Dark Explorers Countdown
#5 Dark Patch
Hello and welcome to the second part of
our countdown of the top 10 cards from
Dark Explorers, here on
Pojo’s
CotD. We’re
getting to the
really good stuff now.
We kick off the week with Dark Patch . .
. a Trainer-Item that looks a bit like a
sticking plaster. One thing it won’t do
though is make your opponents feel any
better!
Dark Patch’s effect is to take a Basic
Dark Energy from your Discard Pile and
attach it to a Benched Dark Pokémon.
Pretty
straightforward huh? It’s
basically Eelektrik NV in Trainer form
just for Dark Types. It also has
brilliant synergy with Junk Arm: use
Dark Patch to attach an Energy, play
Junk Arm discarding more Dark Energy to
get the Trainer back, then play it again
to recover and attach the Energy you
just discarded: voila! You have now just
got some massive Energy acceleration
from a couple of Trainers!
How important is Energy acceleration in
today’s format? The easiest way to
answer that is just to point out the
decks that have used it recently:
Zekrom/Pachirisu/Shaymin,
Reshiram/Typhlosion,
Celebi/Mewtwo,
Zekrom/Eelektrik,
Magnezone/Emboar
. . . all have been absolutely top tier
contenders at some point during the
HGSS-on format. Before then, we had the
SP decks abusing Energy Gain. In fact
over the last few months, only a very
few lock-based decks like The Truth have
managed to be competitive without either
running some form of acceleration or
having cheap attacks (Durant, for
example). Even decks like Quad
Terrakion
and Six Corners are only possible
because of the pseudo-acceleration they
get from Exp Share and/or
Shaymin UL.
So now it’s Dark’s turn to benefit from
some turbo-charged Energy attachments,
and luckily there is a nice range of
candidates that can benefit. The most
obvious and most important is
Darkrai-EX,
but there’s also
Zoroark DEX if you’re looking to
build a competitive deck. You can also
have fun using Dark Patch to power up
things like
Hydreigon NV and
Krookodile
DEX for more casual or League play.
This is the card that will make
Darkrai-EX a
top tier Pokémon, and ensure that Dark
Pokémon are a
force to be reckoned with in the future.
Rating
Modified: 4 (Is Dark now the best
supported Type in the game?)
Limited: 4 (as long as you have some
Dark Pokémon, obviously)
