Alolan Exeggutor – Ultra Prism – Pokemon Review

Vince

Alolan Exeggcutor is an interesting concept of a Pokémon. The Kantoian counterpart is pretty short while the Alolan counterpart is as tall as a tropical tree. The typing is kinda odd as well, being Grass/Psychic in Kanto and Grass/Dragon in Alola. But this is the TCG, and for today’s card, we’re looking at Alolan Exeggcutor (SM Ultra Prism 95/156)! Being a Dragon type means it won’t hit any Pokemon for double damage sans Black & White era dragon types. However, in Expanded, it gets support with Double Dragon Energy as a means to fuel up attacks easily and Hydreigon-EX for reduced retreat cost. 130 HP on a Stage one may not enough to survive a hit, and Fairy weakness makes it even scarier; Gardevoir-GX won’t have to invest as much. Retreat cost of three is clunky, but searchable via Heavy Ball.

Alolan Exeggcutor has two attacks. Exeggcutor’s Paradise costs no energy and for each of your Benched Exeggcute, you must search your deck for Alolan Exeggcutor or Alolan Exeggcutor-GX and put it into Exeggcute to evolve it. This is actually very good if your deck focus is using Alolan Exeggcutor. Draco Meteor Barrage costs GCC and you must flip a coin for each Grass Energy attached to this Pokémon. It does 80 damage for each heads. Coin flips are unreliable to deal any significant damage one would hope for. Exeggcutor’s Paradise offers some flexibility between the GX and non-GX counterpart. In fact, based on the available card pool, there are three different Alolan Exeggcutor cards to choose from. One, of course, is this card. As for the other two…

We got Alolan Exeggcutor (SM Forbidden Light 2/131) is a Stage 1 grass type with 160 HP, weak to fire, and a retreat cost of three. It’s only attack, Tropical Shake, costs G for 20 damage, plus 20 more for each different basic energy cards in your discard pile…..with a limit of 5 (100 extra damage). That would effectively be a 1 for 120 strike if conditions are fulfilled, enough to almost 2HKO anything. If you really want Alolan Exeggcutor to be the main attacker, in Expanded, you got Battle Compressor to send basic energy cards to the discard pile from your deck. You also got Vaporeon (XY Ancient Origins 22/98), Jolteon (XY Ancient Origins 26/98), and Flareon (XY Ancient Origins 13/98) to enable Alolan Exeggcutor hitting for double damage on Pokemon weak to Grass, Fire, Water, and Lightning. You might be able to make room for one, or maybe two copies of that card when it comes out. It’s also available in a theme deck if you want quick access to this card.

Then, we have Alolan Exeggcutor-GX (SM Crimson Invasion 74/111) is a Stage 1 Dragon type with 220 HP, weak to Fairy, and a retreat cost of three. Tropical Head costs G and does 20 damage times the amount of energy attached to this Pokémon to one of your opponent’s Pokemon. Dragon Hammer costs GCCC for 120 damage and makes the opponent’s Active Pokemon Confused. And Tower-Go-Round GX also costs GCCC for 180 damage and you may move any energy attached from this Pokémon to any of your other Pokemon. Useful if you know that this Pokémon is going to be knocked out next turn. It was reviewed by the Pojo.com here and opinions weren’t favorable.

Alolan Exeggcutor has to evolve from Exeggcute. They’re all Basic Grass types weak to Fire. Exeggcute (BW Plasma Freeze 4/116, BW Plasma Blast 102/101) has 30 HP, resists Water, and a retreat cost of one. It’s ability, Propagation, puts this Pokémon from the discard pile into your hand. Seed Bomb does 20 for GC. Exeggcute (XY Roaring Skies 1/108) has 40 HP and a retreat cost of one. Loathe costs C and if flipped heads, you switch this Pokémon with one of your Benched Pokemon. Ram does 10 for G. Exeggcute (SM Crimson Invasion 4/111) has 50 HP and a retreat cost of one. Hypnosis costs C and inflicts Sleep on the Defending Pokemon. Ram does 10 for G. Exeggcute (SM Ultra Prism 1/156) has 50 HP and a retreat cost of one. Continuous Eggsplosion costs G and makes you flip a coin until you get tails. For each heads, this does 20 damage. Exeggcute (SM Forbidden Light 1/131) has 40 HP and a retreat cost of one. Multiply costs C and puts a Exeggcute from your deck onto your bench. I find Exeggcute from BW Plasma Freeze and SM Forbidden Light to be worth using due to its contribution. Propagation saves you from using Rescue Stretcher and Multiply puts more Pokemon into play, ready to evolve next turn.

So how do you use Alolan Exeggcutor? Given those attacks, you can only focus one or the other, but not both. I’ve already covered Exeggcutor’s Paradise as to which available options that you can use. As for Draco Meteor Barrage, Venusaur (Shining Legends 3/73) has an ability that doubles the unit of Basic Grass energies, so each Basic Grass Energy provides GG! Victini (SM Guardians Rising 10/145) has an ability that lets you re-flip coins if you don’t like the initial result. This will improve your chances, but still doesn’t guarantee you the desired result. Besides those partners, I can’t think of anything else. That’s what I think about how Alolan Exeggcutor would be used in Standard and Expanded. In Limited, it would be a nice pull.

Standard: 2.75/5
Expanded: 2.75/5
Limited: 3.5/5

Conclusion: For what it can do for other cards, Alolan Exeggutor has some potential. Reviewing it this late can help give a certain card more time to unlock it’s true usefulness, specifically this one. I will plan to make an Alolan Exeggutor deck when I get my hands of the Theme Deck.

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PokeDeck
Central

Alolan Exeggutor (UP 95) sprouted / hatched (I don’t know is this thing a plant or an egg?) into the meta from the Ultra Prism expansion set.  I thought that its Draco Meteor Barrage attack was going to be GREAT in today’s meta.  Pair it with Venusaur and Fliptini, and you can attack for two attachments and get to flip four times again if you don’t like your first four flips.  Not that you’ll ever need to hit all four, but I will say that 160 damage is just a little short of where you’d like to be in today’s game.

Unfortunately, I only went 1 W 5 L with this combo.  I was extremely disappointed – I thought I could at least break .500 with this deck.  I faced some decent decks, a couple Garchomps, Ho-Oh GX, DM Necrozma GX, Ninetales GX Lapras GX.  The only deck I beat was an awful Mimikyu Bewear combo.  Yes, yet another combo that I thought would have potential that fell far short of my auspicious theorymon.

Rating

Standard: 1.5 out of 5

Conclusion

One thing I also learned was that Bodybuilding Dumbbells was completely worthless.  It never once turned an OHKO into a 2HKO.   Either my opponents would OHKO me anyway or discard it with Field Blower, so I would definitely pass on the weightlifting equipment if I tried this deck again.