Florges – Forbidden Light Pokemon Review

Vince

Florges from Forbidden Light is this week’s Throwback. I find that although she has four different colored flowers, Battle properties are still the same. She would be pretty nice for collectibles.

Anyhow, the reason why we’re looking at Florges is not because of its Mist Guard attack, which does 70 for 3 energy and takes no damage from your opponent’s Dragon Pokemon. No, it’s the Wondrous Gift ability, which only works 50% of the time due to a coin flip. If you flip heads, you get to put a item card from your discard pile onto the top of your deck. This ability stacks, so if you have multiple Florges in play, then your probability improves. Two of them would get you a 75% chance to get at least one heads from 2 coin flips. Three of them would be 87.5% while all four in play is 93.75%! Almost reliable, though you can still fail to get a item card. Even if you would succeed, the threat of your opponent shuffling your deck will always ruin the moment where you would’ve got the card you need. The only question is which item card would benefit the most from Florges’s ability.

Well, there’s a lot of item cards to think about, but because Florges has to be in a deck, there’s not many that can compliment it…except for one! Lillie’s Poke Doll is the main attraction for Florges to exploit, as it is an item card, but also a 30 HP Pokémon that gives up no prizes, regardless if they’re able to take more or not. With those two, it created an near-infinite loop of having your opponent waste an attack on the doll over and over again…until your opponent ran out of cards in their deck. This is yet another slowest way to win that would fare poorly in Swiss formats where you only get 45 minutes for three total matches. But other than that, that tactic has earned an premium article on Pokebeach regarding “Doll Stall” and various decklists from Limitless.

Florges may not seem like it was gonna be playable, but it finally waited long enough to create an exploit. Part of me wishes that someone in Expanded would use Florges Break for the ability to heal damage and remove a special condition, but that seems that this is unnecessary. Also, such tactics can fail if an opposing Seismitoad-EX is going to keep preventing you from using items, so Poke Doll is out of luck. Not to mention it has potentially eight opportunities to attach a DCE (4DCE and Twin Energy).

Ratings:

• Standard: 3/5
• Expanded: 2/5
• Limited: 3/5

Otaku

Note: My review of Ninetales (SM – Team Up 16/181) has finally been posted.  My apologies for the delay!

Florges (SM – Forbidden Light 86/131) isn’t a full two years old yet, but we never looked at it when it was new, so it is our Throwback for this Thursday.  As a Stage 2, Florges is slow and resource intensive.  Its [Y] Typing lets it smack most [N] Types for double damage and grants it access to some useful pieces of support.  120 HP is a little more likely than not to be OHKO’d.  [M] Weakness is a moderate concern right now, and looks like it will be very dangerous to have post-Sword & Shield.  Any Resistance is appreciated, and may sometimes help with that borderline HP.  A Retreat Cost of [CC] is low enough you can pay, but high enough you’ll wish you didn’t have to.

This Florges has the Ability “Wondrous Gift”, which may be used once per instance during your turn, prior to your attack (or doing anything else that ends your turn upon resolution).  When you use this Ability, you flip a coin: “heads” means you put an Item from your discard pile on top of your deck, while “tails” does nothing.  [YYC] pays for “Mist Guard”, which lets Florges attack for 70 damage and prevents all damage done to itself by your opponent’s [N] Pokémon, during your opponent’s next turn.  Mist Guard is pricey for what it does, but Wondrous Gift is quite good, even though its results depend on a coin flip.

Florges saw little to no successful competitive play until after the release of Lillie’s Poké Doll, which we reviewed here.  This Trainer-Item can be put into play as if it was a Pokémon, but gives up no Prizes when KO’d, even against effects that normally increase Prizes taken.  Florges’ Ability proves a way to constantly recycle it, as well as many Item cards that can disrupt your opponent.  With our best currently legal Gust effect options being Custom Catcher, Great Catcher, or Monday’s Ninetales, it can be difficult to attack “around” Lillie’s Poké Doll; the deck then typically uses control/stall tactics to secure the win.

Florges Doll decks enjoyed some success earlier in this year’s Standard Format, but it didn’t win anything major that I can find.  It has placed well at difference times, though recently, the best one did at the Bochum, Germany Regional Championship was take 47th-place.  Then again, out of 659 Masters Division players, that puts it just outside of the top 7% of finishers.  I’m not seeing any similarly well performing examples in the Expanded Format; given the presence of cards such as Lysandre and Guzma, I assume it is just too easy to get around Lillie’s Poké Doll. As long as you pull at least a 1-1-1 line, have some Items, and don’t pull something better off run in a +39 build, Florges is a nice pull for the Limited Format.

Ratings

• Standard: 3/5
• Expanded: 2/5
• Limited: 3/5

Wondrous Gift tends to live up to its name, but Florges itself is a little too vulnerable to be worth it in most decks.  Enjoy it in Florges Doll decks for now, and perhaps it will prove itself somewhere else at a later date.