Now dear readers, we close out this week
of “Honorable Mentions” from out Top 5
New and Top 5 Reprints of BW:
Legendary Treasures with
Gothitelle (BW: Legendary
Treasures 72/113), first printed as
BW: Emerging Powers 47/98.
The rotation to NEX-On removed it
from the card pool, but reprinting it
brought it back to us.
Now I have to resist going off on
a tangent, because apparently I never
bothered researching the video game
counterpart to this card.
So many things that make you go
“Huh?”
This is a Stage 2 Psychic-Type Pokémon,
and one that has actually seen some
successful, competitive play before
rotation.
Some hoped that the return of
Gothitelle would restore the
Accelgor (BW: Dark Explorers
11/108) and
Gothitelle decks, but while that
combo keeps getting more and more useful
toys, it barely has room for its
essentials, and we keep getting more and
more counters.
So… what can you do with
Gothitelle?
I wish I could just give you an answer
like “Shake up the metagame!” but I
can’t.
Perhaps because Items are almost
always so potent, I have a natural
affinity for effects that block them.
Unfortunately, I don’t believe
the changes brought up by rotation,
errata, and altered game procedures are
enough to compensate the weak points of
Gothitelle: durability and offensive
speed.
I had nearly finished a longwinded
review in my usual pattern, breaking
this card down feature by feature, but I
realized it was overkill.
Unless you are new to the game,
you know that Magic Room blocking Items
is amazing, and that under normal
circumstances an attack that can be
pumped up to OHKO levels via additional
Energy should be fairly good.
What goes wrong here is that
Gothitelle is fragile and slow by
competitive deck terms.
You can get her out and Active to
block Items reasonably quick (by your
second turn) but you won’t be able to
attack well unless you get incredibly
lucky and/or run a painfully complicated
set-up… and even then an opponent
running
Mewtwo EX or
Deoxys EX (with
Plasma Energy) can take all your
hard work setting up a “good”
Gothitelle and drop it in one hit.
Madkinesis is terrible unless fueled
purely by Psychic Energy.
Right now this would mean relying
on
Ether or
Gardevoir (BW: Next Destinies
57/99; BW: Dark Explorers
109/108) and by their nature those are
two cards you can’t rely upon; there is
no way to guarantee
Ether will work (improving your odds
is not the same thing) and even if you
could get two Stage 2 Pokémon out
simultaneously, without another form of
Energy acceleration Psychic Mirage won’t
speed Madkinesis up enough to matter.
Musharna (BW: Next Destinies
59/99) improves
Ether slightly, but that is yet
another Evolution.
Exp. Share won’t speed up your start
but can retain Energy in play, but is
vulnerable to
Tool Scrapper and means you can’t
use any of several other relevant
Pokémon Tools.
So how did this card work before?
Prior to Pokémon-EX becoming
dominant, decks struggled to break 120
points of damage in a single hit, which
in turn allowed you to try and set up
Reuniclus (Black& White
57/114; BW: Dragons Exalted
126/124) alongside
Gothitelle.
The good news is that the rule
changes would make this easier to
accomplish than before; the bad news is
too many decks can OHKO
Gothitelle for it to really matter,
plus in a strange twist the nerfing of
Pokémon Catcher may lead to more
decks that can force
Gothitelle out of the Active slot
using an alternative (like
Genesect EX and its Red Signal).
Then there was
Accelgor decks, mentioned above.
For Unlimited, my understanding is that
if an older Trainer does not specify
itself as a Stadium or Supporter, it is
treated as an “Item”: the game doesn’t
“perceive” how silly that seems for a
card named “Professor
Oak”.
Combined with Evolution
acceleration like
Broken Time-Space, the best
draw/search cards of the TCG’s
existence, and Energy acceleration in a
variety of forms,
Gothitelle in theory (…I never got a
chance to test this after finally
getting a ruling) just needs to open
with its own copy of
Sableye (DP: Stormfront
48/100) and then win the opening coin
toss;
Focus Band then gives you about a
50% chance of surviving if a deck can
actually unleash a good beatdown.
It is also important to remember
that Supporters are a luxury in this
format – decks aren’t built around a
need to drop one each turn.
For Limited play,
Gothitelle is adequate; like most
Stage 2 Pokémon if you pull a workable
line, it works simply because it will be
bigger and better equipped than whatever
your opponent is trying to use, barring
a +39 deck or a deck built around
another solid Evolution line.
Magic Room will rarely affect
opponents; even in the unlikely even
you’re able to use BW: Emerging
Powers packs and not BW:
Legendary Treasures, there aren’t
many Items in the set and players will
be fortunate to have one in a deck.
The winner is Madkinesis here;
while you might have to give up a few
Prizes building on the Bench, and while
you might not be able to run a pure
Psychic Energy using deck, as long
as you can build a mostly
Psychic Energy using deck you should
be able to power-up to OHKO level and
steamroll your opponent… or rather if
you can set-up up at all you should
accomplish this.
Ratings
Unlimited:
4/5
Modified:
2/5
Limited:
3/5
Summary
Gothitelle
is back, but it will have to find a new
trick to bring back the old magic.
I selected it for my own Top 5
Reprints list as the number four pick
because I get the feeling I am missing
something, and like many I thought an
older build might be able to work using
the new rules.
Now I think it at best deserved
the number five slot, and the chief
service of this review was as a PSA to
warn players that think they can just
tweak a Gothgor deck for NEX-On play and
easily win.
