Baby Mario
2010 UK
National
Seniors
Champion |
Heliolisk
(Phantom Forces)
Today’s card is one of those Pokémon that offers
effectively limitless damage (well, enough to OHKO
anything, anyway), and these always tempt players into a
second look as they try and search for a way to make it
work.
Unfortunately, they are wasting their time with
Heliolisk. Parabolic Spark
may offer the possibility of huge attacks by doing 30
for each Lightning Energy you discard from any of your
Pokémon, but making that function with the cards we have
just isn’t possible. With five discards needed to OHKO
an EX, it would take something with the Energy
acceleration of Emboar LTR
or Blastoise BCR to make
Parabolic Spark worthwhile. Lightning doesn’t have
anything like that.
Bear in mind too that Emboar
and Blastoise themselves are
barely playable these days. Add to that the fact that
Heliolisk is a Stage 1 with
very low HP and only a low damage alternative
attack, and I think it
becomes obvious that it isn’t really a competitive card,
and that that fact is very unlikely to change.
Rating
Modified: 1.5 (it’s no Black Kyurem
EX)
Expanded: 1.25 (it’s no Rayquaza
EX either)
Limited: 2.75 (Pound is somewhat decent)
|
aroramage |
Welcome to Jurassic Park, featuring the mighty
dilophosaurus with its frills and acid spray-wait a
sec...nope, sorry. Wrong script! Welcome to the Pokemon
Card of the Day, featuring the mighty Heliolisk with its
frills and electric charge! Is this Stage 1 a threat to
anything out there, or is he gonna be trampled over by
the mighty Fighting EX?
His first attack is just Pound, dealing 30 vanilla
damage for 1, so let's skip to the fun part: Parabolic
Spark. With an additional Energy, this attack does
something very VERY different. You can send any number
of Electric Energy attached to ANY of your Pokemon in
order to use the attack, dealing 30 damage for each
Energy discarded for the attack! We've seen this type of
attack plenty of times, so we know the drill on this by
now, right?
On the one hand, it has the potential to OHKO with 6
Energy total - 3 for anything weak to Electric (looking
at you Yveltal-EX!). On the other hand, your main form
of Energy acceleration in Standard is MManectric-EX, and
he's a much better attacker than Heliolisk. In Expanded,
you've got Eelektrik to help out with adding up to 4
Energy each turn, but you have to take care of the rest
of it, and a better partner for Eelektrik is Rayquaza-EX,
so Heliolisk is tossed aside.
These weaknesses - coupled with the regular Fighting
weakness that's been heavy-hitting as of late - are
going to cripple Heliolisk in terms of competitive play,
but at least he can make a fun casual deck!
Rating
Standard: 2/5 (a quick Stage 1 that has potential, but
requires a lot of set-up and support)
Expanded: 2.5/5 (combine the MManectric-EX with
Eelektrik support, and you have a fun quick Electric
deck to use!)
Limited: 3/5 (not a lot of competition for that Electric
spot, so maybe he's a good backup attacker in a
MManectric-EX deck!)
Arora Notealus: He's stopped dancing from his last card
in Flashfire and just ready to lay down some wires to
fry everything with electricity! Fun times!
Next Time: Well now I know you're just making words up.
|
Otaku |
Today we look at Heliolisk (XY: Phantom Forces
30/119): are its prospects bright or does its future
seem dim?
Heliolisk
is a Stage 1 Pokémon, meaning it is a turn slower than
the Basics that dominate the format plus it also
requires an extra card per copy to get into play. Like
Stage 2 and even Mega Evolutions it will be enhanced
through heavy Item usage, both to aid in quickly getting
the Basic form out of the deck and into play as well as
Heliolisk itself, but it isn’t horribly crippled
under Item lock since manually digging for them via
Supporter based draws (or a lucky draw for the turn) is
functional, even if far from optimal. I often gloss
over the Evolution support that is available, as it
tends to be rather hit or miss, but to be fair there are
cards like Training Center and Evosoda to
help them out (it varies as to how often they will be
worth the space of running).
As a Lightning-Type, Heliolisk is not all that
well supported. I don’t recall any direct support for
the Type nor did a quick pokepedia.net search turn any
up, unless you count Emolga (BW: Noble
Victories 37/101) because its Electrichain attack
does 20 (+20 if you have any Lightning-Type Pokémon on
your Bench)... which I suppose technically does count,
but is so minimal that I wouldn’t have remembered it
without said search (plus just running multiples of
itself would fill the requirement). For indirect
support, we’ve got a solid assortment of attackers (some
that merely make good use of Lightning-Type Energy) plus
Eelektrik (BW: Noble Victories 40/101),
which is well known for its Energy accelerating antics.
Yes, both of the Pokémon I specifically cited are from
Expanded; Standard merely offers some useful attackers.
In both Expanded and Standard hitting for
Lightning-Type Weakness is useful primarily due to the
popular and potent Yveltal-EX. Unlike for some
Types, Resistance is often a serious concern but not
because hitting for 20 less is so important on its own,
but because it so very often is found on Fighting-Types,
for which most Lightning-Types possess Weakness.
90 HP is all Heliolisk possesses; pretty much
every competitive deck with its set-up in tact will OHKO
this. Most decks with a partial set-up will usually
OHKO with. Some decks with a minimal set-up will again,
OHKO something with this low of an HP score, though at
least in Expanded this is low enough to search out via
Level Ball. It has the misfortune of being
Fighting Weak; with a low HP sometimes a Pokémon gets
lucky because competitive attackers of that Type would
score a OHKO anyway and thus being Weak just results in
overkill. Fighting-Types are known for hitting hard and
fast, but not to the point that sans Weakness, they
would still be scoring a low Energy, low prep OHKO
against Heliolisk and its 90 HP. With Weakness,
a popular attacker like Landorus-EX just needs a
Muscle Band or a single Strong Energy and
its Hammerhead attack will score 100 against
Heliolisk (plus 30 damage to a Benched target) all
for a single Energy attachment. Landorus-EX is a
doubly useful example; it is a Fighting-Type with
Lightning-Resistance, so while its scoring double damage
Heliolisk is doing 20 less. Heliolisk
does have its own Resistance to Metal-Types, and 110
damage is a little trickier for some attackers to hit
than 90, so it is a welcome thing though more of a bonus
than a major feature. At least it only requires [C] to
retreat; free would have of course been better but one
Energy is often easy to pay and recover from, plus most
decks are going to need to back alternatives to
retreating at full price anyway because that is how the
last two or three formats have Evolved.
Heliolisk
has two attacks, so unless its presence is a trigger for
some other card, that means it is trying to be a glass
cannon. For [L] it does a straight 30 damage with
Pound; this isn’t bad, but it isn’t overly good either
and certainly not enough to earn it a place in decks.
Its second attack is Parabolic Spark for [LC], which
allows you to discard as many [L] Energy as you wish
from any and all of your Pokémon in play. That means if
you could discard six total [L] Energy in a turn, you’d
score 180 points of damage! Well, that is impressive if
you’ve got an easy way to “reload” the Energy into play,
or something else you’re running the card for (and thus
you can resort to it for a final big hit). You can
leave its own Energy intact if you wish; for example
because you’re running the earlier referenced
Eelektrik and thus can Dynamotor whatever you
discarded back onto your Benched Pokémon, like I said,
Heliolisk is at best a glass cannon; it’ll be
shattered by your opponent during their next turn unless
you’re somehow able to sabotage their set-up… or got
lucky and they have nothing able to take an easy OHKO
against your 90 HP attacker. The attacks do compliment
each other a little, as Pound can finish off a tiny or
wounded target and save you further discard plus it is a
little less expensive, but that is really a pretty basic
requirement of good card design.
Heliolisk
needs to Evolve from Helioptile and we’ve got
three options: XY: Flashfire 36/106; XY:
Phantom Forces 28/119 and XY: Phantom Forces
29/119. All are Basic Lightning-Type Pokémon with
Fighting Weakness, Metal Resistance, single energy
Retreat Costs and no Abilities. XY: Flashfire
36/106 has 60 HP and for [L] can attack for 10 damage,
while for [LC] you get a coin flip to discard an Energy
attached to the opponent’s Active Pokémon. XY:
Phantom Forces 28/119 has just one attack for [LC],
which does 10 damage plus another 20 per “heads” from
two mandatory coin flips. XY: Phantom Forces
29/119 has just 50 HP, can attack for 10 (+10 if you get
heads on a mandatory coin flip) at a price of [C] or for
[LCC] can attack for 30 points of damage. Pick
whichever you prefer of the first two and skip the 50 HP
version; none of the attacks are very good though sadly
are the standard fare of Evolving Basic Pokémon.
There is one other Heliolisk available in English
plus one more unreleased promo (out in Japan) that I’ll
cover as well because we have the space in this review.
Both have the same attributes as today’s card. XY:
Flashfire 37/106 has two attacks; for [C] it can use
Parabolic Charge to function as a Professor’s Letter
(you search your deck for up to two Basic Energy cards
and add them to your hand). For [LCC] it has Quick
Attack for 60 (+30 if you get “heads” on the mandatory
coin flip). The other is the Japanese XY Promo
82/XY-P and it actually has an Ability. Not an overly
useful one, but according to Bulbapedia its “Dry Skin”
Ability drops the damage done by attacks from your
opponent’s Water-Type Pokémon against itself by 30. For
[LCC], its Hyper Beam attack does 60 points of damage,
with a coin flip to discard an Energy attached to the
opponent’s Active should you flip “heads”.
Whether looking at them separately or together, no
Heliolisk seems worth the effort of running in a
competitive, Standard or Expanded deck. Today’s card
would be worth working into a Limited deck, provided you
can run quite a few Lightning Energy basic Energy
cards and perhaps into a “fun” Expanded deck where it
does indeed partner up with Eelektrik (just no
where near as well as most other cards). At least you
could use Level Ball for all your searching
needs… but even there it faces stiff competition as
Galvantula (BW: Plasma Storm 51/135) is a
Stage 1 Lightning-Type that lacks Resistance (bad) and a
Retreat Cost (perfect!) and can attack for [L],
discarding all [L] Energy attached to itself for 30
damage per discard or for [CC] to do 30 with a coin flip
for to Confuse the Defending Pokémon. As both are
expected to be OHKOed but easy to stream and
Galvantula has a free Retreat Cost (as it has to be
loaded with the Energy itself), I’d give it to
Galvantula but only just and since we were already
talking fun or casual game play, it really doesn’t
matter which you run.
Ratings
Standard:
1.1/5 - It tries to be a glass cannon, but without
worthwhile Energy acceleration it just can’t do it.
Expanded:
1.5/5 - Here it has the Energy acceleration, but the
same set-up serves other Pokémon so much better, now it
is the amount of Energy needed to reach OHKO levels that
holds it back (plus its attributes).
Limited:
3/5 - As stated above, here it has a chance to shine.
It still isn’t a must play because you’ve got to run a
good chunk of basic Lightning Energy cards to get
off two or three moderately sized attacks or one big
one, and your opponent should get at least one turn’s
warning that this combo is coming.
Summary:
Heliolisk tries to be an attacker with small HP
but big damage, but it just can’t do it. In Standard it
lacks the support necessary to really be functional and
in Expanded while it just barely gets that support,
other Pokémon use it better whether you want to be
competitive or unorthodox. On the bright side, it isn’t
going to make the format any worse other than being a
missed opportunity for one of the rare (theoretical?)
cards that are good enough to be competitive but yet
still balanced.
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