Fire Memory & Electric Memory – Pokemon Card Review – COTD

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PokeDeck
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Ok so let me just start of by saying that Memory Cards are freaking AWESOME!!!

THAT’S how much I like Silvally GX now – I didn’t even start off my review with my typical hum drum phrase identifying the card and the expansion set it came out of.

But for those of you who missed that…

Electric Memory (UP 121) and Fire Memory (UP 123) came out of the Ultra Prism expansion set, while Fighting Memory (CIN 94) and Psychic Memory (CIN 98) debuted in the Crimson Invasion set.  These cards allow the Silvally GX that they are attached to to become that type of Pokemon.  I hadn’t really tried Silvally GX much in a deck until now.  I know that we first saw it with Volcanion, then a little bit in a Metal Toolbox, my buddy Mike (MarquisEXB) built a pretty good version with Xerneas Break (you can check that out here I went 4 W 2 L with this list), but I always said I would wait and try this when we got a couple more memory cards to really turn this into the Swiss Army Knife of Pokemon decks.  The theorymon is that you can go get the Memory Card you need to help you OHKO the opposing Pokemon by hitting it with Turbo Drive for 240 (AND you get to attach a Basic energy from your discard to one of your benched Pokemon – what a deal!).

The theorymon in this case is right.  I went 19 W 6 losses in 25 matches (76% winning percentage).  And it fared almost as well against meta decks, going 5 W 2 L against the best decks in the format today.  Maybe the best measure of how good this deck is, however, is that it also went 5 W 2 L against Fighting Deck archetypes.  Can you think of any other deck that can win 71% of the matches it plays against decks that it is weak to?  Buzzwole is weak to Psychic – how well do you think it does against the Psychic Toolbox decks that are running around?  Golisopod is weak to Fire – I had a TON of trouble against Volcanion with my Golisodor deck.  Volcanion, in turn, is weak to Water and is almost an autoloss against Greninja or Glaceon.  Metal Toolbox decks had their way with Gardevoir a couple months ago.  The weakness mechanic is absolutely broken (especially compared to resistance which is basically an afterthought and makes very little difference in most matches), it’s so hard to beat a deck you’re weak to and yet this deck still beats its archenemies almost as much as its regular win rate.

You can find the list I used and a more detailed anaysis of the deck here.  By all means check it out and take it for a stroll and you’ll see that this is almost certainly at least a Tier 2 archetype… and might just be Tier 1.  Seriously, if I knew how good this deck was two weeks ago, this would have been my play at Collinsville.

Rating

Standard: 4 out of 5

Conclusion

So it’s really hard to rate these because they are specific to only Silvally GX, but they’re so darn good that I have to give them a high rating.  I actually didn’t use the Electric Memory and that turned out to be a good call.  Although my first match with this decklist was against Empoleon and I saw Empoleon three times, I beat it each time without Electric Memory (sorry Empoleon just isn’t that good).

aroramage

1. MANY. MEMORIES!!

Every Memory card though pretty much does the exact same thing, and the new ones in Ultra Prism don’t change that fact. Electric Memory and Fire Memory both are Tool cards that only get effects when attached to Silvally-GX, granting it the appropriate Type – Electric gives Lightning and Fire gives Fire.

Giving Silvally-GX more Tools to change its Type is all fine and dandy when you’re looking to have a diverse advantage against a variety of decks, but I feel that it fundamentally undermines a Silvally-GX deck to have so many memories. He’s already got Fighting and Psychic Memories, and now he’s got 2 more on top of that? How do you decide which Memories to go with?!

The best answer to that is to be familiar with all the decks out there in the competition. You can’t account for every single deck in existence showing up out of nowhere, but if you have an idea of what the meta is like, you’ll have a better idea of ratios in which to put Memories into your deck…if you feel like devoting space to them. For instance, if Dark decks are popular, it’s likely that most of them are running Pokemon that have a Fighting Weakness – thus you put in Fighting Memories into your deck, and you keep Psychic Memories in the binder, since those Dark decks are also Resistant to Psychic.

“But wait a minute,” you may say, “what about those decks running Psychic Pokemon? Psychic Memory would work against them!” True, but that’s where the idea of ratios comes in. If Dark decks are MORE popular than Psychic decks, you can include both of those Memories in your deck if you want, but I’d run more Fighting Memories than Psychic Memories overall. It may make it more difficult against those Psychic-weak decks, but it also doesn’t ruin you against the more prevalent Dark decks.

It’s the same sort of mental work you’ve got to put forth with Electric and Fire Memory – are there more Lightning-weak Pokemon present? Or are there more Fire-weak Pokemon? And do those decks outnumber the Dark decks and Psychic decks you’d have to contend with as well?

…or you could just, ya know, not run the Memories in favor of consistency and Choice Band.

Rating

Standard: 2/5 (all things considered, the Memories are outclassed by better Tool options)

Expanded: 2/5 (they help Silvally-GX against certain decks, but only if those decks are an issue)

Limited: 1/5 (it’s only worth it if you don’t lose out on your own deck’s consistency…and if you have Silvally-GX in your deck, which in Limited you can’t)

Arora Notealus: The Memories for Silvally are like Plates for Arceus, which is interesting since when they made the Arceus cards, they instead opted to make different Types of Arceus instead of printing out all those Plates. You could also have any number of Arceus in your deck, meaning Arceus decks were a thing at least. I imagine the inherent inconsistency of dealing with multiple Types of Arceus made such decks unviable competitively, and they wanted to adjust that with Silvally-GX so as not to make that mistake. Just that now they’re throwing it into optional Memory Tools…soooooo good job?

Side Reviews: Dashing Pouch – Similarly, Dashing Pouch is another Tool that hasn’t had any impact on the game. Its effect is very useful, I think its biggest usage is in Limited, but in comparison to other Tool cards, it’s outclassed in what it does. It just doesn’t hold the capacity to beat out the likes of Choice Band. Or Float Stone. Or Escape Board…

Next Time: He’ll take a bite out of your Pokemon if you’re not careful!

Vince

Fire Memory

Standard: 3.5/5     Expanded: 3/5     Limited: 4/5

Electric Memory

Standard: 3/5     Expanded: 3.5/5     Limited: 4/5

Otaku

Resuming our usual order, we’ll cover a set of cards that were paired together for our countdown, and actually tie into another set of cards: Electric Memory (121/156) and Fire Memory (SM – Ultra Prism 123/156). These two Trainer-Items appeared on only one Top 10 list – my own – in fourth place, while they appeared in another reviewer’s Top 20 list to earn 26 total voting points, and had our countdown been longer, would have taken 15th place. Hint: I definitely overrated them, but that doesn’t mean they are bad!  These cards follow the pattern of Fighting Memory and Psychic Memory before them, being Pokémon Tools exclusive to Silvally-GX that – when equipped to it – change its Type to match the one specified on the card. While this allows Silvally-GX to tap certain kinds of Type support, the reason these Memory cards are so good is that the Weakness mechanic is broken in the Pokémon TCG. I’m not convinced it is really balanced in the video games, either, but it definitely creates too large of swings in damage in the TCG.

Silvally-GX itself is a solid Stage 1 [C] Type Pokémon-GX with 210 HP, [F] Weakness, no Resistance, Retreat Cost [CC], one Ability, one regular attack, and one GX-attack. The Ability “Gyro Unit” zeroes out the Retreat Cost of your Basic Pokémon while they are in play. For [CCC], Silvally-GX can use “Turbo Drive” to do 120 damage to the opponent’s Active while attaching a basic Energy card from your discard pile to one of your Benched Pokémon. “Rebel-GX” costs [CCC] as well, but does 50 damage times the number of your opponent’s Benched Pokémon. Gyro Unit makes it easier to run various Basic Pokémon and creates a potent, familiar combo with Dawn Wings Necrozma-GX and its “Invasion” Ability. Turbo Drive delivers solid hits, enough for a 2HKO in most cases while helping to prep your next attacker. This is where the Memory cards come in; now Silvally-GX can do an effective 240-for-three against some [W], many [F] and [P], or
most [C], [D], [G], [L], and [M] Pokémon. Only many [W], and all [N] or [Y] don’t have to worry about this (yet).

Of course, the Memory cards are useless for anything other than Silvally-GX, but what really hurts them is that – from an admittedly incomplete list of winning decks from the Malmö, Sweden and Collinsville, IL Regional Championships, I didn’t see any Silvally-GX; either it wasn’t be run or none of the people who did made it into the top 64. Not too long ago, however, it was a contender, so I think this is less the new status quo than just a bump in the road. I’ll also point out that, barring dramatic shifts in the metagame, the two new Memory cards are less important than Fighting Memory. If more [M] decks don’t start doing well, then Electric Memory and Fire Memory are going to be equally good in the Standard Format, and I expect about as good in the Expanded. Though the metagame is rather different between the two, exploiting Weakness is universal. In fact, the only reason I’m not scoring the new Memory cards higher for Limited Format play is that Type: Null (SM – Ultra Prism 116/156) is a normal Rare while Silvally-GX is reprinted here as an Ultra Rare (the normal rarity for a Pokémon-GX). Get them all together and you should add them to just about any and every deck.

Ratings (both cards)

Standard: 3.5/5

Expanded: 3.25/5

Limited: 3/5