Weakness Guard Energy – Unified Minds Pokemon Review

Vince

Ratings:

Standard: 3/5
Expanded: 3/5
Limited: 4/5
Theme: 4/5 (Actually essential for Special Laser Necrozma!)

Otaku

Weakness Guard Energy (SM – Unified Minds 213/236, 258/236) is exactly what it sounds like, a Special Energy card that provides [C] and cancels out a Pokémon’s Weakness while attached.  As a Special Energy card, it is a little more vulnerable to removal and difficult to recycle in Standard; in Expanded, it is even more vulnerable to removal but also easier to recycle.  Special Energy cards went from being difficult to search out in Standard to quite reasonable thanks to Guzma & Hala; you’ll need to burn your Supporter for the turn and pay a two-card discard cost, bu you can get the exact Special Energy you want plus a Stadium and Tool.

There are two big issues with Weakness Guard Energy.  The first is just that sometimes, you don’t need to worry about your Weakness.  While the metagame is always changing and sometimes a Type that was seeing little play suddenly shoots to the top, it is more likely that changes will be gradual.  Which means you can probably go without Weakness Guard Energy if there’s nothing that currently exploits it enough to be an issue. The next is that [C] is the absolute minimum an Energy can provide  If that is all your Pokémon need and/or you’ve got some Energy acceleration to compensate, though, you’re golden.

In Standard, Weakness Guard Energy has been seeing success in certain competitive decks.  Most frequently, we see it in decks with TAG TEAM Pokémon, which can’t afford to be OHKO’d.  I’m not seeing it in recent, winning Expanded Format decks, but I don’t have many of those to reference.  Weakness Guard Energy – like most cards – gains more combos, competition, and counters here, but I think it should be about as good here as in Standard.  Coping with Weakness is often even more important in both the Limited and Theme Formats.  In the former, you should have room in most decks for Weakness Guard Energy, and in the latter, the Laser Focus Theme Deck uses it to trigger the extra damage clause in the second attack of Necrozma (SM – Unified Minds 101/236; SM – Black Star Promos SM204).

Ratings

• Standard: 3/5
• Expanded: 3/5
• Limited: 4/5
• Theme: 4/5

Weakness Guard Energy isn’t an amazingly powerful card, but it is a good card.  If you don’t already have some of these, get a few if the price is right; odds are good they’ll come in handy sooner or later.  Though, if I had my way, Weakness Guard Energy wouldn’t be good at all… because I really think the x2 Weakness modifier is unbalanced.  The TCG can handle effects that add damage, but multipliers seem too powerful.