Dusk Stone – Pokemon Unbroken Bonds Review

Vince

For this week, we are looking at related Pokémon cards that utilizes the Dusk Stone (SM Unbroken Bonds 167/214) to evolve certain Pokémon, which is what the TCG version of Dusk Stone accomplish. But to start, we have to look at the actual item card first. Item cards are easy to play even though there are several anti-item effects or Pokémon that punish you for playing too many items, which aren’t many. On the flip side, item cards can be easy to search out, but usually require an ability (Alolan Ninetales’s Mysterious Guidance), Supporters (like Green’s Exploration), or some amount of luck via other item cards (like Order Pad).

So what does it exactly do? The card states that you search your deck for a Mismagius, Honchkrow, Aegislash, or Chandelure that evolves from one of your Pokemon in play – which is either Doublade, Lampent, Murkrow, or Misdreavus – and evolve it. This also includes the GX version of those four specific Pokémon, but only Honchkrow-GX is the only related GX Pokemon at the moment. You can use this card on your first turn or the turn you put those Pokémon into play, which is brilliant! You could get Honchkrow or Mismagius as early as turn one while Chandelure and Aegislash – unfortunately – have to wait at least one more turn.

Yeah, this can’t be stressed enough. Dusk Stone is NOT Rare Candy in a sense, because I don’t see a similar wording that can let you skip from being a Basic into a Stage 2. So sadly, I don’t think you can skip from Litwick to Chandelure, or Honedge to Aegislash. You can fake it by manually evolving Litwick to Lampent, and then use Dusk Stone to evolve again to Chandelure; Likewise, you manually evolve Honedge to Doublade, and then use Dusk Stone to evolve into Aegislash. While you can fake evolving twice, the Basic Pokémon in question has to already be in play and you have to wait a turn. Misdreavus and Murkrow doesn’t have to wait at all!

As it excels at giving speed to certain Pokémon, ultimately it depends on whether those four Pokémon see any use competitively or casually. Two of the four Evolutions, Honchkrow-GX and Mismagius, have potential enough to be on the runner-ups of Unbroken Bonds because both of them are from that set. Chandelure and Aegislash are from various previous sets, but I had to fetch them for this theme, and neither of them were being reviewed when I scrolled down the COTD archives.

If Dusk Stone were to be reviewed alone, this would’ve been a massive review because I would be listing every Pokémon that can make good use out of it, and there’s plenty of related cards in the Expanded card pool, but fortunately, I don’t have to. The rest of the week will be reviews of those related Pokémon, and today is even a two-fer because we are also looking at Honchkrow-GX today.

Ratings:

• Standard: 3/5
• Expanded: 3/5
• Limited: 3/5

Average scores across the board, this is one of those cards where it doesn’t deviate between “worst” and “best”. It has one job to do and it does it well because those options listed on the card text are available.

Otaku

Welcome to Dusk Stone week… beginning with Dusk Stone (SM – Unbroken Bonds 167/214)! This a Trainer-Item, so it is fairly easy to play you crash into Item-lock, which is more of an Expanded Format problem than a Standard Format issue, though you still can run afoul of it (and other anti-Item effects) in Standard. We’ve got an almost surprising amount of Trainer and Item search at the moment; it may be easier than ever before to utilize such cards. The only “requirement” to use Dusk Stone is what is built into its effect; you’ll need a Pokémon in play capable of Evolving into

• Aegislash
• Aegislash-GX
• Chandelure
• Chandelure-GX
• Honchkrow
• Honchkrow-GX
• Mismagius
• Mismagius-GX

because the effect lets you search your deck for one of those and then play it onto the appropriate Pokémon from which it Evolves. No set name/card number because those are just the card names; unless something about the specific card would prevent it, all cards with those names are and will be able to use Dusk Stone.  Some of these don’t exist yet, and may never exist.

Dusk Stone clearly states you can use this on the first turn a Pokémon is in play, including the very first turn of the game. What you cannot do is combine this with something like the “Almighty Evolution” Ability found on Ditto {*}, or with Rare Candy to go directly to a Stage 2 form. You also need the correct Evolution in your deck, not in your hand; of course, that only matters when you couldn’t just Evolve from your hand, anyway. I must confess, even before we move on, I’m a bit worried about this card. This is Wally as an Item but with fewer chances to “break” the game because it only works with certain Pokémon. As long as they don’t create some really crazy cards to work with it, Dusk Stone… will still probably cause problems eventually. Either they’ll forget about it and make something a little (or a lot) too good with it, or they’ll remember and still make something too good. Assuming they haven’t already.

We’ll be looking at some of the Pokémon that can take advantage of this card the rest of the week, so I’m not going into details here. Instead, I’ll focus on the card’s inherent quality and perceived quality according to recent tournament results. I’m not seeing Dusk Stone in any winning lists. Maybe I just missed it, as all I did was head over to Limitless and Ctrl+F through the decklists for tournament results that they have… human error or missing entries could account for its absence. Proceeding as if this was accurate, then I can only surmise the current crop of compatible cards is insufficient, or at least, not yet ready to harvest. Why? This really is a great effect; sooner or later this should pay off in Standard or Expanded, and as long as you pull something compatible and worth running, its fantastic in Limited as well.

Ratings

• Standard: 3/5
• Expanded: 3/5
• Limited: 3/5

Wait, average scores after hyping it so much?  For the Constructed Formats, barring something radical, this card should only get better.  Maybe the “broken” combo I fear will never materialize, but the potential alone means it is one to pick up now while it’s abundant and inexpensive.  Oh, and the Limited Format still clocks at three because of how reliant it is on pulls (when building your deck) and draws (when playing your deck).