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Pojo's Pokémon Card of the Day

Otaku

Today we review Dangerous Energy (XY: Ancient Origins 82/98), which has the hilarious (and perhaps appropriate) name of “Bad Energy” in Japanese; either way, you can still justify making all sorts of fun (obnoxious?) Michael Jackson references because both “Bad” and “Dangerous” are names of one of his albums and songs.  Hopefully this card offers a bit more than that. ;)  Dangerous Energy is a Special Energy card that provides [D] Energy while attached to your Active Darkness-Type Pokémon; this is worded as an effect unlike say Darkness Energy (either the basic Energy or awkwardly named Special Energy card that preceded it) which counts as [D] no matter its location.  Dangerous Energy can only be attached to Darkness-Type Pokémon and if it somehow ends up on something else, it has a built in clause to discard itself.  These are a lot of restrictions for the card, but the rest of its effect is that the Pokémon to which Dangerous Energy is attached is attacked and damaged by an opponent’s Pokémon-EX, you place two damage counters on said Pokémon-EX.  The effect does stack, so if you have two copies of Dangerous Energy attached, the Pokémon-EX would have four damage counters placed upon it.  As the damage is placed after the opponent attacked, the only way your opponent can heal it (before it can be potentially exploited) is through the few healing effects that trigger between turns (I’m not sure if there are any that work during your opponent’s turn).  In total isolation, forcing the opponent to damage his or her own Pokémon is good.  Damage counter placement also means multiple protective effects won’t be triggered, though you miss out on damage boosting effects as well.  What leaves me less than impressed with the package is that this is the Darkness-Types entry into the modern Type-specific Special Energy cards, with its incredibly restrictive template (only works for that Type, only provides that Type of Energy while attached, etc.) coupled by only Pokémon-EX being affected on the opponent’s side of things.  I’ve often pointed out (on message boards if not here) that contrary to popular belief, Pokémon-EX are not a problem.  They are the dominant force in the format, but only because they are more prone to receiving overpowered entries than non-Pokémon-EX.  There are an abundance of powerful non-Pokémon-EX that still see successful, competitive play and multiple anti-Pokémon-EX cards to give incentive above and beyond the inherent benefit of attacking with a non-Pokémon-EX.  So I believe that Dangerous Energy should have placed damage counters on whatever is doing the attacking and wherever the Pokémon being attacked is positioned (Active or Bench).  Dangerous Energy is helped and hurt by the current pace of the game; I don’t have actual numbers but from what I personally see, a decent number of Pokémon fall just short of a OHKO (or being OHKOed) by 10 or 20 points of damage, including more common damage buffs.  When it is a Darkness-Type attacking or being attacked by something that is in this range, clearly Dangerous Energy is useful because it speeds up a KO.  At the same time this pacing is why Dangerous Energy is likely to only trigger once or twice; few Pokémon survive more than one hit.  Strong Energy seems overpowered for the +20 damage it grants… but that largely comes from what it is boosting: hard hitting, often low Energy requiring Fighting-Types that can stack additional damage buffs and have a high probability of hitting Weakness.  The two damage counters received while being attacked is probably the more balanced version of the damage buff… except for being restricted to Pokémon-EX.  So where should you use this?  I’d say Darkness-Type decks that can’t make better use of a different Special Energy card, can handle being very vulnerable to anti-Special Energy tactics or specifically combo with Dangerous Energy.  I’m drawing a blank on examples for those first two (if there are any) but we were spoonfed a combo for that last one and we reviewed it here: M Tyranitar-EX.  It has a lot of HP and an attack (Destroyer King) that needs [DDCC] to hit for 110+ damage, where the “plus” is an additional 60 points of damage for each damage counter on your opponent’s Active Pokémon.  So if M Tyranitar-EX or a Tyranitar-EX you intend to Mega Evolve are other Darkness-Type you want to leave up front to soak a hit have Dangerous Energy attached and are attacked by an opponent’s Pokémon-EX for damage, Destroyer King is set up to hit for 210/230/460 points of damage (Resistant/Neutral/Weak).  Slightly less obvious is giving you some damage counters to play around with for Absol (XY: Roaring Skies 40/108) and its “Cursed Eyes” Ability.  So for Standard play you may as well test with it but I only expect it to fit into very few decks (I’m not even sure about whatever deck is running M Tyranitar-EX).  Expanded doesn’t look much better; after all the big advantage to Darkness-Types here is regaining access to Dark Patch… which only works on basic Darkness Energy cards.  For Limited play it is nice to have but only matters if you have a Darkness-Type worth running.  There are only seven Darkness-Types in the set with two of them being Tyranitar-EX and M Tyranitar-EX and their Full Arts.  Inkay (XY: Ancient Origins 45/98) and Malamar (XY: Ancient Origins 46/98) are decent if you each of them and both are Commons, while Sableye (XY: Ancient Origins 44/98) is an Uncommon with two solid attacks.  Just remember that it only works against Pokémon-EX so most games, it just won’t matter.  Ratings  Standard: 2/5  Expanded: 1.95/5  Limited: 2/5  Summary: Dangerous Energy is indeed a “bad Energy” card.  It is far better than I realized; at first I thought it was something I’d never consider using but now it goes from “adequate” to “probably not” because even with the abundance of attacking Pokémon-EX, it isn’t enough to gain a sufficient return, especially when you’ll often find a Special Energy like Double Colorless Energy as or more valuable, such as with Yveltal-EX.  Yes I docked it for Expanded because it doesn’t work with Dark Patch - while not essential Dark Patch is still a great play for Darkness-Type decks and with most decks needing to watch their Energy counts, it really does hurt.  Though I’m not fond of this card, others regard it better: Dangerous Energy actually scored four points from voting for our Top 15 XY: Ancient Origins list, coming in at 18th place.

Emma Starr

Ever wish cool Pokemon like Yveltal EX, Darkrai EX, and Malamar EX were around during the earlier days of the TCG, where it could take advantage of the 10 damage boosts that Darkness Energy could provide? Well I certainly don’t, because that would have made the game awfully unbalanced! But now, in the era of heavy-hitters, we have a new, and maybe even better option!             Dangerous Energy provides a single Dark Energy to Dark Pokemon, but if that Dark Pokemon gets attacked by an EX, the EX gets hit for 20 damage! Keep in mind, this isn’t your usual 20-energy boost you see a lot these days, like Strong Energy or Muscle Band – this one is more like the protection you see from Rocky Helmet – it relies on your opponent attacking you for it to get the damage on it. Thus, it also relies on the attacking Pokemon being an EX. And with EXs usually being heavy-hitters, you’ll usually only get the chance to inflict around 40 damage or so with it. There are some nice combos you can try to do with this, that can easily counter-act these hindrances, though!             Firstly, you could once again run Jamming Net (PF 98) to lower the opponent’s damage output by 20. Hey, if you’re lucky, this alone could be enough to turn a 1HKO or 2HKO into a 3HKO! Another option (in Expanded) you could use is combining it with Rock Guard (PLF 108) to do a whopping 80 damage without even hitting them! And of course, I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention that Mega Tyranitar EX can do 230 damage with his attack if he simply gets hit once before attacking. …Yeah, that will take out any Mega, and if you attach a Muscle Band to Mega Tyranitar, it can even take out Wailord-EX, officially being able to take out anything. And with his Ancient Trait, you could even attach a Lucky Helmet (or two, if you’re not using the Muscle Band) to not only potentially do 230 damage, but also drawing 4 cards as well. But hey, we already reviewed Mega Tyranitar and Lucky Helmet, this is Dangerous Energy’s time to shine…or darken…              Modified: 3/5 (A must for Darkness decks…but trash for everyone else.)             Expanded: 4/5 (Darkrai EX LOVES this card, since him and his cronies get the effect, and thanks to the wording of this card, this still acts as normal Dark Energy, so Dark Cloak still applies to anyone this Energy is attached to…but remember you can only attach this to Dark type Pokemon, so keep that in mind.)             Limited: 4/5 (Running Tyranitar EX or his Mega? Use this too! But if you don’t run Dark types, you aren’t running this.)