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Pojo's Pokémon Card of the Day

 

Togekiss #46

- Roaring Skies

Date Reviewed:
July 14, 2015

Ratings & Reviews Summary

Standard: 2.30
Expanded: 2.25
Limited: 4.00

Ratings are based on a 1 to 5 scale.
1 being horrible.  3 ... average.  5 is awesome.

Back to the main COTD Page


aroramage

And now for today's Togekiss, one that starts off looking rather tame with its 3-for-60 vanilla Fairy Wind attack. Seems a bit of a waste honestly, especially given that he's got a lot of promise with the Delta Evolution Trait - you know, the one that makes M Rayquaza-EX (Colorless) a bit OP? Still, that shouldn't keep you from looking at Togekiss with some promise, because he's still got a fair bit!

I'm referring of course to the Ability on him, Serene Grace. Now Serene Grace is interesting, as it acts as an Energy accelerator of a different kind. When you play Togekiss to evolve a Pokemon, you get to look at the top 8 cards of your deck and attach any Energy among them to any of your Pokemon in any way you'd like! The best part is that the rest will go back into your deck, which saves you from having to worry about Lysandre's Banned Card being...well, banned. 

You are a bit limited in your selection of Energy though, seeing as it's gotta be basic Energy. The other thing to worry about is what you draw before Togekiss gets played. Too early in the game, and your chances of getting Energy may be dwarfed by your Trainer cards. Too late, and you may have already drawn all the Energy you need. There's a certain timing that increases the probability of you having an optimal amount of Energy in your top 8 cards, but to be honest, you probably won't need that sort of thing when you've got Supporters to draw the Energy anyway. 

Still, Togekiss' way of attaching Energy that you draw by his Ability makes him a more optimal choice than just drawing the cards and then gradually attaching them. If your deck needs an accelerator for Energy, consider Togekiss as an option, but if you've already got Bronzong, Reshiram, or anyone like that, it's better to pass on Togekiss. 

Rating 

Standard: 2/5 (a decent acceleration option with the right timing) 

Expanded: 2/5 (same here) 

Limited: 4/5 (powering up all of your guys quickly and easily is fantastic here!)

Arora Notealus: I'd like to take a moment here in my normally goofy "Notealus" to say some words about a man that passed away yesterday. Satoru Iwata was probably one of the most iconic figures in Nintendo's history, alongside Shigeru Miyamoto, Eiji Aonuma, and Masahiro Sakurai. He developed games early on and eventually became the president and CEO of Nintendo. He saw some of its greatest triumphs and most devastating losses, and now we sit here finding ourselves with a devastating loss of our own. It's going to be difficult for anyone to follow in those footsteps that Iwata put down before him, but I sincerely hope that there will be someone worthy of the task who will rise up and help Nintendo and the rest of the gaming community in moving forward after the loss of our dear Iwata. Someone who can make us smile like he did, who will innovate gaming the way he did - someone who will make us proud of Nintendo, like he did. 

Rest in peace, Satoru. 

Next Time: Mining deep into the earth, we find something very curious...


Otaku

Our second selection for the week is again Togekiss, but this time it is XY: Roaring Skies 46/108. instead of yesterday’s XY: Roaring Skies 45/108.  Prepare for a lot of deja vu.  Though it hits all XY-era Dragon-Types for Weakness, faces no Resistance and enjoys some solid support, the Fairy-Type isn’t one of the better ones.  It isn’t one of the worse ones either; it is probably another “middle” example.  It doesn’t help that cards like Fairy Garden, Aromatisse, Slurpuff (XY: Phantom Forces 69/113) and Xerneas (XY 96/146, XY: Black Star Promos XY05) can all work off-Type so long as the Pokémon in question can make use of a source of [Y] Energy (which would include [C] costs as well as others paid with Prism Energy or Rainbow Energy)... except Slurpuff which doesn’t care at all what it works with, having earned notoriety backing up Seismitoad-EX.  With all of this, the fact that you mostly see the Fairy-Type in the form of Fairy Transfer decks tells you it has potential, but so far isn’t really living up to it.  Well, that or the top Types are just too good… in fact just assume it is both.  Stage 2 Pokémon do see competitive play, but usually with tricks to get them into play faster and/or for fewer resources, in supporting roles or both in supporting roles faster and/or with a shortcut.  So it is less that Stage 2 cards are in good shape and more some examples are so awesome that they compensate for the current imbalance between how the game is paced and how the Evolution rules work (for the record, I favor fixing the pacing instead of trying yet again to tweak or ignore the Evolution rules). 

The 130 HP is pretty borderline in terms of durability - I’m not trying to be inconsistent when in some reviews I state it is more likely to survive a hit than not: if you’ve been active anytime during the last few years, you are already familiar with how decks that don’t focus on damage output still might have a back-up plan to still score the OHKO while those that do focus on OHKOs still sometimes whiff on their set-up, and there are a few decks in between where you might be a Muscle Band away from being OHKOed.  As such, it isn’t borderline in terms of quality - it is at least a little too low though it isn’t especially bad.  No Weakness is good, but the Metal-Type Weakness seen on all Fairy-Types is currently problematic, though not the absolute worst one to have.  The short version is that both on their own and supporting some of the bigger names in the format, Metal has made a comeback so unless it proves short lived, that means you’ll have more match-ups where Togekiss is an easy OHKO.  A bit bittersweet is that with its HP, the Weakness might not matter as often because it would be OHKOed regardless.  The Darkness Resistance looks handy, but remember that Resistance is far less beneficial than Weakness is detrimental.  The single Energy to retreat is very good; even without a Fairy Garden in play Togekiss is easy to retreat. 

Togekiss sports both an Ancient Trait and an Ability!  “Δ Evolution“ helps it to speed its way onto the field; you can play this Togekiss to Evolve one of your in play Pokémon on the first turn said Pokémon is in play, even if it is your very first turn of the game.  This only works from hand (so no helping Evosoda) and can’t be combined with another effect like Rare Candy.  You can use on a Togetic you played via Evosoda or Wally; the latter means a T1 Togekiss is possible, just difficult, resource intensive and still not reliable.  Why would you want to even try though?  “Serene Grace” is this card’s Ability; when you play it from hand to Evolve one of your Pokémon you can look at the top seven cards of your deck and attach any basic Energy you find there to your Pokémon (however you’d like).  It won’t work on Special Energy cards, but seven is a nice spread; unless your deck is really low on Energy (through play or design) you’ll probably hit at least one, perhaps two.  If you build a deck around this, you might reliably hit two or three and of course, if we aren’t worried about being reliable then upwards of seven is a possibility.  It isn’t restricted to a particular Type of Energy, either.  “Fairy Wind” is the one attack, and it requires [YCC] to hit for 60 - this is bad, though better than nothing.  At least if you had to, you might be able to finish something off or set-up something up to be finished off with it.

You have your choice from three Togepi whether you’re dealing with Expanded or Standard play: BW: Boundaries Crossed 110/149, BW: Plasma Storm 102/135 and XY: Roaring Skies 43/108.  BW: Boundaries Crossed 110/149 and BW: Plasma Storm 102/135 are both Colorless Pokémon (and Fighting Weak with no Resistance) since the Fairy-Type didn’t exist until the latest generation and thus Togepi was a Normal-Type. XY: Roaring Skies 43/108 is a Fairy-Type (and Metal Weak with Darkness Resistance).  All three are Basic Pokémon with 40 HP, Retreat Cost [C], no Ability, no Ancient Trait and one lone attack (which costs [C]).  I’m just going to copy and paste what I said yesterday:  BW: Boundaries Crossed 110/149 has “Attract Smack”; it is a creative name for your typical “10 damage, plus a coin flip to Paralyze the opponent’s Active” attack.  BW: Plasma Storm 102/135 can Yawn to put the Defending Pokémon to Sleep (that is all the attack does).  XY: Roaring Skies 43/108 has Sweet Kiss to do 10 damage and your opponent draws a card.  Your opponent draws a card, not you.  Unless the rest of your deck requires you run a Fairy-Type Togepi, stick with one of the older versions: as Sleep can go away between turns with a “heads” on the Sleep check, its no more likely to detain the opponent’s Active than Paralysis: that makes BW: Boundaries Crossed 110/149 the clear “winner”. 

Togetic is the Stage 1 form and unfortunately as uninspired as you would expect.  We explained earlier why you aren’t going to want to skip it completely with Rare Candy and once again, I’m just going to copy and paste what I said about the our two options (BW: Plasma Storm 103/135 and XY: Roaring Skies 44/108) yesterday.  Both are Stage 1 Pokémon with 80 HP, a Retreat Cost of [C]. no Ability and no Ancient Trait.  BW: Plasma Storm 103/135 is a Colorless-Type (couldn’t have been anything else when it was printed), and since in the video games this is the point where the line where it gains a Flying as a secondary Type the Weakness is actually to Lightning and it gains Resistance to Fighting.  For [C] it can use its lone attack (Sweet Kiss) to hit for 30 while again, your opponent draws a card, not you.  XY: Roaring Skies 44/108 can use “Go Fetch” for [Y] to shuffle three basic Energy cards from your discard pile back into your deck while for [YCC] its second attack (Fairy Wind) does a vanilla 40 damage.  This will be a metagame dependent call; you might actually have reason to run both (and Rare Candy) if you want to also run today’s Togekiss, though if you absolutely need a tiebreaker, then Go Fetch. 

The other two Togetic you can pick from are  BW: Plasma Storm 104/135 (reviewed a little over a year ago) and XY: Roaring Skies 46/108 (yesterday's CotD).  Expect some more copied and pasted text, though I have to change a few things since two roles have been reversed.  Both are Stage 2 Pokémon with 140 HP.  BW: Plasma Storm 104/135 is a Colorless-Type with 140 HP, the Ability “Bright Veil” that blocks the effects of an opponent’s Items done to your Pokémon but only while this Togekiss is Active and the attack “Return” that requires [C] and does 30 damage plus you draw until you have six cards in hand.  Bright Veil is amazing, but it seems like Return just does too little damage to make it work; before the Lysandre’s Trump Card ban I kept meaning to trade for these and see if they could follow the spamalot formula popularized by the many other decks (like Seismitoad-EX), offsetting the low damage by neutralizing or diminishing an opponent’s Items as well as disruption to mess up what they already have in play.  I still could, but I really doubt it will be worth the effort.  This seems like something to build a deck around with it up front… but you might indeed consider dedicating a slot to it if you want to get off multiple uses of Serene Grace.  It won’t offer perfect protection, but some and a single Energy to add some more draw might even help spare your Supporter for a Wally to speed the Evolving up even more. 

Togekiss (XY: Roaring Skies 45/108) has a Retreat Cost of [CC] in addition to the above mentioned +10 HP over today’s card: the rest of the attributes are the same.  There is no no Ability or Ancient Trait: instead it has two attacks.  The first (Powerful Slap) requires just [C] and has you flip a coin for each Energy attached to Togekiss itself: for each “heads” 50 damage is done while the second attack (Aura Sphere) requires [YYC] and hits for 70, plus 20 to one of your opponent’s Benched Pokémon.  These attacks aren’t horrible wastes, but the first is either light on damage or reliability (maybe both) and the latter is also a bit weak.  You might consider one but I’d rather just run a big, Basic as the attacker instead and save your slots for a different Togekiss.  So… what else should we include or exclude from a Togekiss (XY: Roaring Skies 46/108) deck?

It isn’t too easy to pin down specifics but the generalities really whittle down the field; if your deck runs a decent amount of basic Energy cards and can fit in a Stage 2 line in a supporting role, there you go.  You can use any kind of Basic Energy so Type isn’t really an issue, and that means for those cards that need more than one kind of Energy (especially when it has to be basic Energy), this seems like a natural partner.  That being said, I am uncertain as to what actually fits those criteria.  You could run it with Mewtwo-EX or Yveltal-EX (as examples) but unless you’re going for a first turn Serene Grace, you’ve got multiple other options that can stack Energy on quickly onto those two, often with no more (or less) set-up and in a reusable form.  So that would make “speed” the third requirement; you need to have a deck trying to be so fast that it can’t wait for other Energy accelerators to do their thing and that leaves… nothing. 

No, I’m not calling this a bad card, I’m just pointing out that besides a gimmicky (and not recommended) Togekiss deck (featuring one or both other Togekiss) there will always just be another option to consider.  Serene Grace is a good effect for Standard, Expanded and Limited, it is just only in Limited will there be little-to-no competition for its role.  In fact, even if you only get a 1-1-1 line, you have to also have a big, Basic Pokémon worth building a +39 deck around to justify skipping Togekiss.  In anything that isn’t restricted to a single Basic Pokémon, you’ll run this “just in case” you can pull it off.  As an added bonus the second Togekiss in this set isn’t too bad and is an option here. 

Ratings 

Standard: 2.6/5 

Expanded: 2.5/5 

Limited: 4/5 

Summary: Togekiss honestly is a lot closer than the scores indicate… again!  Perhaps someone else will make me look like a fool by pointing out the obvious dance partner(s) for Serene Grace; I will be perfectly happy if that is the case.  As is, it does something really useful and well enough I keep looking for a partner that needs it (and not something already proven successful) and I’m just not finding it.  This is something to pick up and perhaps with some speed; unless I am totally off then eventually something will combo with it and drive up the price… but not to the point you should pay top dollar (or trade favorably) for it.


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