Giratina – Unified Minds Pokemon Review

Otaku

Giratina (SM – Unified Minds 86/236) is our third “spooky pick” for this week because of backstory.  If you don’t know what I’m talking about, I’m not sure I can explain it adequately… but a quick online search should bring you to articles or videos that can.  Let’s get to the actual card!

Giratina is a [P] Type, which is important because it makes it a legal Mysterious Treasure target; it can also come in handy for exploiting Weakness and sometimes be a drawback for crashing into one of the more common forms of Resistance, but given the rest of the card I’d say the additional search option is the important part.  It is also a Basic, which is the best – easy to run, easy to field, etc. – but sometimes can be a drawback (you don’t want to open with this card).

130 HP is slightly more likely than not to be OHKO’d, but especially for a Basic that ain’t bad.  [D] Weakness isn’t the worst to have right now, and any Resistance is better than none.  A Retreat Cost of [C] is good as it is often easy to pay and something like Escape Board zeroes it out completely.  Plus, this is the first Giratina with a Retreat Cost this low!

“Dimension Breach” is an Ability you can only use when you play this card from your hand to your Bench, and also only during your own turn.  If you do, you may discard a Special Energy from your opponent’s Active.  “Fade to Black” is an attack that costs [PCC] and does 70 damage, plus it leaves your opponent’s Active Confused.  Dimension Breach gives us a weaker version of Enhanced Hammer while Fade to Black is a so-so attack; a little low on damage.

When you put it all together, however, you have an okay card.  Not a great card.  Not a good card, but also not bad.  What is most telling is the current metagame seems pretty favorable to Giratina, as we have a lot of TAG TEAM Pokémon running around, stuff that isn’t easy to OHKO, and some of them really like their Special Energy. If OHKO’s are easy, not much point in Dimension Break or leaving something Confused.  Both itself to use and for it to discard from other Pokémon, though, Giratina wishes Double Colorless Energy was still legal but that Enhanced Hammer was still not.

Giratina does just enough to have some hope of eventually proving useful in Standard and even Expanded, though less so due to the added competition there.  As a relatively big, splashable Basic it should only be left out of your Limited Format deck because you’re doing something like running a TAG TEAM Pokémon with no other Basics.

Ratings

Standard: 2.2/5

Expanded: 1.8/5

Limited: 4/5

Girainta is a bit underwhelming.  I really wish it sent the Energy to the Lost Zone and/or wasn’t as restrictive in what it could discard; it would be “on theme” for the card and bring it in line with the potency of your average, competitive card.  What we actually got ain’t too bad, though.  It wouldn’t hurt to have a copy in your cardpool, in case it proves useful at a later date.