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Pojo's Pokémon Card of the Day

 

Flash Energy

- Ancient Origins

Date Reviewed:
September 25, 2015

Ratings & Reviews Summary

Standard: 2.5
Expanded: 2.5
Limited: 2.25

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

Back to the main COTD Page


aroramage

Hey guys, sorry for missing yesterday's card! Guess it was just too...dangerous for me. Huh? Huh?? :D 

It's okay, I'll pretend you're all laughing while I move on to the next card. 

So Flash Energy here, like many other Special Energies of this type, provides a specific type of Energy and an additional effect. We've had Herbal with Grass and healing, Strong with Fighting and damage, and more recently Dangerous with Dark and counter-damage. We've also got Shield for Steel and damage reduction, as well as Wonder for Fairies and effect prevention, not to mention Mystery for Psychic and retreat cost reduction, so there ya go! 

What does Flash give us then? I'm sure you've gotten the Electric part down, and then there's "No Weakness."  

...well, that's not terrible. I don't know how prominent Fighting is nowadays, but last I checked, Electric types were coming up thanks to M Rayquaza-EX's massive presence. That in turn may have led to some Fighting decks coming up to counter them, or at the very least maybe some Fighting tech? Who knows? But now that Ancient Origins has been out for a bit, it seems to me that Grass types are dominant as of late, so Fire would be a bit more prevalent. 

Truth be told, Flash Energy...you can easily pass on it, and your Electric deck won't really suffer for it. It's more of a meta-based card anyway, since Electric-types will for the most part be weak to the Fighting element, so if they surge in power, so will the need for Flash Energy. And even then, you're still limited to the four you run tops, so it's hard to say what its impact would be. With stuff like Strong Energy and Dangerous Energy, you can see where they're going with it. And even with stuff like Shield, Herbal, and Wonder, you know they're working to fill in niche areas anyway. 

But Flash? Flash is filling in a niche area that...didn't really need to be filled. It's not its fault, it just came out a bit late if anything. Or maybe early...whatever, it came out a time where the weakness for Electric-types wasn't relevant, so it's meh. 

Rating 

Standard: 2/5 (I wouldn't run it right now, but that's not to say you should trade off your copies; wait for the meta to surge again, and if it does, maybe you can try running it then) 

Expanded: 2/5 (I can't really say whether or not the meta here's that much different; I mean, there is more OG Rayquaza-EX and VirGen here, so I guess Fighting's not as big? Or maybe it is, who knows how many people got Lucario-EX) 

Limited: 2/5 (...eh) 

Arora Notealus: Flash DANCE!!...yeah, okay, best part is that you could say that any time you play this card XD 

Weekend Thought: So what did you think of this week's cards? Anything strike your fancy? Think Dangerous Energy should've gotten a review from me? I'll say it's better than Flash Energy at least. And hey, maybe Lucky Helmet's not so bad, it's probably got something going for it! Who knows?


Otaku

We finish this week with Flash Energy (XY: Ancient Origins 83/98).  Thankfully DC is apparently okay with this; stupid though it sounds their superhero “The Flash” does use a yellow lightning bolt as his insignia… though now that I have a reason to pay attention to it, I guess it isn’t the same shape in official versions of the costume for the major iterations of the character.  Now that I’ve quickly wasted a lot of time looking into that (...it was supposed to be a 30 second Google search), on to the review! 

Flash Energy can only be attached to Lightning-Type Pokémon and if you somehow get around that clause then the effect states it is discarded the instant it is attached to something that isn’t a Lightning-Type.  Yes, it can be attached to something that is more than one Type, so long as one of those Types is the Lightning-Type.  Only while attached does it provide [L] Energy, so don’t worry about any effects that deal with [L] Energy unless they affect Energy already in play.  The benefit provided to Lightning-Types by Flash Energy is that while attached, it negates their Weakness.  This can’t stack and there are other ways to deal with Weakness, but while I was annoyed that the designers went this route for Flash Energy, after encountering others using it I think it is… adequate.  The big deal is that M Manectric-EX is still good and Fighting Weakness still dangerous.  If a deck already favors using a different trick to deal with Weakness (for example running basic Darkness Energy and Shadow Circle) then Flash Energy won’t replace it.  Quite a few Lightning-Type decks don’t have an option better than Flash Energy and they may appreciate it. 

I say “may appreciate” because it still isn’t perfect.  I named M Manectric-EX as an example of a great Lightning-Type.  While it may be packing Flash Energy, its “Turbo Bolt” attack is one of the many effects that work on basic Energy cards but not Special Energy; as with Bad Energy yesterday you will only have so much room for Special Energy cards and there are others that will serve you better.  There are also Lightning-Types like Raichu (XY 43/146); a glass cannon with a great attack but only 90 HP so there isn’t much point of countering Weakness because it usually uses Double Colorless Energy to attack and a Fighting-Type attacker has a good chance of scoring a OHKO regardless of Weakness.  Special Energy cards in general are more easily countered which is a mark against all Special Energy cards but specific to Flash Energy is timing; you can’t benefit from it right away as you might Strong Energy; your opponent will have time to deal with it before you can cash in on it being more than just a basic Lightning Energy card.  Most of all though… Weakness is already something specialized.  The Fighting-Type’s popularity (and potency) waxes and wanes, but usually it isn’t everywhere.  Some Lightning-Types have a different Weakness, but either way you are more often encountering something that doesn’t care about your Weakness: an attacker belonging to any of the other Types! 

So for Standard and Expanded, go ahead and give it a try but you’ll probably only find it worthwhile if you have a lot of spare room in your deck or your metagame is heavily slanted in favor of your Weakness.  For Expanded go ahead and run it if you pull it another Lightning-Type you wish to run.  Odds aren’t great it will come in handy but it has a chance to… especially because Jolteon (XY: Ancient Origins 26/98) could allow some crazy mix-and-matching.  That card is a Holo-Rare though so pulling it isn’t too likely.  Past that, there aren’t a lot of other Lightning-Types: Ampharos-EX (and its Full-Art), M Ampharos-EX (and its Full-Art) and Rotom (XY: Ancient Origins 29/98) which is an Uncommon. 

Ratings 

Standard: 3/5 

Expanded: 3/5 

Limited: 2.5/5 

Summary: A solid but not spectacular addition to Lightning-Types’ arsenal, it is better than I thought it looked but it still isn’t exceptional.  The phrase “You get what you pay for.” springs to mind; you “pay” for balancing out potentially serious mismatch by however many copies of Flash Energy you choose to run.  If the Fighting-Type again comes to prominence (again, being the near universal Weakness on Lightning-Types) or Jolteon enables a worthwhile combo that otherwise would suffer due to its Weakness, then Flash Energy could really shine.


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