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Chesnaught Break
(Breakthrough, 12/162) broke out from the
Breakthrough expansion set back in November of 2015.
Chesnaught
Break has a very impressive 190 HP.
Its attack,
Tough Hammer,
has a four energy attack cost (two Grass and two
Colorless).
Tough Hammer
additionally does 30 damage to one of your opponent’s
benched Pokemon, but it also does 30 damage to itself.
Chesnaught
(Breakthrough, 11/162) also has two quality
attacks.
Spike Lariat
does sixty damage (120 if the opponent’s active already
has any damage counters on it), and
Adamantine Press
does 100 and reduces your opponent’s damage by twenty
during the next turn.
Spike
Lariat costs one Grass and two Colorless, and
Adamantine Press
costs two Grass and two Colorless.
In play, I used
Spike Lariat
most frequently and only used
Adamantine Press
and Tough
Hammer once or twice each.
Breakthrough
(for some odd reason) contains three different options
for Chespin (Breakthrough,
8/162). I
prefer number eight which has the attack
Work which
does ten damage for one Colorless energy.
This leads well into
Spike Lariat,
and I had a number of occasions where I hit for 120
because I had just nipped him for ten in a previous
turn.
Actually, I managed to donk my opponent a couple of
times thanks to the help of
Forest of Giant
Plants (Ancient Origins, 74/98).
With the aid of
Forest, it’s
not hard to get
Chesnaught or
Chesnaught Break out within a turn or two.
I went 4-6 in ten matches, but two of the four
wins were quick donks where I punished my opponent for
failing to get out more than one Pokemon early in the
game.
I did play a good match against
Lapras GX (Sun
& Moon, 35/149) and another one against
Passimian (Sun
& Moon, 73/149)
Mew (Fates
Collide, 29/124), but overall this deck did not do
particularly well.
It’s somewhat enjoyable to play, but the attack
costs are simply too high.
Plus, being a Break built on top of a Stage 2
Pokemon, it eats up fifteen or sixteen card slots.
Combine that with the twelve energy that I was
running in the deck (eight grass and four DCE) and you
just don’t have a lot of slots left for draw support,
Poke balls, and other Trainer cards that many other
decks have available to them because they don’t have to
dedicate as much space to Pokemon.
This is another example of the disproportionate
scaling that Pokemon has built into its design of
evolution cards.
Chesnaught
and Chesnuaght
Break’s attack costs should be significantly lower
than what they are.
If they were, then
Chesnaught
would compete at a higher level than it did for me.
Rating
Standard: 2 out of 5
Conclusion
Chesnaught Break
isn’t bad, and if its attack costs were lower it could
play a few more Trainers and get off a few more attacks.
As it is, though, it’s just not competitive
against the best decks in the format.
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Otaku |
What’s this?
We aren’t looking at a Sun & Moon card today, but
neither are we jumping to SM: Guardians Rising;
instead are covering Chesnaught BREAK (XY:
BREAKthrough 12/162). Don’t worry, our next
Top 10 is coming, but we wanted to wait until we were
working with scans of the actual cards and not mere
translations. Plus, now we’ll have at least the
chance to actually playtest a little, instead of
operating on pure Theorymon. If it really annoys
you, feel free to
let us know.
So why Chesnaught BREAK? Seems like the
BREAK Evolution mechanic is done, so I thought we might
as well knock out the few we have left to review (hint
hint).
Chesnaught BREAK
is a Grass Type, which isn’t as important as it sounds.
The Grass Type has access to one broken piece of
Type support in the form of Forest of Giant Plants,
but it focuses on the Pokémon being Evolved, not
the Evolution itself, and as such doesn’t care about the
Typing on Chesnaught BREAK but the Chesnaught
from which it Evolves. Fortunately, the entire
line is Grass Type so speedy Evolution is here.
Otherwise, the Type has a few useful tricks, hits most
Water and Fighting Types for double damage (via
Weakness), and never has to deal with Resistance (we
aren’t worried about Unlimited Format-only cards).
There are some anti-Grass Type effects floating around,
but nothing dramatic. Being the BREAK Evolution of
a Stage 2 means Chesnaught BREAK is essentially a
Stage 3; Stage 2 specific effects won’t apply,’t apply,
but general Evolution and BREAK Evolutions specific ones
do. Even with Forest of Giant Plants, you
still have to accommodate the massive card investment.
Its 190 HP is some compensation, enough to make
Chesnaught BREAK a tricky OHKO. The last thing
Chesnaught BREAK itself supplies is an additional
attack, “Tough Hammer”, which costs [GGCC] and hits for
160 damage. Tough Hammer also does 30 damage to
Chesnaught BREAK itself, plus 30 to one of your
opponent’s Benched Pokémon. 30 to the Bench could be
handy, could be a waste, and similarly, 30 to itself
could be negligible or could be disastrous; specific
matchups will determine if these margins matter;
personally I would have preferred a flat 160 damage than
a combination of hindering and helping effects.
So what about the
rest of the Evolution line? First, the common
factors; all are Grass Type Pokémon with Fire Weakness,
no Resistance, and no Ancient Trait. Fire is big
right now, but once SM: Guardians Rising
officially becomes legal, they might be doused thanks to
the serious boost the Water Type gets from the set.
There have been seven Chespin released, with six
actually being distinct, and none particularly
worthwhile. If you need a recommendation,
go with Chespin (XY: BREAKthrough 9/162);
it can search out a [G] Energy from your deck and add it
to hand, at a cost of [G], with its “Tree Climb” attack.
Yeah, our other options are that underwhelming. Quilladin
is in a similar boat, only we only have three options
from which to pick. Quilladin (XY 13/146)
is our pick here, for its “Scrunch” attack; if you get
stuck with this Quilladin Active, at least you
can pay [C] to flip a coin and (if “heads”) protect
itself from being damaged by an opponent’s attacks
during the next turn. Of course, this version is
only legal for Expanded play; you’ll have to use
XY: BREAKthrough 10/162) if you want to run
Chesnaught BREAK in Standard. Well, you
could use Rare Candy to skip from Chespin
directly to Chesnaught but while you can
still run Forest of Giant Plants to then
immediately Evolve into Chesnaught BREAK, you
cannot directly combine the two Trainers effects;
you’ll have to wait a turn to Evolve Chespin via
Rare Candy.
For Chesnaught,
we again have three options, and it’s a matter of being
the best of the worst. Chesnaught (XY
14/146) has 160 HP, the highest we see on Stage 2
Pokémon and sturdy; it can be OHKO’d but it isn’t easy
(unless you’re a Fire Type). The massive Retreat
Cost of [CCCC] will require deck resources to avoid
Chesnaught or Chesnaught BREAK being stranded
up front. It has a night Ability, “Spiky Shield”,
that forces an opponent’s attacking Pokémon to place
three damage counters on itself if it damaged
Chesnaught. The attack has a fun name but not
much else going for it: [GGCC] pays for “Touchdown” to
do 90 damage to the opponent’s Active while healing 20
from Chesnaught itself. This is worth
maybe [GC] or [GCC], but for four Energy, the attack
needs to do 100-120 damage. The healing could
stand to be a bit more as well, but it isn’t vital.
This Chesnaught is only available for Expanded
play, so what about our only Standard legal option,
Chesnaught (XY: Black Star Promos XY68;
XY: BREAKthrough 11/162)? It has the same
stats as XY 14/146, but with two attacks.
For [GCC] it can use “Spike Lariat” to do 60 damage,
plus another 60 (so, 120 total) if the opponent’s Active
already has any damage counters on it. For [GGCC]
it can use “Adamantine Press” to do 100 damage and
reduce the damage it takes during your opponent’s next
turn by 20, but that is after Weakness and
Resistance and only applies to attack damage.
Either of these attacks is better than Touchdown, but
not better than Spiky Shield, which is a problem.
With that, we come
to the heart of the matter: currently, there is no
Chesnaught worth using with Chesnaught BREAK.
A single, competent Chesnaught could give
us a brand new deck that is at least remotely
competitive. Why? Let us jump back to the
190 HP and (of course) Forest of Giant Plants.
While not perfect, the powers-that-be behind the Pokémon
TCG do make it a little easier to damage stuff like
Pokémon-EX and Pokémon-GX, so that 190 HP is just a tiny
bit more durable than the same score on a Pokémon-EX or
Pokémon-GX. With Forest of Giant Plants for
speed, we just need a worthwhile attack to complement
the whole package. A deck that can power up Tough
Hammer is plausible, but doing so quickly and reliably
is unlikely. If you do get it going, Spiky Shield
or Muscle Band can set up OHKOs (or effective
OHKOs) again many Basic Pokémon-EX, and soon Choice
Band (possibly with a Professor Kukui) can
bring all but the larger Pokémon-EX and Pokémon-GX into
range as well. For now, you can really only enjoy
it in Limited play, provided you are fortunately enough
to pull the entire Evolution line. Skip it
for Standard or Expanded.
Ratings
Standard:
1.75/5
Expanded:
1.75/5
Limited:
3.5/5
Conclusion
Not the most
exciting start to the week, but you never know when
we’ll revisit the starters from a prior generation, so
don’t forget Chesnaught BREAK exists,
especially while Forest of Giant Plants is in
the same format.
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