Quaquaval-ex – Paldea Evolved
Date Reviewed: June 4, 2023
Ratings Summary:
Standard: 2.50
Expanded: 2.50
Limited: 2.00
Ratings are based on a 1 to 5 scale. 1 is horrible. 3 is average. 5 is great.
Reviews Below:
Vince
Time to dance with Quaquaval-ex (SV Paldea Evolved 52/193) to end the weekend! A Stage 2 Water-type with 320 HP, Lightning Weakness, and a retreat cost of CC, it has two attacks. Exciting Dance costs a Water energy for 60 damage and lets you switch this Pokemon with one of your Benched Pokemon. Your opponent also switches their Active Pokemon with one of their Benched Pokemon. Spiral Shot costs WC for 230 damage and you must put two energies attached to that Pokemon into your hand.
Quaquaval-ex was briefly mentioned in my Quaquaval review almost a month ago and I still think my thoughts about it haven’t changed. Quaquaval (Scarlet & Violet 54/198) has the Energy Carnival ability that lets you attach a Basic energy card from your hand to one of your Pokemon once per turn. Energy Carnival might be inferior to other abilities that provide unlimited energy attachments, but even having just one Quaquaval in play is all you need to use Spiral Shot every turn. All you have to do is use up your manual attachment and one use of Energy Carnival. Returning energies attached to that Pokemon into your hand might seem like a drawback, but it can be easily remedied via Energy Carnival. It is also a good thing to have no energies attached to Quaquaval-ex so that it will take little to no damage from opposing attacks that rely on having a certain amount of energies attached to certain Pokemon (like Magnezone-ex’s Energy Crush attack).
Overall, Quaquaval-ex’s attacks are fairly cheap and they do reasonable damage for the cost. A 2-for-230 attack with little to no drawbacks is almost unheard of, though with power creep, I’ll be bound to encounter similar attacks from different Pokemon more often than not. I’m not sure if there’s anything else to improve Quaquaval-ex’s damage output, but maybe Defiance Band may help push Spiral Shot to do 260 damage if you are behind on prizes. That’s still 2HKO territory on all Stage 2 Pokemon-ex, some Stage 1 Pokemon-ex, Pokemon VMAX, and Pokemon VSTAR. However, there is another Water-type attacker that can even reach certain thresholds: Gyarados-ex! Its Tyrannical Tail attack can deal 360 damage if your opponent’s Active Pokemon already has damage counters on it. I might have lowballed Gyarados-ex when I first reviewed it, but now I feel like Gyarados-ex is a far better attacker than Quaquaval-ex would be despite expensive attack costs; it OHKOs anything in sight! You’ll just have to devote the entire Quaquaval line to be a full four on the baseline Quaquaval card with the Energy Carnival ability, perhaps some Hawlucha (Scarlet & Violet 118/198) (or Galarian Zizzagoon in Expanded with the Headbutt Tantrum ability) for damage counter placements, and Boss’s Orders to bring the damaged Pokemon up front. Whether to put two different evolutionary line or one evolutionary line is up to the player. Quaquaval-ex and Quaquaval shares the same lower stages, but you only have four opportunities to evolve Quaxly. As mentioned a while ago: “While you could run both 4 copies of today’s card and 4 Quaquaval-ex, only 4 Quaxly is allowed in a deck, so there’s only four opportunities to evolve. Maybe a 3-1 or 2-2 split should suffice.”
And definitely not 4/4/4-4! Ditto Prism Star might give you one more opportunity to evolve a certain Pokemon into a Stage 1.
Ratings:
Standard: 2.5/5
Expanded: 2.5/5
Limited: 2/5
It’s nice to see the Paldea starters get the spotlight of getting their Pokemon-ex forms, but like almost all cards, it’s a matter of card effects, and I think Meowscarada-ex got the edge due to having an ability.
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