Pachirisu ex – Space-Time Smackdown
Date Reviewed: February 9, 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 seventh eighth best Pokémon of Space-Time Smackdown is Pachirisu ex (A2 061, 183, 198)! This (L) Type Basic Pokémon ex has 120 HP, (F) Weakness, (C) Retreat Cost, and one attack. “Sparking Gadget” requires (L)(L) and does 40 damage, plus another 40 damage if there’s a Pokémon Tool attached to Pachirisu ex. There is one version of Pachirisu ex available at the ♦♦♦♦ rarity, and two at the ★★ rarity.
There’s no (L) Type support, but at least there are no anti-Lightning effects either. Being a (L) Type can is useful for exploiting Weakness, however. Out of the 426 unique Pokémon cards currently available, 90 are (L) Weak. It also spans several Types. There’s only only one (L) Weak Fighting and Metal Pokémon, and two each of Darkness, Fire, Grass, Lightning and Psychic. Yet there are 18 (L) Colorless Pokémon and 60 (W) Pokémon! Only Dragon Types lack anything with (L) Weakness… and their shtick is not being Weak to any Type.
When we ignore the Pokémon with little to no competitive presence, the Pokémon with Weakness from the (D) and (P) Types stop mattering.One also needs to do the math, as sometimes Weakness won’t really matter1: there goes our (M) representative. When both are considered, it’s still just the (D), (M), and (P) Types where (L) Weakness is unlikely to help. There are very few big OHKOs enabled for Pachirisu, even with combos. The bigger (W) Types remain just outside of OHKO range, while the smaller ones were OHKOs before Weakness. Fortunately, it’s great for setting up more reliable 2HKOs.
Pachirisu ex wouldn’t have its stats and effects if it wasn’t a Pokémon ex. Don’t forget it is worth two points when KO’d, and it is a Pokémon ex Tauros (A1a 060) can OHKO with its “Fighting Tackle”. 120 HP is the lowest printed on any Basic Pokémon ex, so Pachirisu ex is fragile. It’s still enough to survive even medium hits. Being a Basic is the best. You require minimum deck space and time to hit the field. The latter is only sort of true, as you’ll want to run several Pokémon Tools, due to Pachirisu ex’s attack effect. Pachirisu ex is still a legal Poké Ball target, and not a terrible opener.
(F) Weakness is as bad as it looks. Marshadow (A1a 047, 074) scores a OHKO from it, though only when it gets the bonus damage from its attack effect. Which happens quite often. The (F) Type just got Lucario (A2 092, 170). When you combine its damage boosting Ability with Weakness, that’s up to +60 damage… and it won’t be uncommon to also encounter a Giovanni, opening Hitmonlee (A1 154), etc. to increase the range even more. The Retreat Cost of (C), is simply good. A single X Speed zeroes it out, let alone a Leaf, and even retreating at full price is often doable.
Sparking Gadget is why Pachirisu ex functions like the halfway point between a Basic and a Stage 1. Without a Tool attached, you get a substandard 40 damage for two Energy. I said this wasn’t too bad when we looked at Lucario, but also how that was because of its Ability. Pachirisu ex is all about this attack. Fortunately, with a Tool attached, now you do a good 80 for (L)(L). Still not amazing, but it fits in well with various (L) archetypes and gives us another good 18 Trainers candidate.
We only have three Tools right now: Giant Cape, Lum Berry, and Rocky Helmet. We haven’t looked at Lum Berry yet. It isn’t bad, but we didn’t review it yet for a reason: Giant Cape a Rocky Helmet are much, much better. Lum Berry automatically removes all Special Conditions from the equipped Pokémon, at the end of the turn, then discards itself. That can prove handy, and some of the 18 Trainer decks running Pachirisu ex do include one, but they run two each of Giant Cape and Rocky Helmet.
Pachirisu ex is already seeing success. I’ve already mentioned 18 Trainers; the Pachirisu ex variant is performing quite well. At the time of writing, according to the tournament data collected by LimitlessTCG, its the fourth best performing deck in terms of Win %. It’s possible this is misleading, as the deck is only 21st most played. 136 instances of the deck may sound like a lot, but the most played decks have around 1000 instances. If this sounds too risky for you, there’s still another option…
…partnering with Pikachu ex (A1 096, 259, 281, 285). Pachirisu ex fits into the Pikachu ex deck like a glove. The deck was already likely to run Giant Cape and/or Rocky Helmet, given Basic (L) Pokémon ex have lower HP scores. Dawn is also playing a role in some of these lists; if you can move one (L) Energy from a Benched Pokémon to an Active Pachirisu ex or Pikachu ex, your manual Energy attachment will let either start attacking. The deck’s only seen a little more play than the first one I mentioned, and is less risky in the sense you’re not begging to lose by Bench Out but its Win & is significantly lower.
Rating: 3.75/5
Have I used a score ending in “.75” since I began reviewing cards for the Pokémon TCG Pocket? Pachirisu ex is a very good card, but it isn’t quite on the level of those essential to the best decks in the metagame. Small but scrappy, it’s reliance on Tools could become a liability in the future. For now, though, you’re getting bonus damage for doing what you’d have done anyway; slapping a Tool on your attacking Pokémon ex.
1Where (L) Weakness: reduces the number of turns needed to score a KO, improves the rapidity, reliability, or repeatability of a KO, or some combination of the preceding. Both as a single attack, or as part of proven or sufficiently plausible combo.
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