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Pojo's Pokémon Card of the Day

 

Top 10 Roaring Skies Cards: #9 - Winona

Date Reviewed:
May 5, 2015

Ratings & Reviews Summary

Standard: 3.33
Expanded: 3.38
Limited: 4.40

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

Back to the main COTD Page


aroramage

Winooooooooooo-naaaaaaaaaa~ 

What a nice gal. Winona here, as you all know, hangs around the other Gen III Gym Leaders and uses Flying-types - something featuring predominantly in this set thanks to all the Colorless support! That's interesting too, seeing as there are several Pokemon that are Colorless that in the past have not been, so it's pretty interesting overall. 

And what better way to support Colorless Pokemon than by having a means of getting them to your hand? Welcome to Winona, who adds up to 3 of them to hand. That's pretty scary when you get right down to it - most of the other Leaders aimed to only add 1, but 3?! The first issue that comes up though is what Colorless Pokemon would you add to your hand? 

From earlier sets, there's not a whole lot of great Colorless Pokemon - if anything, they're underrepresented when it comes to support considering they can fit into any deck! Not to mention most of them these days have ended up as weak to Fighting, which is still hanging around the format and what-not. This set provides a lot of Colorless Pokemon not only without that weakness but even that Resistance, so they might make a little bit of a comeback with stuff like Winona here. 

Tornadus-EX could be a good candidate for Expanded at least, but most of the time you're aiming at stuff like Regigigas (PHF) or some kind of Evolution, of which there's one particularly notable one in this set... 

Needless to say, Winona's gonna probably see play in Colorless decks. Will said decks ransack the tournaments of the world? Maybe. It depends on how well they can deal with Seismitoad-EX and those Fighting decks - never mind the Electric decks that may arise to counter these decks. 

Rating 

Standard: 3/5 (she's good support, I'd say, not necessarily spectacular if only because of her partners...with one notable exception) 

Expanded: 3/5 (more range for more peeps to hang around, but still not that fantastic) 

Limited: 4/5 (there's a lot of Colorless folk hanging around this set, so having a search option for them is nice - and let's face it, you're still going to run them no matter what deck you put together) 

Arora Notealus: Elegant, graceful, able to fly alongside Bird Pokemon...Winona apparently can do that, she says so right at the start of her fight. That or she can fuse with them, depending on how you take "become one with them." Though now I've got the image of her doing the Fusion Dance from DBZ with her and a bird Pokemon of some sort, like Swellow. Or Skarmory! 

...why aren't human-Pokemon fusions a thing? 

Next Time: BEHOLD THE DESCENT OF THE MIGHTIEST RAYQUAZA!!


Otaku

The ninth most promising pick of XY: Roaring Skies is Winonna (XY: Roaring Skies 96/108, 108/108).  She is a Supporter that allows you to search your deck for three [C] Type Pokémon to add to your hand.  So what makes her so good?  While she is a search card, she nets as much card advantage as Cheren or Tierno (not that they see competitive play).  Still at least for the Colorless-Type, three Pokémon (with no additional restrictions) is pretty sweet.  Additionally Colorless-Types have a particular niche in the game; while we have had decks that were mostly or truly mono-Colorless, most of the time they are that “neutral” Type you can work into just about any deck, whether because its the easiest way to counter Weakness/Resistance in what would otherwise be a mono-Type build or because you’ve already got several other Types and by using Colorless, the Energy resources are easier to share, Colorless-Type Pokémon help a lot. 

The format has been in a strange place since the BW-era; Professor Juniper (or Professor Sycamore, if you prefer) and N have basically dictated the pace of the game.  Few cards can draw more and then only under conditions.  N usually improves in disruptive power while its draw power diminishes while Professor Juniper/Professor Sycamore only worry about the resources being trashed or accidentally decking out (less of a concern now that you can play a properly timed Lysandre’s Trump Card).  The short version is we are so used to ripping through our decks to gain access to what we need but also being prepared to have our hand altered on each of our opponent’s turns… and so while what we really need is to lose those two Supporters (along with most of the competitive card pool, I suspect) so we can dial it back a notch instead we crave a third such Supporter so that we can achieve even more reliability in the current metagame.  Winona doesn’t do that. 

She may help though thanks to Shaymin-EX.  No playing coy; it made the list and we’ll discuss it in detail.  For now know that it has a “Draw until you have 6 cards in hand” Ability when you Bench it from your hand, outside of setting up.  We also got a lot of other potent Colorless-Types, like M Rayquaza-EX (XY: Roaring Skies 76/108, 105/108) which also made the Top 10.  Shaymin-EX might become the new (or alternate) Jirachi-EX and if you can make use of some other generic Colorless-Types, clearly Winona becomes a great deck choice.  If you’re running a deck built around mostly or all Colorless-Type Pokémon (and I just named a new, massive Colorless attacker two sentences ago) Winona could lead to some amazing plays.  All of this takes what might be an “okay” card and adds on a “Staple for specific decks” bonus.  Expanded might hold more promise - there are some significant Colorless Pokémon we regain access to like Bouffalant (BW: Dragons Exalted 110/124).  Perhaps “White Tea” decks could make a comeback?  In Limited play, this set has a lot of Colorless-Types and in Limited play Colorless Pokémon are often more valuable than normal because they rarely have non-Colorless Energy requirements and you might have a deck with two, three, four maybe even more Types all bouncing around trying to share Energy and exploit Type-matching while not having it used against you.  Basically unless you’re doing a +39 deck or have extreme luck with your pulls, you’ll be running it if you get it in Limited. 

Ratings 

Standard: 3.65/5 

Expanded: 3.75/5 

Limited: 4.8/8 

Summary: Winona is most likely not a staple for every deck but it will be for some specific ones and may become a common sight - while you won’t want to run one for a lone Shaymin-EX in your deck, there may be some other, worthy Colorless-Type attackers or supporting Pokémon to consider.  I actually had Winona as my sixth place pick because of her potential general usage but mostly for her deck specific plays (we’ll eventually discuss a deck where you might actually want to run and drop multiple Shaymin-EX in a single turn).


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