aroramage |
Welcome to another Pokemon Card of the Day! Here we
take a look at one of the scariest Pokemon to have shown
up out of Gen VI - and it's about as common as a Pidgey!
Talonflame bursts onto the scene, ready to rip apart
anything with its Gale Wings!
...oh, sorry, that's a video game Ability of his. This
Talonflame doesn't get that. Instead, he gets a couple
of...okay attacks. The first is Acrobatics, a 1-for-30
strike that flips twice for 30 more damage a piece. So
on average, this is a 1-for-60 attack, which is pretty
good, but the fact remains that it's a flippy attack.
Maybe combining it with Trick Coin will make it work
more often? Don't get too greedy with that though.
Jet Shoot isn't that great for a second attack. It's a
3-for-120 hit that leaves Talonflame extremely
vulnerable, so unless you're KO-ing or winning the game
with this attack, it's not going to be worth taking an
extra 40 damage AFTER Weakness and Resistance apply just
to hit for that much. To give you an idea, Manectric-EX's
Overrun would deal 80 damage on Talonflame after Jet
Shoot gets used and just OHKO it outright with Assault
Laser - without a Tool necessary! Or to really put it in
perspective, Pachirisu can Pachi it, and if he's lucky
enough to land heads, he's dealing 140 damage and KOing
Talonflame after Jet Shoot!
Talonflame doesn't do himself any favors with either of
his attacks, asking that you rely on chance flips or
huge risks that may not play out. Competitively
speaking, he's a wash, but hey, maybe he just needs an
EX version to pan out. For now, he's binder-fodder.
Rating
Standard: 1/5 (not worth using at all)
Expanded: 1/5 (nope)
Limited: 1.5/5 (chancy chancy chancy, and again doing
himself no favors here)
Arora Notealus: I like that they illustrated
Talonflame's fiery wings that he gets when he's in an
exciting battle! If only the rest of the card could've
been as exciting.
Next Time: Open wide and say AHHHHHHHHHH
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Otaku |
To begin with… happy birthday Dad! Will my father ever
see that? Not unless I go to the trouble of showing it
to him, but at least I tried. ;)
Getting to business, today we look at Talonflame
(XY: Phantom Forces 10/119). This is our second
Stage 2 Pokémon this week, and being a Stage 2 is pretty
bad right now. Not only is the format dominated by
faster Basic Pokémon, but general card design isn’t such
that this is balanced out, like by making Evolving Basic
and Stage 1 Pokémon so useful that they aren’t really
“wasted slots” or by designing the big, Basic Pokémon
who are meant to be main attackers to not have
really good “fast” attacks. If such Basic Pokémon had
to be supplemented by actual “openers” or else sit there
dead, you can help further balance out cards invested as
well as pacing issues… but that isn’t how the Pokémon
TCG currently operates, and making it worse is that the
Item support necessary for Stage 2 Pokémon to set-up in
a timely manner? Now easier than ever to block thanks
to cards like Seismitoad-EX.
Being a Fire-type is pretty good though; there are
better supported types but Blacksmith is pretty
amazing as are some of the Pokémon you can mix in with
it. Hitting Fire-Type Weakness is more useful than it
has been for a little while; we’ve got at least one
great Grass-Type deck (VirGen) and one good Metal-Type
deck via Bronzong (XY: Phantom Forces
61/119) and friends. Of course, Fire Resistance only
exists in Unlimited, so you don’t have to worry about
that, though there are a few cards that actually are
Fire-Type “counters” (have effects that specifically
target Fire-Types). They aren’t very good, so it isn’t
a big deal.
Talonflame
sports 130 HP; this is low enough to be OHKOed with only
a little extra effort by most decks. It is poor, though
it isn’t an easy KO in the sense that your opponent does
need their core strategy to be at least partially
set-up, as opposed to an inexpensive attack with just a
Muscle Band taking it down. Talonflame is
Lightning Weak, so it has to be cautious of Pokémon like
Dedenne (XY: Furious Fists 34/111),
Thundurus-EX (BW: Plasma Freeze 38/116) or
Zekrom (latest printings BW: Legendary Treasures
51/113, 115/113). Talonflame does enjoy
Resistance, and it is even one that might prove
relevant; Fighting Resistance on 130 HP is just enough
to push to make it a slightly challenging OHKO, though
still quite feasible. Finishing off the attributes is
the Retreat Cost of one; this is very good as it is easy
to pay and recover from, though being a Stage 2 that
corresponds to a Fire/Flying Type with a well-developed
Speed Stat in the video games, I would have expected a
free Retreat Cost.
Talonflame
has two attacks, which means either one of these attacks
needs to elevate it to “glass cannon” status, has to
have a protective effect and/or is part of a combo.
Acrobatics is fairly good; for [R] you hit for at least
30 points of damage, and you get two coin flips good for
+30 per “heads”. So minimum damage of 30 and maximum of
90, with 60 damage being both the middle score, the
average of all the damage scores, and the most common
result of the flips. Jet Shoot starts out promising as
well; for [RRC] it does 120 points of damage with an
effect. Unfortunately the effect is that Talonflame
takes an extra 40 points of damage, but at least it is
after applying Weakness and Resistance.
Still, that means that instead of 150 points of damage,
Fighting-Types only need 110 for a OHKO; instead of 70
damage, Lightning-Types only need 50 and everything else
just needs to deal 90 instead of 130. In some ways, I
can see why this drawback was added; earlier I pointed
out that 130 HP is still likely to get OHKOed, but this
not only puts it into “extremely probable” territory,
but without a lot of set-up. 90 points of damage is
still the going rate for a competitive attackers (yes
there are exceptions like Seismitoad-EX), so 40
extra damage results in a OHKO with no additional
effort. So even though you would think that something
on the small side like Talonflame would be safe
taking this kind of drawback, it turns a fairly common
damage amount into a OHKO plus Talonflame really
needed a benefit to remain competitive.
There are four Fletchling to choose from on your
path to Talonflame. All are 50 HP Colorless-Type
Pokémon with Lightning Weakness, Fighting Resistance and
single Energy Retreat Costs. Note that the Type change
can interfere with direct Type support like
Blacksmith: no using Blacksmith to accelerate
Energy and thin your hand before then using Bicycle,
at least if all you’ve got in play is Fletchling.
None of them have Abilities, which they probably could
really use (see my earlier mini-rant). The first one
we’ll look at in detail has been printed released
multiple times as XY: Kalos Starter Set 31/39;
McDonald’s Collection 2014 11/12, XY Trainer Kit:
Sylveon Half Deck 1/30 and 19/30. It has just one
attack, that does 20 for [C] but is “tails fails”. XY
113/146 can draw a card for [C] or do 20 for [CC]. XY:
Flashfire 86/106 can do 10 with a coin flip to make
it 20 at a cost of [C]. Lastly XY: Phantom Forces
89/119 can do 10 for [C] or 10 with a coin flip for an
additional 20 points of damage for [CC]. As the damage
is pretty meaningless, I’d go with XY 113/146
just because if you’re desperate enough to attack with
Fletchling, you probably could use another card.
It is a minor improvement, though.
You might be able to use Rare Candy to skip to
Talonflame, but if you decide to go through
Fletchinder (perhaps because you fear Item lock),
you have three options. All are Stage 1 Fire-Types with
Lightning Weakness, Fighting Resistance, single Energy
Retreat Costs and no Abilities. XY 27/146 has 70
HP and for [C] it can search your deck for a [R] Energy
to attach to itself while for [RC] it can hit for 30
with no additional effect. XY: Flashfire 17/106
has 80 HP and only one attack; for [R] it does 20 points
of damage, with another 20 if you get “heads” on a coin
flip. XY: Phantom Forces 9/119 also has 80 HP
but has two attacks: for [R] it can do 20 and for [RRC]
it can do 60. The attacks aren’t damaging enough to
likely be worth it, but the Energy acceleration based
attack is on the 70 HP version. 80 HP isn’t much better
than 70 HP, though so in the end, run whichever one you
feel like. No, I don’t like it when that is the
verdict.
There is only one other Talonflame, XY
28/146, which was reviewed
here
by baby_mario and Hez. It has the same attributes as
today’s card except with a perfect free Retreat Cost
(instead of needing [C] like today’s card). Its first
attack Devastating Wind that… isn’t very devastating
since it just shuffles the opponent’s hand away but then
has them draw four cards. Sometimes it will hurt them,
but it could help them and since it is an attack, it is
happening at the very end of your turn, giving your
opponent a turn to recover (if it was a drawback) or
capitalize upon it (if the shuffle and draw helped
them). Its second attack is Flare Blitz, and for [RR]
you do 100 points of damage but have to discard all
Energy attached to Talonflame. This is a decent
attack. Is it great? No, but unlike when the card was
first reviewed, we now have Blacksmith. If it
hit just a little bit harder, we might even have had a
chance for kooky decks based on it getting to Pokémon-EX
OHKO levels. Honestly, I think this version might
ultimately be a bit better, but only. The first attack
is worse but the “big” attack is better with the free
Retreat Cost serving as a tiebreaker.
So should you run either version? Nope. If you want to
try your luck with a Stage 2 Fire-Type that is a long
shot, there is actually competition! Blaziken (XY:
Furious Fists 14/111) and Infernape (BW:
Plasma Storm 17/135) spring to mind. Infernape
is actually Infernape [Plasma], allowing it to
tap Team Plasma support and it actually seems like a
better version of Talonflame (XY 28/146).
Expanded just adds in a few more potential (but still
long shot) candidates, though Limited does make
Talonflame a lot more impressive. There is both a
regular rare and a holographic rare version of
Talonflame in the Burning Winds Theme deck, and in
my experience its fairly good attacker for Theme Deck
battles. At the same time, even though its a fleshed
out line in the Theme deck and enjoys some intentionally
designed support, it doesn’t get that much better than I
suspect it would be in regular limited: even here Jet
Shoot can be a problem. In fact, I found myself (on the
PTCGO, testing with theme decks) to just use Acrobatics
until I expected to be KOed the next turn anyway, and
(assuming I could spare the Energy and already built it
up) then go for a Jet Shoot when the extra damage taken
the next turn won’t matter.
Ratings
Standard:
1.75/5
Expanded:
1.7/5
Limited:
3.75/5
Theme Deck:
3.8/5
Summary:
If you want to be just a little daring or creative,
you’ve got plenty of other Stage 2 and even Stage 2
Fire-Type Pokémon to consider before Talonflame.
Still it isn’t entirely hopeless as Acrobatics is a
slightly good move and Jet Shoot is decent if you can
time it for when taking 40 more damage the next turn
won’t matter, but its a long way from being competitive.
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