Impact Energy – Chilling Reigns
Date Reviewed: July 10, 2021
Ratings Summary:
Standard: 3.00
Expanded: 3.00
Ratings are based on a 1 to 5 scale. 1 is horrible. 3 is average. 5 is great.
Reviews Below:
Otaku
Impact Energy (SW – Chilling Reign 157/198) is a Single Strike card, one of their new pieces of support. It is a Special Energy card that can only be attached to Single Strike Pokémon. You cannot manually attach it to something that is not a Single Strike Pokémon, and if you use a trick to get it on a non-Single Strike Pokémon, its own text says to discard it. Considering you can evolve into and out of a Battle Style, this may not be as rare a situation as it sounds. While attached to a Pokémon, Impact Energy provides one unit of Energy which counts as all types at once. At least, that is how other cards such as Rainbow Energy function; the worded is a bit awkward on this one.
There’s more. These cards all come with their own drawbacks. Rainbow Energy places a damage counter on the Pokémon to which it is attached from hand. Aurora Energy requires you discard a card from your hand to attach it to something. Impact Energy only works with Single Strike Pokémon… but it has one more beneficial effect! The Pokémon with Impact Energy attached is can’t be Poisoned! If it was already Poisoned, that instance of Poison is cured and (still) future instances are prevented. In a way, this does make some sense; only working for Single Strike Pokémon is a very significant restriction for this kind of card.
Impact Energy should make it easier to run multi-type Single Strike decks. However, it should be noted that it does not work with the “Single Strike Roar” Ability found on Houndoom (SW – Battle Styles 096/163, 179/163; SW – Black Star Promos SWSH090), or with the effect of Urn of Vitality. This is an official ruling that has already been given: those two cards have effects that specifically work with the card named “Single Strike Energy”, as opposed to Energy cards that have the Single Strike Battle Style. Impact Energy should be a new, solid bit of support for Single Strike Pokémon in Standard, and maybe in Expanded. I’m unaware of any major winds for decks featuring Single Strike Pokémon in either Format, but I see a lot that I like in their bag of tricks.
Ratings
- Standard: 3/5
- Expanded: 3/5
Vince
Impact Energy is the equivalent to Rainbow Energy, but only for Single Strike Pokémon, as well as removing the Poison special condition and can t be affected by Poison. Not sure if it counts as a certain type while in your hand or deck, but I think it wouldn’t count as any type of energy, which is unfortunate. What’s even more unfortunate is that even though it has the Single Strike logo on the top right hand corner, it is NOT considered a Single Strike Energy, meaning Houndoom wouldn’t fetch Impact Energy at all. Now that I think about it, Impact Energy is a situational card that uses up your manual attachment, though you can still employ Houndoom to accelerate Single Strike energy. This will probably meet attack costs like X (X being any type), XC, or even XCC at best.
Standard: 2
Expanded: 2
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