Gardevoir V – Champion’s Path Pokemon Review

Otaku

Time for another lead-in review, as opposed to proceeding to 5th-place proper.  Gardevoir V (Champion’s Path 016/073, 070/073) is a Psychic type; not too great at type matching, and maybe one or two pieces of worthwhile type support.  Being a Pokémon V means this Pokémon is worth an extra Prize when KO’d and gets punished by some card effects, either excluded from the beneficial or targeted by the detrimental.  Being a Pokémon V also means being a Basic instead of a Stage 2, like most Gardevoir, which is a big advantage.  It also means better HP than single-Prize Gardevoir cards, and only 20 less than Gardevoir-GX.  [M] Weakness is awful right now; Zacian V already scores a OHKO, but this puts Gardevoir V in range of some supporting attackers.  No Resistance is the worst, but hardly matters.  A Retreat Cost of [CC] is neither high nor low, so pretty neutral.

Gardevoir V knows two attacks.  “Magical Shot” costs [P] and does 30 damage.  That’s it, and it’s quite inadequate.  [PPC] pay for “Swelling Pulse”, which lets Gardevoir V do 120 damage, or 200 if it was healed this turn.  Its poor without the effect, but decent with it.  Though your opponent probably will attack Gardevoir V, it shouldn’t always be for a OHKO, so this strategy could work even with only the most basic of combos.  If you can include something like Spikemuth, plus some switching cards and a free-retreater, you could intentionally damage your Gardevoir V with a token amount, then heal it to boost Swelling Pulse.

Besides what I already said, a Gardevoir V deck may wish to use Gardevoir VMAX.  We’ll cover Gardevoir VMAX tomorrow, but its existence does bode well for Gardevoir V.  Gardevoir V becomes a decent alternate attacker in such decks, and might have just enough to actually be the focus, with Gardevoir VMAX backing it up.  In Expanded, you’ve got additional tricks like Max Potion to help attack Energy more quickly, as well as Dimension Valley to shave [C] off of Swelling Pulse’s attack cost.  There are more healing card effects to consider, though resupplying your [P] Energy after Max Potion seems like a tall order.  Gardevoir V should be decent, but might actually be good.  I just checked:

• Hyper Potion
• Pokémon Center Lady
• Potion
• Suspicious Food Tin

are all in this set as Uncommons or – in the case of Potion – a Common.  The 4 Copy Rule does not apply to Limited, so if you actually pull more than 4 copies of one of these, all are legal for your deck.  Even if you cannot heal, however, Gardevoir is worth it, but maybe not in a mulligan build.

Ratings

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

I’m being a tad generous with Gardevoir V’s Limited Format score; which on healing cards, and it’s more like a two-out-of-five.  Get just one or two, Gardevoir V is more like a three-out-of-five.  Keep an eye on Gardevoir V; it might not amount to anything, but it packs enough punch that, if you can reliably, affordable, and repeatedly trigger the bonus damage for its second attack, it might be able to star in its own deck!