Beast Energy [Prism Star] #8 – Forbidden Light Countdown

aroramage

Man, I remember when Special Energy cards were just all over the place. Strong Energy, Burning Energy, Double Dragon Energy…now it’s like they’re “special” again. What’s up with that?

Beast Energy <Prism> is a Special Energy card that you only get 1-of cause it’s a <Prism> card, and it only provides 1 Colorless Energy. Naturally, this is not all it does. If it’s attached to an Ultra Beast card, it becomes 1 Energy of any Type, AND it lets the Ultra Beast deal an extra 30 damage with all of its attacks to the defending Pokemon.

Honestly it’s probably a good thing there aren’t any Water-Type Ultra Beasts in the game right now, cause I can imagine using Crasher Wake to get rid of Water Energy, grab this, attach it to one, and then just get all kiiiiiinds of silly with it. That being said, Beast Energy <Prism> is, for the most part, not easy to get. At the very least, you play this in a dedicated Ultra Beast deck, cause it can attach to any of your Ultra Beasts and let’s them deal even more damage. I can already imagine this being run in things like Buzzwole-GX or Guzzlord-GX to get that extra damage boost in – in the case of the latter, he needs it.

The thing about it though is that it’s hard to justify a Special Energy at only one copy for the whole deck. Granted, in a dedicated Ultra Beast build, this card can work with any of them, but the Ultra Beasts themselves are of such a diversified Type and require so many different kinds of Energy, it’s complicated. You’re likely playing this, alongside Rainbow Energy and DCE for some of them, but you can’t run every Ultra Beast cause a lot of them require allllllll of their Energy to be of one Type to use their attacks, and while this is good for the one you attach it to, you’ve got to be consistent with the rest of it so that the deck can effectively function without this as much as it gets enhanced by this.

That being said, it’s a solid Energy, but it is a <Prism> card, so once it hits the discard pile, it’s gone for good. Definitely a powerful enough card to justify the <Prism> restriction, but whether or not it’s powerful enough to justify running the one copy of it in Ultra Beast decks remains to be seen. Call me skeptical, but I should think that you’d want it around for very certain situations in decks that main an Ultra Beast attacker – see Buzzwole-GX for instance – than just being thrown in for any Ultra Beast that’s in the deck. Keep an eye on this one.

Rating

Standard: 3.5/5 (certainly can’t argue with an effective Rainbow Energy + Choice Band)

Expanded: 3.5/5 (but being a one-of and restricted to Ultra Beasts can impact its overall splash)

Limited: 3.5/5 (not that that should stop you from playing it in Ultra Beasts)

Arora Notealus: As a deck archetype, Ultra Beasts are in a weird spot, and that’s not necessarily their fault – it all comes down to their design. Like I said, a lot of them have restrictions in terms of Energy for their attacks, and they don’t all synergize together all that well. It’s likely the reason they ended up printing more non-GX Ultra Beasts to alleviate the stress of having to cram them all into a single deck, but whether or not the ones we have are good enough for that deck – looking at you, Guzzlord – remains to be seen. That’s not to say there’s no reason to build an Ultra Beast deck now though…

Side Reviews: Missing Clover – also known as “Missing in Action”, the Clover hasn’t seen much play, and who can blame it? Getting 4 copies of the same card to get the best result? It really needed something in-between 1 and 4 to really get rolling.

Turtonator – alas, Burn decks aren’t that big right now, even with Infernape around. Burn is a much more powerful Status Condition post-SM, but I think the delicate balancing act that the Pokemon Company is implementing with it is still in that experimental phase. Granted, the game itself is taking a sliiiiiight step back to avoid ramping up the power creep too much; even in light of higher HP scores and the like, the pace is generally aimed at a slower set-up to an explosive finish rather than a big brute force, and Burn just doesn’t quite have that high-impact card right now. Though that does bring up questions on whether we’d want to go back to an HTLBank-meta where it was necessary to have such a combination to hit numbers?

Infernape – I feel like I’m going to have to come back to this guy, cause he ended up getting a reprint in this set…sort of. Really it just changed his Type, and that ruffles my jammies to a degree that I’ll cover when I actually get to that point. For now, just keep Infernape in mind.

Next Time: What’s an Ultra Beast but a beast from beyond the known world?

Vince

Clocking in at number eight is Beast Energy Prism Star! It initially provides one Colorless Energy, but if attached to a Pokémon with the subcategory “Ultra Beast”, it provides every type of energy but one unit at a time. Additionally, the attacks from an Ultra Beast Pokemon does 30 more damage to your opponent’s Active Pokemon (before applying Weakness and Resistance).

When it comes to support, Beast Energy does a very good job supporting a handful of Pokémon. The Pokémon that are considered Ultra Beasts, whether or not they are one-prize Pokemon or GX versions, are Nihilego, Buzzwole, Pheromosa, Kartana, Celesteela, Xurkitree, Guzzlord, Poipole, Nagandal, Blacephaleon, and Stakataka. However, in the TCG, they decided to make Ultra, Dusk Mane, and Dawn Wings Necrozma Ultra Beasts as well. Really, just going through all the TCG versions of those Ultra Beasts is beyond the scope of my review. But to give you an idea…

-Dusk Mane Necrozma, in most cases, no longer needs Choice Band, Beast Energy can do 30 more damage to ANY Pokemon, not just EX or GX Pokemon. However, if you’re dealing with Lightning GX Pokemon that resists Metal Pokemon (like Vikavolt GX or Alolan Golem GX), then you’ll still need Choice Band to break through their resistances, otherwise they’ll still survive with a little bit of HP left.

-Buzzwole GX’s Jet Punch becomes ridiculous as ever. Doing 60 damage to the Defending Pokemon AND 30 to one of your opponent’s Benched Pokemon with just a single Beast Energy is a huge bargain. And that’s before factoring other damage boosting items such as Choice Band and Diancie Prism Star, which can make Jet Punch fake being a stronger version Night Spear!

If such a special energy becomes amazing, why isn’t this card run at four copies? Beast Energy is a Prism Star card, which restricts such cards to one copy in your deck instead of the usual four. Not only that, if this card gets discarded from your hand, deck, or from play, then it gets sent to the Lost Zone. That pile means that such cards are outside of the game board, never to be retrieved; not even Special Charge will save it. Because of this mechanic, one must be careful when using Beast Energy, because they’re not easy to search out and it can be removed from play if you leave it unattended for the opponent to get rid of it. Despite being a Prism Star card, Beast Energy is a wonderful addition to decks with Ultra Beast Pokemon.

In limited, there are a variety of Ultra Beasts in this set, regardless if they are worth one prize or two prizes. As long as you have Ultra Beasts, then Beast Energy Prism Star will serve you well. Since you start the game with four prizes, Buzzwole’s Sledgehammer backed with Beast Energy will already do 150 damage to whatever your opponent’s Active Pokémon has!

Standard: 4/5
Expanded: 4/5
Limited: 4.75/5

Notes: Beast Energy is an enhanced Strong Energy since it gives a higher damage boost as well as providing any type of energy. Imaging what would happen if decks were allowed to use four Beast Energy!

21times
PokeDeck
Central

Beast Energy Prism Star (FLI 117) bursts into the meta from the Forbidden Light expansion set.  Like other Prism Star cards, you can only carry one of them in your Ultra Beast decklist.  If attached to an Ultra Beast, it functions as a Rainbow Energy, providing a single energy but of every type (and without having to ding yourself for ten damage!).  It also has the added perk of giving your attacking Pokemon a thirty damage boost to attacks on your opponent’s Active Pokemon.

It’s a nice card, a one of in every Ultra Beast deck.  It means Buzzwole’s Jet Punch would do sixty to the active (without including any of the gazillion other damage enhancers available to Fighting archetypes).  It helps Ultra Necrozma GX find that Metal energy and allows it to OHKO Stage 1 Pokemon with only two Basic Psychic energy.

Unfortunately, it is a Special Energy card, so it’s extremely susceptible to Enhanced Hammer, but I have only seen Hammers 15% of the time in this nascent meta.  But really what’s the harm in running one of these?  If it gets knocked off, you just continue on, really only losing the Energy card and the +30 damage spif it provided.  So if you’re running a deck with an Ultra Beast, it’s an automatic inclusion, and it will probably help you out a little bit a some point during the game.

Rating

Standard: 3.5 out of 5

Conclusion

There’s really no down side to running Beast Energy Prism Star, and there are A LOT of Ultra Beasts running around now.  This Sun & Moon chapter of the PTCG has become completely dominated by the Ultra Beasts.  Certainly, the best Pokemon in the format now are almost exclusively Ultra Beasts, and Beast Energy Prism Star only makes them more powerful.

Retro

The second generation of Prism Star cards has already began to creep decks of every kind, providing much needed supports that many decks need. And starting our look into the new Prism Star cards is Beast Energy! 

Before we begin the look, let me remind once again about the Prism Star rules. You can carry only one copy of a certain Prism Star card, but I can carry as many types of Prism Star cards as needed. For example, I can carry Beast Energy and Solgaleo Prism Star in a Metal deck, but I can only bring one example of each in a deck, i.e. only 2 Prism Star cards.

Now with that out of the way, I would like to explain what Beast Energy does. Its specific to Ultra Beast Pokemon only, on which there now exists non-GX versions of said classifications so it’s not GX-only. It normally gives 1 Colorless energy when attached to any Pokemon. But when attached to an Ultra Beast, it becomes a Rainbow Energy without the 10 damage penalty and gives an extra 30 damage to its attacks. So what happens here is a Rainbow Energy with an inbuilt Choice Band that works against all Pokemon and can be teched into any Ultra Beast deck, but it only works with Ultra Beast Pokemon. 

In this time of writing, we had a grand total of 11 Ultra Beast Pokemon cards in print/circulation, consisting of Nihilego, Buzzwole, Pheromosa, Xurkitree, Kartana, Celesteela, Dusk Mane Necrozma, Dawn Wings Necrozma, Poipole, Naganadel and Ultra Necrozma. Nudging from the description of Beast Energy, this card is best used on Ultra Beasts with either missing some key damage without support and would appreciate extra support without any extra resources. For example, a Beast Energy-buffed Jet Punch from Buzzwole-GX with a Choice Band and a Princess’ Cheer active from a Diancie Prism Star (more on that later) will actually net an OHKO against a healthy Zoroark-GX ((30 + 30 + 30 + 20) x 2 = 220), something that usually can’t be done without searching multiple Regirock-EXs in the past. Dusk Mane Necrozma-GX can now hit 250 damage with Meteor Tempest unboosted with Choice Band and against all Pokemon, making it more potent as a nuker. Pheromosa-GX’s Fast Raid can now hit 180 damage with Beast Energy and Choice Band against weakness-bound Pokemon, one-shotting Grass-weak Pokemon-GX that has 180 HP or lower and actually capable of taking 2 prizes. Something like a water type Palkia-GX will fall with one fell swoop, and a Lurantis (SM25 Promo) boost by something like Wally can get it to the 220 damage range, one shotting meta cards like Lycanroc-GX (SM GUR). Naganadel-GX’s Beast Raid can now hit 180 damage with a full bench of Ultra Beasts (more on that later) and a Choice Band. I’m sure there are more applications towards Beast Energy as we obtain more Ultra Beast on circulations with their unique attacks, and of course Beast Energy will come into play when we discuss the viability of these types of cards, so powerful were their effect. 

In short, so potent is Beast Energy on Ultra Beast decks that they help shape the Ultra Beast archetypes into a potent force, and one to watch out in the future. Extra damage and splashability into these certain decks are always welcome, and this could be the future of Ultra Beasts as a whole. 

Rating:

Standard: 4/5
Expanded: 4/5
Limited: 5/5 

Otaku

Beast Energy [Prism Star] (SM – Forbidden Light 117/131) is our 8th place finisher, having placed on three out of five on our individual Top 5 (yes, top five) lists to earn a total of 65 voting points. This puts it a comfortable seven voting points above the tie we had for 9th and 10th place, but also seven voting points below seventh place. This card was actually my fourth place pick, and I’m going to explain why. This seems like a niche card; it is a Prism Star, so you may only run it as a single AND it sends itself to the Lost Zone if it should hit the discard pile for any reason. That means you cannot rely on it, as you can easily lose it before you even get a chance to use it, most likely because you needed to attach a different Energy card from hand but also needed to use a Professor Sycamore that turn. Beast Energy [Prism Star] can be attached to anything, but if it isn’t attached to an Ultra Beast, its only good for [C] Energy… which may sound bad, but I’ll remind you of the many good and bad Type-specific Energy cards that couldn’t even be attached to the wrong Type target at all. Being a Special Energy is also somewhat rough; even if the Pokémon to which it is attached can tank, there are quite a few easy, proven removal effects waiting in the wings (if not already in use).  When Beast Energy [Prism Star] is attached to an Ultra Beast it gains not one but two effects:

• It provides one unit of Energy that simultaneously counts as all Energy Types.
• It grants +30 damage to the attacks of the Pokémon to which it is attached before Weakness/Resistance (doesn’t affect Bench damage).

Normally, the big deal about a Special Energy providing all Types is to make it easier to mix Types, even splashing in an otherwise unsupported attack. here, it is mostly so that you don’t have to sweet specific Energy requirements for individual Ultra Beasts; do not think Beast Energy allows any Ultra Beast to efficiently run in any deck. The exception is if you just need to use a GX-attack; it might do the job then. As for more damage, it is always better, right? Nope. If it doesn’t shift the turn count to a KO in your favor or trigger some effect, it doesn’t actually make a difference. In fact, it can sometimes backfire because of effects it triggers, though this is quite rare. Fortunately, +30 damage is likely to make a difference in the current format, where several key HP amounts are so close together and many decks will combine it with Choice Band for a total of +60 damage against Pokémon-EX/GX.

So, what Ultra Beasts are most likely to benefit from this card? Almost every released Ultra Beast (so far) can make some use of Beast Energy [Prism Star], so let’s cover the worst, the best, and some I just find interesting. Poipole (SM – Forbidden Light 55/151) can’t attack for damage, and it is really just a stepping stone to the new Naganadel-GX (SM – Forbidden Light 56/131; 121/131; 134/131) which itself makes pretty good use of Beast Energy [Prism Star]. Buzzwole-GX. Buzzwole-GX is already the frontman of an existing, proven deck that most expect to grow stronger – or at least stay steady – with the addition of SM – Forbidden Light cards. Buzzwole (SM – Forbidden Legends 77/131) is likely to join it, and both have very good single Energy attacks that love it when you stack damage bonuses on top of them. Guzzlord-GX is problematic because I don’t know if the timing of its first attack plays nicely with Beast Energy [Prism Star] should it be discarded from your deck. Even with a Choice Band alongside Beast Energy [Prism Star], it GX-attack falls short of the 170 you’d want for OHKOing Basic Pokémon-EX/GX like Tapu Lele-GX (let alone those which are bigger). Kartana-GX could actually use its first attack to recycle a Beast Energy [Prism Star] already attached to itself while enjoying the damage bump, making it easier to run it off Type, and its almost universally useful GX-attack has a single, Type-specific Energy requirement.

Buzzwole-GX decks should make room for Beast Energy [Prism Star]. I expect we’ll see some “Ultra Beast Box” decks tearing up the competitive scene soon, even if they are really more like Buzzwole-GX/Naganadel-GX than actual “box” style decks using a variety of Ultra Beasts. Any deck that either runs a single Ultra Beast heavily or runs multiple different Ultra Beasts (even if only as singles) should also make room for Beast Energy, though unlike the first two, it is plausible they’d be forced to choose between it and something more valuable. That makes Beast Energy [Prism Star] Pokémon-specific without being too deck specific. This applies to the Expanded Format as well, though the Limited Format is all about whether you pull at least one Ultra Beast alongside it. This set has a couple, and while getting one of them and Beast Energy [Prism Star] at the same time can be challenging, it should be very potent!

Ratings

Standard: 4/5

Expanded: 4/5

Limited: 3.5/5