aroramage |
And now with the last week of 2015
(crazy year that it's been) wrapping up, we count down
the last three of our Top 10 for 2015 list with the
bountiful Sky Field!
This was a Stadium card that, since
its introduction to the game back in Roaring Skies, has
shaped how the game has been played. Its simple effect
of giving both players 3 extra Bench slots for Pokemon
opens up the playing field for more combos, more "played
from your hand" type of Abilities, and MORE DEVASTATING
M RAYQUAZA-EX ATTACKS!! Well, at least for the Colorless
form. Dragon one doesn't really need this for his
attack...
But this card isn't just about
getting extra spaces to put down Pokemon, as evidenced
when having to deal with the consequences of its
destruction - sometimes it's about figuring out which
Pokemon to deny your opponent the KO from. This is
useful for set-up Pokemon that aren't needed to be on
the Bench, stuff like Shaymin-EX and Jirachi-EX (in
Expanded) rather than Blastoise and Emboar.
In any case, Sky Field opens up a
lot of plays and possibilities much more than being a
set-up for one Pokemon's attack. Expect it to hang
around!
Rating
Standard: 3.5/5 (a simple yet
powerful effect with a lot of versatility)
Expanded: 3/5 (does well here too)
Limited: 3/5 (...yeah, it's...alright)
Arora Notealus: I'm rating this a little better than my
initial review, since it's shown up in a couple of other
decks as a nice tech option, and hey, Stadium Wars are
still a thing! Every advantage you can get, am I right?
Next Time: You got mail!
|
Otaku |
The
second runner-up (that would be our third place
finisher) in our Top 10 cards of 2015 countdown is
Sky Field (XY: Roaring Skies 89/108), the
stadium that I believe is the first card to allow either
player (in this case, both players) to exceed the five
Pokémon limit for a player’s Bench. We first
reviewed it
here
where it… did not make our Top 10 list. I
can’t speak for the other reviewers, but it did manage
to make my own Top 10 list back then, however
only as my eighth place pick. We had no shortage
of cards for our Top 10 list for 2015, so how did a card
that didn’t make our Top 10 list for the set make the
Top 10 list for the entire year?
Like I
said, it allows each player to have up to eight Pokémon
on his or her Bench and that is useful in general; while
we don’t always need the extra room, most decks can put
it to good use. It came out when we already had a
card like Colress that allowed you to draw a
number of cards equal to the number of Benched Pokémon
in play (for both players) turning a potential 10 card
draw into a potential 16 card draw. It came out
when we had attackers like Raichu (XY
43/146) which could use a Double Colorless Energy
to go from zero to “Circle Circuit” in a single turn,
with Circle Circuit being an attack that did 20 for each
of your Benched Pokémon; a Stage 1 that with a full
Bench and Muscle Band can land a 180 damage hit.
At the time though it seemed most important for M
Rayquaza-EX (XY: Roaring Skies 76/108;
105/108) and perhaps it still is; a Mega Evolution that
can hit the field in a single turn and attack for up to
240 damage with its “Emerald Break” attack. Yes it
takes a lot; using its Ancient Trait (Δ Evolution) and
Rayquaza Spirit Link to enter play in a single
turn and Mega Turbo (usually with Double
Colorless Energy) to meet the three Energy cost of
Emerald Break.
All of
these have one other card (sometimes two other cards) in
common, though: Hoopa-EX (XY: Ancient Origins
36/98, 89/98; XY: Black Star Promos XY71) and
Shaymin-EX (XY: Roaring Skies 77/106;
106/108). We also see some less prominent but
similar cards that really enjoy having the extra Bench
space; Unown (XY: Ancient Origins 30/98),
Mr. Mime (BW: Plasma Freeze 47/116) or the
not-quite-reprint Mr. Mime (XY: BREAKthrough
97/162), Expanded favorites like Keldeo-EX and
Virizion-EX, etc. but Shaymin-EX is probably
the biggest; it enables massive set-ups but at the cost
of Bench space, and Sky Field gives us three
extra slots to burn for it. Does that mean every
deck that runs multiple Shaymin-EX should run
Sky Field? No, but it is still an extra bit of
synergy that helps decks with another reason for running
Sky Field, as well as sometimes making Sky
Field backfire because of how often your opponent
can take advantage of it. So the fact your
opponent can relatively easily benefit is a definite
drawback, and if you have a set-up that requires the
large Bench you have to discard down to the new Bench
size (usually the default five, but if your opponent
uses Parallel City it could go down to three!)
but even this can sometimes prove useful as sometimes
you benefit from discarding injured or no longer useful
Pokémon.
Ratings
Standard:
4/5
Expanded:
4/5
Limited:
4.9/5
Summary:
So when we put it all together, we see that Sky Field
has been quite significant to the overall metagame since
it released, even with the relatively fragility of
Stadiums. Certain decks are made by this card with
all of us having to learn how to best utilize it both
while Sky Field is in play and when it
subsequently gets discarded, so I went ahead and bumped
its scores up from my previous ratings in Standard and
Expanded.
For my
own Top 10 cards of 2015 list, I had Sky Field as
my fifth place pick so while this seems a touch high, it
isn’t anything to bother even me. With 19 voting
points, Sky Field managed to secure third place
quite solidly. At the same time Sky Field
missed tying second place by eight whole voting points,
so it seems to have placed as high as it could hope.
|
Jason Klaczynski
(Three time
World Champ) |
Sky Field (Roaring Skies)
XY Raichu went from maxing out at
100 damage, to 160! Add a Muscle Band and its Circle
Circuit attack can KO most EX Pokémon in one hit! It
isn’t just Raichu that benefits from Sky Field; so does
M Rayquaza EX, which can hit for a whopping 240 with
eight Pokémon on the bench. Playing Sky Field, and then
another stadium also allows players to clear their bench
of unwanted Pokémon that could be liabilities, like
Shaymin EX.
(Jason had this at #4 on his
Top 10 List)
|
