Manaphy – Space-Time Smackdown
Date Reviewed: February 13, 2025
Ratings Summary:
Ratings are based on a 1 to 5 scale. 1 is horrible. 3 is average. 5 is great.
Reviews Below:
Otaku
The fourth best card of Space-Time Smackdown is Manaphy (A2 050, 162)! It’s a (W) Type Basic Pokémon with 50 HP, (L) Weakness, (C) Retreat Cost, and one attack. “Oceanic Gift” costs (W), and attaches a (W) Energy to two of your Benched Pokémon. If you have three, you pick which two. If you only have one Benched Pokémon, it still just gets one (W) Energy. Manaphy is available at the ♦♦ and ★ rarities.
Manaphy cannot attack for damage, so it cannot exploit (W) Weakness. Manaphy can make use of Misty (A1 220, 267) and/or Vaporeon (A1a 019, 072). Turn 1 you could attempt Misty to begin attaching more (W) Energy to your Bench via Manaphy’s Oceanic Gift. I wouldn’t expect to move a lot of (W) Energy too an Active Manaphy (from your Benched (W) Pokémon… but moving Energy Manaphy attached and/or Energy attached to Manaphy to an Active? That’s a little more likely.
Being a Basic is the best; no waiting to evolve or extra cards required to hit the field. Manaphy’s a legal Poké Ball target, and is a Pokémon you’ll want to open with. The 50 HP is low. It’s just low enough for Joltik (A1a 028) OHKO unaided, due to Weakness. The same goes for Pikachu (A1a 025), if you have a Bench full of (L) Pokémon. Multiple (L) Pokémon can do 20 for one Energy; they just need a Giovanni for Weakness to add up to a OHKO. The Retreat Cost of (C) is good. If you had the Energy to attack, and Manaphy actually survives your opponent’s turn, you’ll often be able to retreat.
Oceanic Gift is a great attack! As stated earlier, if you get even one “heads” on a Turn 1 Misty, Manaphy can begin setting up its fellows before the opponent even has their first turn! Turn 2, and you can just do it naturally. It might have been too good if Manaphy let you choose a Benched Pokémon more than once1, though I suppose being able to attach to your Active or choosing to not attached to your Benched Pokémon wouldn’t be useful all that often.
I was a bit surprised that not all (W) decks are including Manaphy. Multiple lists with Gyarados (A1a 018, 076) and/or Greninja (A1 089, Promo-A 019) lacked it, but they were either already very crowded, and saddled with low HP, (L) Weak evolving Basic Pokémon. There were also some 18 Trainer variants featuring Articuno ex (A1 084, 258, 275) and/or Palkia ex (A2 049, 182, 204, 206) also won’t use it, since the entire point is to start with one of those two and just power-up manually and/or with Misty.
There are many more fleshed out Palkia ex decks, however, and those almost always lead with Manaphy. Unless your opponent can take out Manaphy ASAP, you’ll be able to build up at least one serious attacker on your Bench… sometimes more than one. You pretty much need to abandon all hope if you see a Palkia ex with 6+ (W) Energy attached. As Manaphy isn’t considered as deck focus, the way Dialga ex (A2 119, 188, 205, 207) is, I can’t tell if it is seeing any use off-Type. At least, not without pouring through deck results.
I can see some non-(W) decks taking advantage of Oceanic Gift not caring about the Type of the receiving Pokémon. As with Dialga ex, this could be used to prep anything that runs on all or mostly (C) and/or (W) Energy. It’s possible something that outdoes Manaphy will show up in a future set, but if it doesn’t, I expect Manaphy has a bright future, in addition to a bright present day.
Rating: 4/5
Do you risk Dialga ex, with its slower start but better HP and solid second attack… or do you go with Manaphy, who might be able to attack Turn 1, and can reliably attack Turn 2? Dialga ex does attach two Energy – in this case, (M)(M) – to a single target, while Manaphy attaches (W) to two Benched Pokémon. There are trade offs to using either, but the speed of Manaphy seems better to me, if only in the decks it has helped perform so well.
1I only recently pulled a second Manaphy, and didn’t think to test if it could. It isn’t written in a way that suggests it could, so I’m assuming it can’t.
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