Wobbuffet – Lost Thunder Pokemon Review

Vince

Today, we’re looking at Wobbuffet from Lost Thunder. This is a card which took 43rd place of the best cards of the set, which isn’t extraordinary, but nonetheless was mentioned. Probably because it does something that caught the eye of some reviewers. What’s been established is that it is a Basic Pokémon which could be easily be brought into play and takes the least amount of deck space. Being a Psychic Type can be useful for exploiting weakness found on Fighting and Psychic types, but does 20 less damage from Pokémon that resist it. 110 HP isn’t big, but enough for you to work things out. Psychic weakness is Achilles Heel for mirror matches, and a retreat cost of two is something you don’t want to pay unless you use Altar of the Moon or Expanded cards like Mystery Energy that shaves off the retreat cost by CC, making it free.

Wobbuffet has an ability and one attack. Knock Over is a simple PC for 30 damage, plus 30 more damage if you flipped heads. The ability, Shady Tail works when this Pokemon is on the Bench, because that’ll cause all Prism Star Pokemon in play to not attack AND cannot use their abilities! This makes Wobbuffet a very good Bench sitter that can also feed damage output on certain attacks that does damage based on how many Pokémon you have in play! Prism Star is a mechanic that was introduced in Sun & Moon Ultra Prism, as it acts similar to Yu-Gi-Oh’s list of Limited cards or other TCGs, such that you can only have one of a certain card in your deck. They can be be in any category: Pokemon, Trainers, or Stadiums. While Prism Star Pokemon is a very small fraction of the entire Pokemon TCG, for present time, this ability is actually useful to shut down certain Pokémon that rely on abilities and even attacking.

As long as Wobbuffet is in your Bench, there’s couple things you can stop your opponent from doing or relying. Solgaleo/Lunala Prism Star can’t use Radiant Star/Full Moon Star to recover energies. Giratina/Darkrai cannot use Chaotic Star/Nightmare Star abilities to accelerate energy. Diancie Prism Star cannot boost damage output for Fighting types. Ditto Prism Star is pretty much a sitting duck that is fragile as it can’t use its ability to put any Stage 1 Pokemon on top of it. There are other Prism Star Pokemon that I didn’t mention, but the examples above can show how certain aspects that they try to do are crippled with Wobbuffet in play. This really makes your opponent burn some resources like Guzma just to get their Prism Star Pokemon back online.

In Expanded, there’s Wobbuffet from Phantom Forces, which is a Basic Psychic Type with 110 HP, weak to Psychic, and a retreat cost of two. It’s ability works if it is Active, and it shuts down ALL abilities except for Psychic Pokemon. This makes the new Wobbuffet partially redundant, since the older Wobbuffet already takes care of Pokémon with abilities. If you’re worried about being attacked from Prism Star Pokemon and needing to shut down Abilities from Psychic Pokemon, then the new Wobbuffet just got a tiny niche to help the old one. Psychic Assault costs PC for 10 damage, plus 10 more damage for each damage counter on the Defending Pokémon. There’s also Wobbuffet BREAK, which ups the HP to 140 and adds another attack called Right Back At You that costs PC. This attack discards all energy attached to this Pokémon. If this Pokemon takes damage from your opponent’s attack, you deal the same amount of damage back at it. For Pokémon that do overkill damage, this usually knocks them out.

Overall, Wobbuffet has a useful ability that can cripple other decks, and Expanded has more related cards to work with (and more counters to hinder it), so I can see it being used in a single copy or two for Standard, and possibly a full four for Expanded if a dedicated Wobbuffet deck came to fruition. In Limited, I don’t think it’ll do well as an attacker, but it can mess with Prism Star Pokemon if your opponent had one. Ditto, Xerneas, and Celebi will be rendered useless as long as Wobbuffet is on the Bench.

Ratings:

• Standard: 3.25/5
• Expanded: 3.4/5
• Limited: 3/5

Conclusion:

Wobbuffet isn’t something to fear or forget about, depending on the situation, but it is a serious roadblock for Prism Star Pokemon if a deck relies heavily on their capabilities. Although Shady Tail is extremely niche and specific, it can still put a stop to some of the Prism Star Pokemon frequently played at the moment.

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PokeDeck
Central

Wobbuffet (LOT 93) got its second Sun and Moon incarnation in the Lost Thunder expansion set.  Its attack Knock Away isn’t even worth mentioning, but its ability Shady Tail has seen some use for its ability to shut down Prism Star cards and prevent them from attacking and using their abilities.

We really haven’t seen many decent Prism Stars. Ditto is great, no doubt there, but what’s the best Prism Star after that?  Diancie?  Solgaleo?  Lunala?  So it’s no surprise that Wobb hasn’t made its way out of the binder much.  And it doesn’t mean a whole lot when I say the best Prism Star might be less than a month away, but Tapu Koko Prism Star comes out with the next set, and it will probably be an automatic inclusion in the majority of your decklists.

If I told you Tapu Koko Prism was so good, you would even include two Lightning energy in virtually every deck you play – even decks that don’t have any Pokemon that would use Lightning energy – you would probably think I was crazy, but that’s what’s undoubtedly going to happen.  You see, Tapu Koko Prism allows you to attach two Lightning energy from your discard to your benched Pokemon.  It does have to be one energy on one Pokemon and one on another, you can’t put both energies on one Pokemon, but still that kind of acceleration will be employed by a LOT of different decks.  The only trouble is that you have to get both Lightning energy into the discard, but you don’t have to use the ability when you put Koko Prism into play, you can wait a turn or two until you get both Lightning in the discard.  Also, after using this ability, Koko Prism goes straight to the Lost Zone, so you only get to use it once.  And if your featured attackers don’t have Colorless energy or Lightning energy requirements, ok, then yeah you’re probably going to pass on Koko Prism.  But for most decks, Tapu Koko Prism will help accelerate energy attachments in a way we’ve never really seen before.

And that just goes to show how good Koko Prism will be: it completely took over this Wobbuffet review.  Don’t feel bad for Wobb, though, with Ditto and Koko Prisms running around so much, you can bet she’ll see more play in the near future.

Rating

Standard: 2 out of 5 (3 out of 5 about a month from now)

Conclusion

And yes that rating is for Wobbuffet and not Koko Prism (you can guess what my rating for Koko Prism is going to be).

Otaku

Wobuffet (SM – Lost Thunder 93/214) is our Wednesday review. It is a [P] Pokémon; peeking ahead, I don’t think we’ll be attacking with it all that much, but if we do both Weakness and Resistance are going to come up at least somewhat often, given the current metagame (Buzzwole, Zoroark-GX, etc.). I’m not sure if there are any anti-[P] effects in the game. A quick search over at pkmncards.com turned up nothing but I may not have had my search terms or options quite right. It did tell me that there’s more [P] based support than I realized in the Standard Format because I forgot that Morty even existed until that search. He probably isn’t relevant, but being a legal choice for Mysterious Treasure probably is, and perhaps even Spell Tag could help. Being a Basic is the best right now, though it isn’t quite as lopsided as it has been in other recent (and not-so-recent) metagames; it means Wobbuffet is an easy inclusion in most decks, both in terms of space required and speed to the field. It can even be your opening Active which is… actually a bad thing, given how I expect this card to be used.

Wobbuffet has 110 HP; it isn’t fragile but it definitely isn’t durable, either; unless a deck isn’t meant to swing reliably for 2HKO’s or OHKO’s, Wobbuffet isn’t likely to survive while Active. 110 HP is at least enough to NOT be an easy Bench target for snipping or repeated spread. [P] Weakness will only matter while Active and against a [P] Type that doesn’t hit particularly hard, but it does mean something like Garbodor (SM – Guardians Rising 51/145, 51a/145) can score a OHKO with just three Items in your discard pile instead of six. No Resistance is typical, and its presence probably wouldn’t have made a big difference, but I still wish it was here. The Retreat Cost of [CC] is low enough you probably can pay it but high enough you’ll also probably wish you hadn’t needed to, especially in the long run. “Shady Tail” is an Ability that prevents Prism Star Pokémon from being able to attack and causes them to be treated as having no Abilities, at least while this Wobbuffet is on your Bench. That means your opponent can turn it off by forcing Wobbuffet Active even BEFORE the likely OHKO that would accompany such a play. It also means your own Pokémon {*} are affected as well. “Knock Away” is the only attack on this card, and costs [PC] while doing 30 damage plus flipping a coin for potentially another 30. It is a filler attack, but not a terrible one.

Shady Tail is the start of this show, and it is extremely niche. There are only so many Prism Star Pokémon, and they are all Basic Pokémon, even if they would normally be Evolutions. This means their Abilities can all be countered with Alolan Muk. While some Prism Star Pokémon were hyped as attackers, I don’t recall seeing that many used in the role. The few that were often weren’t expected to survive attacking more than once, either. What I’m saying is that, except against some very specific decks I don’t recall being particularly strong, Shady Tail is mostly only going to matter because it will keep an opponent from Evolving Ditto {*} a turn before Alolan Muk could serve the same purpose, or if your deck has Abilities on other Basic Pokémon it really needs. While very narrow, such usage is plausible. For example, my Granbull (SM – Lost Thunder 138/214) deck needs its Oranguru (SM – Lost Thunder 113/149, SM – Black Star Promos SM13). It doesn’t like an opponent’s Ditto {*} using its Ability to Evolve into Alolan Muk, so this is a potential counter…

…but probably not a worthwhile one, even in that instance. The deck highly values its Bench space and does not need another bad candidate as opening Active. If other Prism Star Pokémon start causing problems, things could be very different.  There are still a few more on the way, and at least one high-performing Japanese list did include a copy of this Wobbuffet. Only really relevant in the Expanded Format is that running one of these means one less Wobbuffet (SM – Burning Shadows 49/147), but the Expanded Format has Wobbuffet (SM – Phantom Forces 36/119, Generations RC11/RC32), but that only matters if you need to max out the older one.  I guess the place to enjoy this Wednesday’s Wobbuffet is the Limited Format; being a Basic with 110 HP, and a two-Energy attack which does 30 or 60 damage (depending on the coin flip) is solid. The fact that one of those Energy Requirements is [C] means Wobbuffet is friendly enough to multi-Type decks, and if your opponent did pull a good Prism Star Pokémon, you might be able to Bench this at the right time.

Ratings

Standard: 1.7/5

Expanded: 1.5/5

Limited: 3/5

Wobbuffet is an extremely niche counter to the Prism Star cards, and unless you have multiples in play your opponent can work around it by forcing it Active as Shady Tail only works while Wobuffet is on your Bench.  Few of the Prism Star Pokémon are great attackers; for now I’ll stick with Alolan Muk if I really think I need to counter Prism Star Pokémon.  This could change in the near future, however, so don’t forget about Wobbuffet in the meantime.