Tapu Fini – Unified Minds Pokemon Review

Vince

Tapu Fini from Unified Minds could be a useful tech to deal with certain threats. A Basic Water type with 120 HP, weak to Grass, and a retreat cost of one, it has two attacks. Razor Fin costs a water energy for 20 damage and Nature’s Wave costs WWC for 100 damage. However, if your opponent has any Ultra Beasts in play, the attack cost becomes a single Colorless energy instead.

As you can tell by the effect text, doing that much damage for a single energy could warrant consideration for your deck. However, the playability of Ultra Beasts varied over the seasons. As of now, both the GX and the non-GX version of Blacephalon are the focus of Fire decks, and Nature’s Wave OHKOs them with ease! Naganadel-GX mostly sits there for the Ultra Conversion Ability, but unless you have some damage boosting cards attached to Tapu Fini, Naganadel’s 210 HP makes you have to 3HKO it.

Tapu Fini is not a mandatory card to acquire as it is not a deck focus, but rather, a supporting attacker that can easily deal with certain things that your main attacker may lack.

• Standard: 3/5
• Expanded: 3/5
• Limited: 3.5/5

aroramage

Come to think of it, out of all the Tapus around and about, how often do you even hear about Tapu Fini? Between Tapu Koko being represented the most, Tapu Lele being on a good card, and Tapu Bulu headlining in his own deck, Tapu Fini just got the short end of the stick.

Tapu Fini here is a Basic Water Pokemon, 120 HP, with a Grass Weakness, no Resistance, and a Retreat Cost of 1. Nature Wave is the only move you’ll want to use, and it’s a 3-for-100 unless your opponent has an Ultra Beast in play which makes it 1-for-100. Cause let’s face it, Razon Fin isn’t even worth talking about.

So how likely is Nature Wave gonna get used? Well, it depends on the match-up more than anything. Sure, 1-for-100 is pretty good, but it only works when your opponent has a specific kind of Pokemon in play. Right now, the biggest Ultra Beasts to see play are Blacephalon, Ultra Necrozma-GX, and Naganadel, though there may be some others that see play here and there. Between these three, there’s a decent chance to run into one, and against Blacephalon in particular, Tapu Fini provides an excellent counter since he’s usually Fire-Type and Water-Weak.

But beyond that? Tapu Fini is limited in what it can do. Sure, there are some more Ultra Beasts arriving soon, but Tapu Fini can only do so much with 100 damage. If Blacephalon decks are popular, he’s great tech, but outside of that, I’m hard-pressed to make any strong recommendations about him.

Rating

Standard: 2/5 (Ultra Beasts are strong and usually see some level of play)

Expanded: 1.5/5 (but that alone doesn’t make a 1-for-100 that easily justified)

Limited: 2/5 (and don’t even get me started on the other side of this)

Arora Notealus: Tapu Fini fulfills a niche role in some decks and makes a strong counter against one particular kind of deck, but at the moment, it’s a weak card. Compare the 100 damage that Tapu Fini deals for 1 Energy against the behemoths of things like Reshiram & Charizard-GX, which is a deck that doesn’t have to run Blacephalon and usually doesn’t! Now Blacephalon itself does make up for a good part of the meta, but the deck archetype isn’t dominant; if it does become dominant though, expect some unexpected Tapu Fini to be pulling in some massive wins!

Next Time: Fly me out with the message!

Otaku

An extremely abridged review today, I’m afraid.  Tapu Fini’s claim to fame is that its “Nature Wave” attack can do 100 damage for [C] if your opponent has any Ultra Beasts in play.  Also that is a 120 HP [W] Type Basic Pokémon.  Once again, we haven’t seen it win any tournaments but among the last Standard Format tournaments with results posted at limitlesstcg.com, up in a few high performing decks.

I wasn’t overly impressed with this card until just now, because I’d misread it.  Oops.  Now I can understand why decks would run it over some of the other [W] Type attackers, even though its damage output is a bit below what would OHKO a Reshiram & Charizard-GX.  Blacephalon-GX, on the other hand, is within OHKO range and would itself trigger the cost-reducing effect of Nature Wave.

I’m not sure how it would do in Expanded since this is very metagame specific, but for the Limited Format you’re not too likely to get the attack cost reduction (I doubt most decks are splashing in Poiple), so just enjoy it as a solid, big Basic [W] Type.  No scores, due to this being a quickie review.