aroramage |
Next up is a new version of
Clawitzer, and compared to his last printing in Furious
Fists, this one is actually pretty good! For certain
decks.
Namely, it's his Ability, Mega
Boost, that may draw attention to him. Once per turn,
Clawitzer's able to push a Special Energy card from your
hand onto one of your Mega Evolved Pokemon. Well
that's...really specific on both ends of it, but the
combinations themselves of what Pokemon you can put
together with that? I can already think of a couple,
like Double Dragon Energy to power up M Rayquaza-EX, or
throw on Dangerous Energy for M Tyranitar-EX. Or even
just something as simple as Strong Energy onto Primal
Groudon-EX! I could go on, but the idea of boosting a
powerful Mega Evolution with a powerful form of Energy
is pretty good in my opinion - never mind that you still
get your regular attachment.
And then there's Crabhammer...3-for-60
vanilla...you really are only worth it for Mega Boost
aren't you?
Rating
Standard: 3/5 (this is a pretty
solid-)
----
BREAK-ING NEWS!!
Clawitzer's also got a BREAK
Evolution! And he's a big boost to his HP score, but
most importantly of all, he's got...Lock-on! Which takes
a turn to set up and deal...even more damage! After
applying Weakness and Resistance! And it keeps them from
retreating!
...all for 1 Energy!
...this is good, right?
Hint: the answer is no.
It's an unimpressive BREAK
Evolution, building off of Clawitzer's vanilla attack
and making it..."better" by giving it a move that makes
that first attack better. Really, the only reason
Clawitzer's #9 is because he technically TIED with
Yanmega and Yanmega BREAK. So no, don't play the BREAK
Evolution with Clawitzer - if you play Clawitzer, it's
for his Ability, not his chancy "maybe I'll hit for 180
after surviving two turns" strategy with Lock-On
Crabhammer.
Rating
Standard: 3/5 (use only the first
part, not the BREAK Evo)
Expanded: 3/5 (he's good enough on
his own to run)
Limited: 3.5/5 (though I'd consider
him a little less than Yanmega in review hindsight)
Arora Notealus: Yes, I put
Clawitzer at #10 on my list. Yes, this somehow made him
worthy to tie him with Yanmega. No, I didn't include the
BREAK Evolution, and now you know why. Frankly, otaku
and I agreed that it was unimpressive enough to give a
review on. Btw, the review on the BREAK Evo:
Rating
Standard: 1.5/5 (nope)
Expanded: 1.5/5 (nope)
Limited: 2.5/5 (...meh)
You're welcome.
Next Time: Wait, you're not even
out until the next generation?!
|
Otaku |
Time for the ninth
place finisher for our top 10 picks from XY: Steam
Siege. It is a single card but we are
doing a twofer review anyway. Why? It seemed
silly to look at Clawitzer (XY: Steam Siege
34/114; XY: Black Star Promos XY146) but not also
cover Clawitzer BREAK (XY: Steam Siege
35/114). Sometimes it does make sense to look at a
Pokémon BREAK on its own but… well you’ll see as we
review the cards. First up is Clawitzer.
As a Water Type it has access to some seemingly strong
support. What tends to happen though is that a lot
of it just won’t prove useful to Clawitzer due to
extenuating circumstances. Similarly there are Water
Pokémon with great attacks or Abilities that can either
be the focus or the support for a deck, including their
own toolbox deck. Water Weakness is on nearly all
Fire Type Pokémon and some Fighting Types, while Water
Resistance is only found on BW-era Grass Types.
There isn’t a lot of mono- or mostly Fire decks to hose
down, and the Fighting Types seeing competitive play are
usually not the Water Weak ones, so this could be
better. Fortunately we are also nearing rotation
and even before then, this set adds a lot to Fire.
Anti-Water effects aren’t particularly great; most just
mimic the effects of Resistance without actually being
(and in fact stacking with) Resistance. The only
one you’re likely to encounter is Parallel City,
played for its other effect (shrinking the Bench), and
which also drops the damage done by Grass and Fire Types
at the same time it affects Water.
As a Stage 1
Clawitzer isn’t too hard to put into play; not as
good as a Basic but better than the rest. Its 100
HP usually won’t survive a hit, but sometimes it will
get lucky and hold on. The Grass Weakness is
another time when it isn’t the best nor the worst; there
are a few Grass attackers that hit the sweet spot where
doubling the damage makes a real difference, but for
many (most?) it either ends up as overkill, or just a
slight savings in resources. The lack of
Resistance is the worst but it’s also business as usual;
an extra -20 against a single Type would not often have
made a difference. A Retreat Cost of [CC] is low
enough you can often pay for it up front, but high
enough it tends to sting in the long run: pack some
alternatives to manually retreating at full price.
Next is the card’s Ability “Mega Boost”, which allows
you to attach a Special Energy from your hand to one of
your Mega Evolutions once per turn (multiples do stack
though). The attack is unfortunately filler; “Crabhammer”
requires [WWC] just to do 60 damage, about 30 points shy
of being adequate filler. Mega Evolutions already
have Mega Turbo, but Mega Boost has some pretty
clear potential.
Clawitzer
Evolves from Clauncher, and we have three from
which to pick for either Standard or Expanded play:
XY: Kalos Starter Set 15/39, XY: Furious Fists
23/111, and XY: Steam Siege 33/114. All are
Basic Water Types with no Ability, Grass Weakness, no
Resistance, and a Retreat Cost of [C]. XY: Kalos
Starter Set 15/39 has 70 HP and a single attack
(Water Gun) that does 20 for [WC]. XY: Furious Fists
23/111 has 60 HP and two attacks; the first is “Bubble”
for [W] which has you flip a coin to try and Paralyze
the opponent’s Active, while the second attack is just
Crabhammer again, this time doing 30 for [WCC].
Last up is XY: Steam Siege 33/114, and it has 60
HP with one attack (Double Pincers) which costs [W] and
has you flip two coins, good for 10 damage per “heads”.
None of these are good but I’d go with XY: Kalos
Starter Set 15/39 for its HP or XY: Furious Fists
23/111 for Bubble, as both might help a Clauncher
survive to Evolve. There is one other Clawitzer
as well, XY: Furious Fists 24/111: it has the
same stats as today’s version but with two attacks.
First is “Reverse Thrust” for [W], which does 30 while
making you switch Clawitzer with one of your
Benched Pokémon, while the second is “Splash Cannon”
which does 50 plus 20 per [W] Energy attached to
Clawitzer itself. The attacks aren’t bad; in
fact Splash Cannon is just a renamed “Secret Sword” from
Keldeo-EX, and that attack proved quite good
there. Here the rest of the package is less
impressive, though, so you should stick to today’s
Clawitzer if you want to use one.
At last we come to
Clawitzer BREAK: unsurprisingly it remains a
Water Type, and as a BREAK Evolution it will gain the
Ability, attack(s), Weakness, Resistance, and Retreat
Cost of the Clawitzer from which it BREAK
Evolves. It has 130 HP, I think just barely the
point where surviving a OHKO becomes a little more
likely than not, but that isn’t as impressive for a
pseudo-Stage 2. I refer to it as a pseudo-Stage 2
since you have to Evolve twice (like a Stage 2) but
can’t take advantage of Stage 2 support like Rare
Candy or Miltank (XY: Flashfire
83/106). I think there might be some anti-Stage 2
cards in Expanded, but they aren’t remotely good enough
to bother verifying. Clawitzer BREAK also brings
an attack called “Lock-On” which keeps the Defending
Pokémon from retreating while also placing a status
effect upon it which increases the damage it takes from
attacks during your next turn. I believe said
effects rests on the Defending Pokémon and it
applies when anything attacks it on your next turn (not
just Clawitzer BREAK), but even without being
able to manually retreat a change out effect like
Switch can remove it. So would Evolution.
Even for just [C], that simply isn’t good enough, though
at least it might allow Crabhammer to 2HKO your typical
Basic Pokémon-EX.
So we won’t be
using Clawitzer BREAK (not even just for the HP)
but Clawitzer (XY: Steam Siege 34/114;
XY: Black Star Promos XY146) has a chance in
Standard and Expanded. You just need to find a
Mega Evolution that needs Energy acceleration
from the hand, would prefer (or at least accept) it be
restricted to Special Energy cards, and can’t get by on
existing options like Mega Turbo. This
probably means looking through stuff not currently worth
running, which may be why I am at a loss for good
examples. Soon we will undergo set rotation, and
we lose Battle Compressor. Battle Compressor
is pretty huge for enabling Mega Turbo. We
also lose popular Energy accelerator Bronzong (XY:
Phantom Forces 61/119) leaving as well, and while it
only attached [M] Energy cards from the discard pile,
several prominent attackers used this to meet [C] Energy
costs. At this point the only knock against
Clawitzer is that we are also losing Xerosic
and Startling Megaphone, so without a replacement
method for easily discarding Pokémon Tools, Garbodor
(XY: BREAKpoint 57/122) is expected to
significantly increase in usage. Though it has
more competition in Expanded, it has more options as
well like Blend Energy GRPD and Blend Energy
WLFM to work with, so I think it evens out. In
Limited play it is mostly just there as a filler Stage
1; no Special Energy this set. Clawitzer BREAK
lets it be a decent filler Stage 2 (ish) Pokémon.
In both cases, you’ll need to run basic Water Energy
as well.
Ratings
Clawitzer
Standard:
3.4/5
Expanded:
3.4/5
Limited:
2/5
Clawitzer BREAK
Standard:
1/5
Expanded:
1/5
Limited:
2.75/5
Summary:
Clawitzer is quite specialized, but Mega
Evolutions are used widely enough that it might not be
that specialized when one thinks about it.
See if it can add needed speed to various cards, both
now and post rotation when current options are off the
table. Clawitzer BREAK should be ignored unless
you can build a decent deck with it in Limited.
Clawitzer
earned four voting points; I had it as my eighth place
pick, but as you can tell even I’m not overly ecstatic
about it (yet). Clawitzer BREAK was either going
to be skipped entirely or become a filler review down
the road; figured we should just cover it now as the
only real use I can see for it is to bolster the HP on
Clawitzer.
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