Whimsicott – Vivid Voltage
Date Reviewed: February 22, 2021
Ratings Summary:
Standard: 2.00
Expanded: 2.00
Ratings are based on a 1 to 5 scale. 1 is horrible. 3 is average. 5 is great.
Reviews Below:
Vince
Whimsicott from Vivid Voltage seems like this card asks for a lot of investment and it still hasn’t paid off. Triple Draw costs 1 energy of any kind and lets you draw 3 cards. But if you can afford a Psychic Energy, then Flying Fury does 10 damage plus 40 more damage for each Pokémon Tool discarded from your Pokémon. Since each Pokémon can only have one Pokémon Tool attached to it and there’s a maximum of six Pokémon in play, the most you can do is 240 extra damage. While this can OHKO certain cards, VMAX Pokemon are beyond Flying Fury’s range, even with a damage boosting tool card. Because the Pokémon Tool cards go into the discard pile, you’ll need some way to get them back. Tomorrow’s COTD might be one of the solutions, but I’m case I might be too busy…Garbodor’s Trash Cyclone costs CC and does 30 damage times the number of Pokémon Tools in your discard pile as well as shuffling all of your Tools from the discard pile onto your deck. This one-two punch manevuer makes it hard to replenish Pokémon Tools that needs to be in your hand.
Expanded has more support regarding this style of play. There are some Pokémon that are capable of holding more than one Pokémon Tool card, whether it be a Pokémon with the Ancient Trait Theta Double or Sigilyph (the BW Plasma Blast version with the Toolbox ability that lets it attach 4 Pokémon Tool Cards! That card’s gonna be this week’s throwback). Having 2 Sigilyph in play is usually sufficient, and having more than that is overkill. That same Garbodor might come in after you exhausted your Pokemon Tools. And while Trash cyclone puts those discarded Tools back into your deck, Adventure Bag (SM Lost Thunder) or Elesa (BW Legendary Treasures) cans fetch multiple tools for you.
While this a nice concept that encourages the use of Pokémon Tools, the deck needs a lot of them to truly deal any meaningful damage. I would say you probably need around 15 to 20 Pokemon Tools. Standard doesn’t have many great choices regarding Pokémon tools outside of Vitality Band, Air Balloon, and Big Charm, but Expanded has a lot of wonderful Tools (that you can benefit in addition to being fodder) such as Choice Band, Muscle Band, Float Stone, Bursting Balloon, and much more! The biggest roadblock would be something to lock down items. Vikavolt-V in Standard and Seismitoad-EX in Expanded are still seeing some competitive play, so once they start repeatedly locking you from playing items, then there’s little to no damage output of Flying Fury.
Ratings:
Standard: 2
Expanded: 2
Whimsicott can theoretically achieve OHKOs, but this is one of the times where a lot of investment is needed, so much investment that deck space is extremely tight under this circumstance. There’s little to no room of surprise TecH because I have to add the Whimsicott line and a bunch of Pokémon Tools. If it was a Basic, then I would have considered using it; maybe make it a Whimsicott-V with the same Flying Fury, and then I’ll build a deck. As it stands, I would have been pretty frustrated trying to make it work. A lot of moving pieces are going to be disrupted.
Otaku
Whimsicott (SW – Vivid Voltage 076/185) is a baseline Pokémon; only worth a single Prize when KO’d, and no special Rule Boxes, no belonging to a special subgroup, etc. While some of those things come with support, most come with counters or exclusions from certain beneficial effects, so I actually consider this to be mildly advantageous in the current climate. It isn’t overly good being a Psychic type right now. Other than Mewtwo & Mew-GX, they aren’t hitting many important cards for Weakness. Thankfully, Resistance is restricted to pre-Sword & Shield cards as well. There aren’t any relevant anti-[P] cards that I can recall, but there are some good pieces of Pschic support… in Expanded. What we have in Standard isn’t bad, but it isn’t overly good, either.
Whimsicott is a Stage 1 Pokémon, so it is neither demanding nor easy to run. You’ll have to wait a turn to evolve, and you’ll either need to use some version of Cottonee or (in Expanded) Ditto {*} for Whimsicott to hit the field. The only standout Cottonee is SM – Cosmic Eclipse 147/236, because it knows “Lost March”. Which isn’t helpful to Whimsicott, so just pick whatever version has the most HP and is legal for your Format of choice. Cottonee has 90 HP, this is small even for a Stage 1, and fairly easy to OHKO. Small bonus, though; if Level Ball is reprinted (already confirmed for Japan), then that will make it a nice, easy way to fetch Whimsicott from the deck. Metal Weakness and a total lack of Resistance are the worst to have right now… but with 90 HP, neither particularly matters. That perfect free Retreat Cost is great, though!
Whimsicott knows two attacks. For [C] it can use “Triple Draw” to draw three cards. This is the “consolation prize”; if you can’t use the card’s second attack, or use it well enough, then at least you can try to draw into whatever it is you’re missing. That second attack is “Flying Fury”, which costs [P] and does 10 damage, and lets you discard as many Tools from your side of the field as you want. Not from your hand, but from your Pokémon. For each Tool discarded in this manner, the attack does another 40 damage. In Standard, that means Flying Fury caps out at 250 damage under its own power: six total Tools discarded, one from each of your Pokémon. That’s enough to OHK0 most of the metagame, excluding TAG TEAM Pokémon and Pokémon VMAX. At least, before protective effects.
Whimsicott can deliver a pretty powerful blow but there’s another issue; you need Tools in play in order to discard them! Even if you OHKO three Basic Pokémon V, we’re talking about 18 total Tools! Tools that likely are not doing their usual jobs. That is a lot of wasted space. Is there anything you can do to help with that? Absolutely. U-Turn Board is a must; it returns itself to your hand if you discard it from your Pokémon in play. If none are Prized, that is a guarnateed 170 damage per turn. At least one probably will be Prized, but that gives the attack a new “base” damage of 90 (two copies) or 130 (three copies). Now you only need another three or four Tools per turn.
You can use Lana’s Fishing Rod to recycle a Tool (plus a Basic Pokémon) from your discard pile. Greedent (SW – Rebel Clash 152/192; Shining Fates SV100/SV122) has an Ability that lets you add a Tool to your hand from your deck, once (per instance) per turn. Guzma & Hala can snag a Tool from your deck as well, though you may just be better off with the raw draw power of draw Supporters unless you’re getting those copies of U-Turn Board. Expanded has Adventure Bag (Item – get two Tools from your deck) and Eco Arm (Item – shuffle three Tools from your discard pile to your deck)… but what might be the best partner is a card we’re reviewing tomorrow: Garbodor (SW – Vivid Voltage 111/185). As such, I won’t be going into detail… but it has an attack for [CC] that does 30 per Tool in your discard pile, then shuffles all Tools from your discard pile back into your deck. Did I mention it is Standard-legal?
There is the “Roto Motor” series of cards: Fan Rotom, Frost Rotom, Heat Rotom, Mow Rotom, Rotom (SM – Ultra Prism 50/156), Rotom (SM – Forbidden Light 40/131), and Wash Rotom. All have the Ability “Roto Motor” that lets them attack while ignoring their Energy costs, provided you have nine or more Tool cards in your discard pile. Alolan Ninetales (SM – Cosmic Eclipse 145/236) has the attack “Rubbish Blizzard”, good for 10 damage per Tool in your discard; lower damage. It only costs [C], and for better and worse, it does not recycle your Tools. What it does do is hit Arceus & Dialga & Palkia-GX for Weakness, and again, it is Standard-legal. Getting back to Expanded, there are some Pokémon capable of having more than a single Tool attached to them. Making room for even more Tools in your deck is difficult, but with enough of these in play and enough Tools, Whimsicott can hit even harder. Even after that, there are still a few other Pokémon with Tool-related effects to consider.
Ratings
Standard: 3/5 2/5
Expanded: 3/5 2/5
Another optimistic set of scores, but I think Whimsicott is a good, combo-oriented glass cannon. Expanded adds even more options, though there is a risk of more anti-Tool effects. At the very least, it looks fun.
20210225: While writing other CotD’s for this week, I discovered two alternate attackers to Whimsicott. Gourgeist (SM – Crimson Invasion 45/111) has an attack called “Pumpkin Bomb” that works the same as Flying Fury, but is priced at [CC]. Perhaps even more of a concern is Cofagrigus (BW – Dark Explorers 52/108). Maybe almost everyone else also forgot about it, but its “Chuck” attack costs [CC] and does 40 damage per Tool discarded from your hand. From you hand!
Pumpkin Bomb didn’t make a splash in past Standard or Expanded Formats, though Chuck may have been forgotten by anyone interested (the way I forgot about it). Still, this tells me that this strategy is facing more of an uphill battle than I expected and/or its success will hinge more on Whimsicott itself. Unless something very specific about its stats makes the difference. Still, this means I am dropping my scores down to two-out-of-five for both Formats.
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