aroramage |
Wailord. So majestic. So powerful.
So...whale! Welcome back, today we take a look at
another interesting Pokemon EX choice in Wailord-EX! And
with a guy like this, the end result
is...well...something.
Of note and what will probably
attract people to Wailord-EX in the first place is that
250 HP BASE that he rests on, laughing at other Pokemon
that dream of hitting that high of a number. Most Basic
Pokemon tend to cap out around 130 HP, most Pokemon-EX
around 180, and a large number of M Pokemon-EX around
230-240, so Wailord-EX having 250 HP shows how high the
cap has gone. But having a big number is not the only
thing a Pokemon should have!
That's where Wailord-EX has a pair
of...interesting features. His Ability Water Veil cures
him of all Status Conditions whenever you put an Energy
on him from your hand, which could be useful against
things like HTL but that's about the extent of it. Then
there's High Breaching, which costs a criminally high 5
energy and deals 120 damage. Oh, and it puts Wailord-EX
to Sleep.
See the idea here? You're meant to
cure High Breaching's negative Sleep effect with Water
Veil's Status-healer to be an effective attacker each
turn. The damage output - however appropriate for a
Wailord it may be - is just far too low. Remember the
last time we saw Pokemon with attacks that cost 5
Energy? You had Gyarados (LTR) which does 120 damage
without putting him to Sleep, and then you've got
Charizard (BCR) that dealt 150 damage and discarded a
Fire Energy. And then you've got both M Charizard-EX
from Flashfire, which have huge negatives (one discards
the top 5 cards of your deck while the other hits itself
with 50 damage recoil) but dealt 300 DAMAGE!!
Limited is pretty much the only
format I think you could get away with Wailord-EX, cause
competitively speaking none of those Pokemon I just
named are viable - not even the "I kill anything no
matter what" M Charizard-EX's see play outside of casual
- and I don't think I want to commit Energy to something
that's already hugely expensive and demanding for more
Energy just to cure itself of its own Sleep.
Wake up, Wailord, we've got better
things to do as Pokemon EX.
Rating
Standard: 1/5 (way too expensive
and way too impractical)
Expanded: 1/5 (could debatably be
one of the worst Pokemon EX - if not THE worst - ever)
Limited: 4/5 (alright, rating it so
high here may seem like a godsend for it, BUT giving its
high HP stat, the access to healing from Rough Seas and
Fresh Water Set, and the fact that you'd probably only
run this in a deck with lots of Water Energy anyway, not
to mention the constant 120 strike it'll deal, I'd say
he holds his own here fairly well. Just prepare for a
slow start)
Arora Notealus: Did you know
Wailord's the largest Pokemon in existence? According to
your Pokedex, Wailord's "height" - or more accurately
the length between the front of him to the tip of his
tail - is about 47 feet, 7 inches, or 14.5 meters!
That's about all the way out to the 15-yard mark on a
football field - that's right, Wailord is almost 1/5th
the length of a FOOTBALL FIELD!! Course, he's not the
heaviest cause most of that bulk is fat and air as
opposed to rocks or metal.
Next Time: That moment when you
land the big one and an earthquake suddenly hits...
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Otaku |
Happy St. Patrick’s Day readers; our CotD has nothing to
do with the holiday! Instead we have entry #2 of Water
Week: Wailord-EX (XY: Primal Clash 38/160,
147/160). So as you’re going to see me say (write?) a
lot this week, being a Water-Type is at worst average,
and might be fairly good. The Type didn’t get its own
Energy card (yet?) but it did get some more direct
support (Archie’s Ace in the Hole, Rough Seas
and Dive Ball) and already enjoys some solid
indirect support in the form of some strong Basics like
Keldeo-EX, Suicune and Seismitoad-EX
(to stick to the more generic options). Archie’s Ace
in the Hole even has some of the less generic
options seeing renewed (and successful) usage, like
Empoleon (BW: Dark Explorers 29/10; BW:
Plasma Freeze 117/116). In terms of exploiting
Weakness, a decent chunk of Fighting-Types (namely those
that correspond to the video game Rock-Type) and almost
all Fire-Types sport Water Weakness, though of those the
only big name that springs readily to mind is
Landorus-EX. Water-Types have to worry about
Resistance, though only on the “older” cards, which in
Expanded and Standard means those that date back to the
BW-era releases; I haven’t noticed anything in the
XY-sets that had Water Resistance. There are a few
“anti” Water cards though like
Hariyama
(XY: Furious Fists 52/111), who has an Ability
that reduces the damage it takes from Water-Types (and
Fire-Types, but that isn’t relevant to today’s review)
by 30 damage. Fortunately for Water-Types, such counter
cards haven’t proven worthwhile.
Wailord-EX
is a bit, Basic Pokémon and it loves it. This is still
more or less a format of big, Basic Pokémon; things
aren’t so bad that Evolutions see no serious play, but
even adjusting for how the gap between the best cards
(which can be subdivided if we want to get… obsessive)
and the rest (which includes some good but not great
cards) is wide and deep for all Stages, it hits
Evolutions (especially Stage 2 Pokémon) really hard.
Being a Basic underscores that for this card, there
actually is an immediate advantage to it being a
Pokémon-EX as normally Wailord are Stage 1 cards.
This comes with the drawbacks of being worth an extra
Prize when KOed, being targeted by certain
anti-Pokémon-EX cards and (though only rarely relevant)
being unable to tap certain pieces of support as they
exclude Pokémon-EX. Of the other potential rewards of
being a Pokémon-EX, the other one Wailord-EX
manages to clearly cash-in on is having abnormally high
HP. In fact as the only other Wailord card legal
in Expanded play (this is currently it for Standard),
Wailord (BW: Dragons Exalted 26/124) holds
the record for non-Pokémon-EX with the highest printed
HP of 200; Wailord-EX now holds the same record
for Pokémon-EX with a massive 250 HP, beating out even
Mega Evolutions. This is a simple but great advantage,
and while I often lament power creep one of the few
areas that (at least currently) I am convinced we need
it is in HP scores; the TCG lacks the design wiggle room
of the video games in so many areas and subtle
variations on damage and HP are already lost due to HP
scores needing to remain multiples of 10, so even though
it can make tracking damage a bit awkward I still think
it is better to get HP scores closer in range to the
video games.
So with this much HP, Wailord-EX is incredibly
hard to OHKO, though it is still possible for certain
decks. Scalable attacks will have to commit vast
amounts of resources; in Expanded a Rayquaza-EX
(assuming no buffs as it usually doesn’t run them) will
need to be able to discard five Energy (four just barely
misses the OHKO). Massive damaging attacks like the one
on either M Charizard-EX still go into overkill
range with their base 300 damage. Pseudo-OHKOs vary in
how the HP affects them; the tactic of a Landorus-EX
backed Crobat (XY: Phantom Forces 33/119)
deck can still work but only because of how many options
it has, and even then you’ll need multiple instances of
Crobat and/or Golbat (XY: Phantom
Forces 32/119) placing damage via their Abilities,
Muscle Band, Strong Energy, Fighting
Stadium and the discard clause on Land’s Judgment to
boost its damage. On the other hand the effective OHKO
Gourgeist (XY 57/146) can pull off with
its Spirit Scream attack and a Hypnotoxic Laser
wouldn’t care if you slapped a Plasma Badge onto
Wailord-EX and backed it up with four Umbreon
(BW: Plasma Freeze 64/116). As always Weakness
creates a dramatic difference; the only major Grass-Type
deck is still VirGen (though there are a few other
Grass-Type attackers that kind-of fit into other decks)
and while Virizion-EX can’t hope to score the
OHKO, thanks to Weakness a G Booster equipped
Genesect-EX can indeed deliver. If the deck bothers
with some lesser (but usually easier to play) buffs, a
OHKO or effective OHKO is pretty reasonable. If you
really wanted this card to feel sort-of festive, the
Grass Weakness also matches the token amount of green
some people will add to their outfit. ;)
No Resistance is the norm but it really is a missed
opportunity here. Granted having one of the appropriate
options might have created balance issues; based on the
video games the only options would have been Fire
Resistance (nothing currently legal has it), Metal
Resistance or Water Resistance (in the video games
Wailord take half damage from both Water- and Ice-Type
attacks). Resistance would have bumped up the damage
required for a OHKO to to 270, for a 2HKO to a combined
290. Speaking of 2HKO, as is it is hard for many
non-Grass-Types to score even a 2HKO against Wailord-EX;
it is so big I’ve basically been talking about how
massive it is through discussing the Weakness and
non-existent Resistance, and had to put the Resistance
and Retreat Cost in their own paragraph! The Retreat
Cost itself also massive, though not record setting as
it is [CCCC]; this is terrible to have to pay but
fortunately most decks will have something to zero out
the cost or bypass manually retreating this Pokémon
altogether, and for a while now such tricks have pretty
much been standard in decks so it isn’t like you’re even
out “extra” space in doing so. It is still a drawback,
but not as great as it could have been and in Expanded
it even has the slight benefit-within-a-drawback of
being a legal Heavy Ball target.
So what does Wailord-EX actually do? It has an
Ability and an attack. The former is Water Veil; it
triggers when you attach an Energy to Wailord-EX
and removes any Special Conditions that are on it. This
certainly isn’t a powerhouse Ability like on most
Pokémon-EX that have an Ability, but it is useful;
Special Conditions are usually an issue for larger
Pokémon. At the same time, it isn’t the same as being
totally immune; one of the reasons I mentioned the
Spirit Scream and Poison combo earlier is that by the
time you could get rid of the Poison with Water Veil,
Wailord-EX will already have been KOed. This
shouldn’t be mistaken for the kind of protection one can
get with Virizion-EX and a source of [G] Energy
or that Metal-Types enjoy while Steel Shelter is
in play, though neither of those are foolproof either.
For attacks Wailord-EX has just one; High
Breaching with a massive five Energy cost, specifically
[WWWWW]. This is challenging to meet though something
like Blastoise (BW: Boundaries Crossed
31/149; BW: Plasma Storm 137/135; BW: Plasma
Blast 16/101) and its Deluge can meet it easily.
For that cost you… just hit for 120 damage plus
Wailord-EX puts itself to Sleep, not the
opponent’s Active. This is an intentionally nerfed
attack; without the effect and for one less Energy it
would still be overpriced. It doesn’t seem unworkable
however; it still hits hard enough to 2HKO anything
lacking protection, other than itself and it has the HP
that it should survive long enough to get the 2HKO. If
you absolutely have to (and Abilities aren’t down) you
can attach an extra Energy should the Sleep caused by
High Breaching manage to stick around.
I am not sure if you should bother attacking at all with
this card; instead it might be meant as a “meat shield”,
a Pokémon to throw up front confident that it will be
almost impossible to OHKO, especially for the typical
deck. Plus the decks where such a strategy may prove
viable are apt to run a few other blockers for those
situations where yes, even Wailord-EX is at risk
of being OHKOed, such as against Night March decks. If
you do want to try and use it as an attacker, you might
consider Aurorus (XY: Furious Fists
26/111), either instead of our alongside Blastoise.
Space will be tight but while Aurorus is in play
and its Ability working, as long as Wailord-EX
has even a single source of [W] attached it will soak 20
damage, and the effect stacks with each Aurorus
in play. It would be very difficult to get going,
especially in a timely manner, but 250 HP that soaks 80
damage is really hard to OHKO by doing straight damage.
Super Potion might also make sense; while it
seems counterintuitive especially if you are trying this
without Blastoise, at 250 HP healing even 60 can
slow your opponent down quite a bit. Max Potion
makes sense for builds where Wailord-EX isn’t
even trying to attack; it forces the opponent to score a
OHKO to make any real progress. Max Potion is probably
an option with Blastoise but as you will need to
cough up another five Water Energy to attack that could
have remained attached otherwise, I’m not sure if it
would be worth it. If you don’t mind the flip Super
Scoop Up still flushes away the damage but also puts
the Energy back in hand, or you might use AZ if
you can afford to give up a Supporter.
In the end though, these aren’t major uses for this card
in Standard or Expanded. In Limited this is likely a
great pull. You can build a +39 deck around this, but
the massive four Energy attack cost keeps you from
coming out too far ahead; even if you go first and never
miss an attachment you’ll give your opponent three turns
before you can attack once. That is enough not only for
something small to savage Wailord-EX to bring it
down to a KO-able level, but to even build something up
front if the cards go your opponent’s way. The set also
has quite a few Grass-Types. The set also has some
healing and Water-Type support, so if you get that as
well Wailord-EX is probably good unless it
crashes into something like Primal Kyogre-EX. It
isn’t so good in a “real” deck unless you can afford
most (preferably all) of your Energy be basic Water
Energy; good thing the set has so many Water-Types.
Ratings
Standard:
3.25/5
Expanded:
3.35/5
Limited:
4.25/5
Summary:
Wailord-EX only really has its HP going for it,
but fortunately that could actually be enough to see
some use, though mostly as something you throw up front
to soak hits and not as an attacker in and of itself.
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