into play. Just having the ability to reproduce
what is now Hau's effect every turn without using a
Supporter is great to have! So what's the catch?
Well he will cost you a Bench slot,
and 120 HP is a prime number in this day and age to hit
for an easy Prize. But the added boost in draw power
ought to be worth it, don't you think?
Rating
Standard: 3/5 (he may not fit into
every deck)
Expanded: 3/5 (but for those that
he can be thrown into, he'll prove to be a great
addition)
Limited: 4.5/5 (and draw power is
ALWAYS good)
Arora Notealus: Seriously, a
sagacious orangutan. I tell you, they come up with some
of the craziest ideas around here.
Weekend Thought: What were your
favorite cards from this week? Think there are some real
solid ones here, or are they just not that good? Are you
going to try your hand at looping Tsareena's Ability?
Because yes, apparently you can do that. That'd be a
crazy thing to work on, eh?
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Otaku |
We close the week with
Oranguru
(SM:
Black Star Promos
SM13;
Sun & Moon
113/149). As you may recall, this time we didn’t
cover the runners-up for our Top 10 list after the
actual list, or before it to make a Top 15, Top 20, etc.
list; instead, we have been covering them once per week
since except for the time when I spaced off that I
scheduled two instead of one. Oops. I also
forgot to even
mention
it in two of the three reviews, let alone state how many
VP (Voting Points) it earned, or how close it was to
moving up a placement. Let us rectify that with a
quick rundown, after which I have a pretty obvious
revelation about
Oranguru.
In order of reviews:
-
16th place:
Skarmory
(Sun
& Moon
88/149), which earned 3 VP. It
tied with 17th place and was only 1 VP
removed from making it a 15th place/16th
place tie or a 17th place/18th place
tie.
-
11th place:
Team Skull Grunt
is the only runner-up so far where I
remembered to mention that it was a
runner-up. To recap, this card
received 8 VP. Plus 1 VP would
have made 8th through 11th place into a
four-way tie, while 1 VP less would have
made 11th through 13th place into a tie.
-
12th place:
Alolan Muk
earned 7 VP, and the only one who didn’t
have it on his top 10 list was me.
It died with 13th place. With 1 VP
more it would have tied with
Team Skull Grunt
for 11th/12th place, while with 1 VP
less it would have ended up as 13th
place (finally, something that wouldn’t
have been another tie!).
So as you’ve realized since before I began,
Oranguru
is also a runner-up; 13th place with 7 VP, the card that
tied with
Alolan Muk.
It made my personal top 10 as my 4th place pick
but
only made one other list as an honorable mention… which
only breaks a tie if both cards appeared on the same
amount of lists, and was worth no voting points.
Time to see if I was far too hyped over this card or if
the others should have given it more credit. I
suppose neither could be true as well.
Oranguru
is a Colorless Pokémon: we won’t be worrying about the
Unlimited Format, and it’s too new to be in the Legacy
Format, so
Oranguru
won’t enjoy double damage from exploiting Weakness or
have to overcome the minor hurdle of -20 damage from
Resistance. Anti-Colorless Type effects haven’t
proven worthwhile yet, even though they’ve been around
long enough to have seen Colorless Type attackers be one
of the best in the game; in short, you probably don’t
need to worry about them. There are some cards
that specifically reward you for playing Colorless
Pokémon, but it has been while since any were really
worth the effort; out of what we have,
Winona
has a chance but many decks do better with other search
effects. Like most Types, Colorless Pokémon have
improved synergy with each other due to (almost always)
having similar Energy requirements and being able to
exploit shared Type support, but this relationship is
weaker here; there is no basic [C] Type Energy, nor
should there be as
every
Energy can already meet the requirement. Unless a
deck relies heavily on the various Special Energy cards
that require [C], there won’t be additional advantage
generated from this, and even where a deck does rely
heavily upon cards such as
Double Colorless Energy,
many non-Colorless Pokémon do as well. Yet I must
be careful in making this sound all bad; what little
this costs the Colorless Type is more than offset by
allowing it to work so well with almost any other Type.
Being a Basic Pokémon is the best; one card in your deck
means one copy at your disposal, there is no time lost
waiting to Evolve, it may function as your opening
Active, there are some great bits of Basic Stage
support, and many effects naturally work better with
Basics due to the preceding. The only true
drawback would be the various anti-Basic effects, and as
we’ll see, those hit
Oranguru
a bit harder than the average Basic. Oranguru
sports 120 HP, 20 below the maximum printed on a Basic
Pokémon that lacks an additional mechanic like being a
Pokémon-EX or Pokémon-GX. This isn’t quite enough
to reliably survive an attack, but it is close enough
that
Oranguru
will require most decks hit with a good setup to do the
job; anything less and
Oranguru
probably will survive after all. Fighting Weakness
is mostly about low cost (including single Energy)
attacks scoring a reliable OHKO. Lack of
Resistance is somewhat understandable; the video game
Typing for
Oranguru
is Normal/Psychic, and the
short
version is that the designers intentionally messed with
some of the relationships involving the Psychic Type
when the game first began and haven’t fixed it since.
So there isn’t a good option for
Oranguru,
and as the Resistance mechanic appears to be balanced
(at least compared to Weakness) and is left off of many
Pokémon, it takes someone obsessive like me to even
fixate on it. Oranguru
has a Retreat Cost of [CC], which isn’t too high for
most decks to cover but isn’t low enough to be
appealing. You still may want to make a little
room to get this card back to the Bench, unless you want
it Active.
Oranguru
has one Ability and one attack. The former is
“Instruct”, named after its signature video game attack;
the effects, however, are totally unrelated. This
Ability follows the typical restrictions of only being
usable once-per-turn (per copy, if multiple instances of
Instruct are in play), and prior to attacking.
Instruct has you draw until you have three cards in
hand; based on past rulings for similar Pokémon-based
effects, you
cannot
use Instruct if you have
more
than two cards in hand. So
when it can work,
the range for Instruct is 1 to 3 cards. As a
one-time thing, this is pretty poor, but if you can make
use of Instruct over and over again, turn after turn, it
can generate an amazing return. So is it a poor
effect or an amazing one? I believe the net result
is a good effect, though not one meant for all decks;
possibly
most
competitive decks, but not all competitive decks, let
alone all decks in general. Now for the latter of
the two effects, the attack “Psychic”. This attack
has a long history with the game, and this version costs
[CCC] to do 60 damage plus another 20 per Energy
attached to the opponent’s Active. I need to be
careful to avoid contradicting myself; in total
isolation, this attack is subpar; too many chances that
it will do just 60 or 80 damage, at a time when 2HKO’s
often require 110 to 130 per turn. The fact that
this attack is on a Colorless attack means no big hits
from Weakness, either,
but
we have a Basic with solid attributes and a useful
effect which makes it a probable Bench-sitter.
Combining this with most forms of Energy acceleration,
and you get a nice fallback option; a little too
Energy-hungry to efficiently deliver a finishing blow
across the board, but something to punish the multiple
Energy intensive attackers in the current competitive
sphere, one something worth a single Prize.
There are no other
Oranguru
cards for this version to compete with, at least not
yet. It does face some rivals for deck space,
however:
Shaymin-EX
(XY:
Roaring Skies
77/108, 106/108),
Octillery
(XY:
BREAKthrough
33/162), and
Unown
(XY:
Ancient Origins
30/98). “Set Up”, the Ability on
Shaymin-EX,
allows a player to draw until he or she has six cards in
hand, but it only triggers when a player Benches
Shaymin-EX
from hand outside of - almost ironically - the opening
setup for the game (what takes place before the first
turn of the game).
Octillery
has “Abyssal Hand”, an Ability allowing that player to
draw until he or she has five cards in hand, following
the same generic restrictions as instruct: once-per-turn
(per copy), and before that player attacks. Unown
has the Ability “Farewell Letter”, allowing you to
discard it (and all cards attached to it) from your
Bench to draw one card. Each of these cards has a
particular advantage over
Oranguru
and Instruct, but
Oranguru
has traits that make it more desirable than them, at
least under certain circumstances. Shaymin-EX
has the best potential draw yield, but may only be used
once, and is a Pokémon-EX with just 110 HP; its attack
does a little damage and bounces it (allowing Set Up to
be reused), but that can get expensive in terms of game
tempo. Abyssal Hand is easily better than
Instruct, but
Octillery
isn’t a Basic Pokémon. Unown
only draws a single card, and can’t work while in the
Active position, but it doesn’t care how many cards you
already have in hand, and aids certain popular combos.
Shaymin-EX
has
not
lost its throne to
Oranguru;
in fact, all of these three are going to see about as
much use as before. It is just in a few areas,
Oranguru
is going to be better, and there it will replace some of
what was already in use. Expect things like people
using one fewer copies of
Shaymin-EX
so they may include a clutch
Oranguru.
The reason, besides converting a short-term windfall
into a sustainable source of extra cards, is to combat
N
and
Delinquent.
N
is still a staple card for Standard and Expanded play,
while
Delinquent
is a relevant part of the metagame even if she isn’t in
every deck. Couple this with how all decks
occasionally get a hand they could play out for a solid
return, and Instruct becomes quite the enabler.
Decks which specialize in burning through their hands
definitely want to consider
Oranguru
for the Bench, unless
Octillery
can fit into the deck just as well. Besides a
Water Type deck, the big reason for
Octillery
over
any
of the others I mentioned is that the designers of the
Pokémon TCG
like
counteracting the Abilities on Basic Pokémon.
We’ve had
Silent Lab
for some time, and now we have
Alolan Muk.
Decks that include something like
Garbodor
(XY:
BREAKpoint
57/122) are
also
unlikely to want
Oranguru,
even if they are good at playing out their hands. Shaymin-EX
can work with such decks because you just use it before
shutting down Abilities; it is a one-and-done thing
(without some effort), so you’ve reaped your reward in
full by the time you lockdown Abilities.
For Standard play,
Oranguru
is already showing up on quite a few Benches, including
somewhere it might not belong. I haven’t been
paying much attention to Expanded, but it seems to be
performing in a similar manner there. This card is
a welcome Bench presence in Limited,
but
remember that lowering your hand size is more difficult
here; it is just that even single card draws are
amazing, and you have more leeway for a card that isn’t
awesome all the time here than in Standard or Expanded
play. Oranguru
is also in the “Roaring Heat” Theme Deck, which includes
two
Nest Ball
and one
Ultra Ball;
it still won’t reliably be drawing you three cards, but
a few turns with one or two extra cards is most welcome.
For both Limited and Theme Deck matches, Psychic works
better as well; it is slower to prep, but
many
opposing attackers will need a lot of Energy and be just
as slow.
Ratings
Standard:
3.8/5
Expanded:
3.8/5
Limited:
4/5
Theme:
4/5
Summary
Oranguru
is a new form of Ability-based draw that most decks
should experiment with, and many will actually want to
work in as a single. Some decks may want
multiples, and not just in case one is Prized.
With the right (wrong?) shift in the metagame, this card
could go from “good” to “abusively good”. Even if
we have effective counters for it, it just takes the
proper combination of fast-to-the-field attackers
(probably Basics), and general use Items that can be
used (even in a suboptimal manner) for a solid return.
For
now,
though, that isn’t a problem.
Oranguru
received a straight “A” grade from me both times I
looked at it, but that would have meant a 4.25/5;
instead its scores mark it as a “B” (nearly a “B+”) with
how I use letter grades. Both using it and facing
off against it, I’ve seen it take surprising KO’s but
also unsurprisingly have little hope of attacking, and
I’ve seen it grant a deck improved speed and
reliability, but also sit there doing nothing due to
anti-Ability effects or a cluttered hand. I still
think it ought to have made our overall Top 10, but
not
in 4th place like I had it on my personal list; at least
8th place, maybe as high as 5th place.
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