aroramage |
And finally, wrapping up the week,
we've got...a Stage 2? In Gallade? Well now, isn't that
a surprise! It's like I was talking about Xerneas
yesterday with the idea of talking about Stage 2s like
Gallade today!
...I mean, I wasn't, but still!
Gallade here actually has a lot of
advantages, and just thinking about them all makes me
think of the potential for a deck to run some crazy
combination of Simis, Parasect, Gallade, M Mewtwo-EX,
and Xerneas all together! It would probably be a
congealed mess, but given that they have a lot of
Colorless costs between them, they really could fit in
just about anywhere.
...okay, I probably wouldn't play
Parasect and the Simis, that'd make the deck too clunky.
But just look at Gallade's
Sensitive Blade! It's a 2-for-60 strike that can deal an
additional 70 damage if you played a Supporter card this
turn. It's kinda like Sceptile-EX's Unseen Claw attack
with a couple minor tweaks, the biggest of which would
probably be the removal of any Colorful Energy - meaning
Gallade is actually technically splashable in any deck!
And if you're worried about clogging up the line with a
Stage 2 line-up, also note that Gallade is Fighting type
and can therefore be brought out again from the discard
pile via Maxie's Hidden Ball Trick!
On top of all of that, Gallade also
has the benefit of an Ability called Premonition, which
allows the player to, once per turn, look at and
rearrange the top 5 cards of their deck in any way
they'd like! This is something I can imagine comboing
very easily with Gallade's Sensitive Blade - find a
Supporter, put it on top, draw it on your next turn, and
use Sensitive Blade after you've played it AND used
Premonition again to put another Supporter on top!
Now if you're worried about
clogging your drawing power with Supporters, don't worry
- we've got a wide variety that will make things easy!
Sycamore is always a helpful option, but you could also
be running the aforementioned Maxie's too, or maybe
you're letting Skyla do her thing! On top of that, we've
got cards like Judge, Hex Maniac, Lysandre, Xerosic -
you name it, there's a Supporter to run in just about
every deck!
Even Steven could, in theory, work
well with Gallade! And he's not even that good!
So whether it's making old cards
playable or just giving more incentive to play the good
ol' staples, Gallade can be a reasonable force to reckon
with!
Rating
Standard: 3.5/5 (an Ability to
rearrange cards so you get what you need alongside an
attack that can get stronger based off of the best cards
in the game? yes please!)
Expanded: 3/5 (the inclusion of
cards like N though make it a little more difficult for
Premonition to get pulled off)
Limited: 4/5 (and naturally,
getting all the stars to align would make him great
here, though Premonition on its own isn't a bad idea
either)
Arora Notealus: But
seriously...don't play Steven.
Weekend Thought: Do you see the
potential of this week's cards? I know some of the
earlier stuff was a bit "meh," but they've all go their
own prospects, don't you think? Or maybe some of them
are just outright terrible. What're your thoughts on
this week's cards?
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Otaku |
We finish the week with Gallade (XY:
BREAKthrough 84/162)! This is a Fighting-Type,
which you know I think highly of thanks to my frequent
praise for it. Most Colorless-Types and nearly all
Darkness-Types and Lightning-Types are Fighting Weak,
building in a lot of advantage. Fighting
Resistance is one of the most common forms but to keep
things in perspective, “No Resistance” is by far the
most common and -20 damage will only matter in
borderline cases. There are a few
anti-Fighting-Type effects but they seem to be limited
to attacks on certain Pokémon and either the Pokémon,
the attack or both aren’t particularly good.
Fighting-Type support is amazing: Strong Energy
may be the best of the Type-specific Special Energy
cards, Korrina and Maxie’s Hidden Ball Trick
provide two different Type specific Supporters,
Fighting Stadium is a good, solid Stadium that
provides yet another way to boost damage done and they
also have access to Focus Sash to make it highly
likely a Fighting-Type will tank a hit regardless of the
damage done. There are many strong Fighting-Type
Pokémon; though nothing on par with - pardon the term -
monsters like Yveltal-EX there are still some
great attackers whether they are the focus of the deck
or a back-up. This is a simple a wonderful start
for Gallade.
Gallade
is a Stage 2 Pokémon which is not so wonderful; while I
believe the TCG should be balanced so that fully Evolved
Pokémon are on the same level with each other, with
lower Stages designed to contribute to the value of
playing the final Stages so that the entire line is
worth the effort of running, combined with fully Evolved
Basic Pokémon (and Evolutions for that matter) shouldn’t
be able to rush into play and start offering any serious
offense the first few turns of the game but I’m already
off in the weeds. If you wish to manually Evolve
Gallade you’ll have to start with a Ralts
and then either use a Kirlia or a Rare Candy,
the former then requiring yet another turn before
Gallade can hit the field. As a Fighting-Type
you gain a third alternative: sending Gallade to
the discard and getting your hand down to only
Maxie’s Hidden Ball Trick so you can play it and
Bench said Gallade from the discard pile. Gallade
enjoys 150 HP, allowing it to survive moderate blows; it
will take a big hit to down it in one shot without
exploiting Weakness. Said Weakness is to the
Psychic-Type and it is dangerous; you’ve got Night
March, various Mewtwo-EX and M Mewtwo-EX
floating around, Mew-EX, and several other
attackers that you might not expect that will find a
OHKO much easier, sometimes where it wouldn’t have been
possible without Weakness. Lack of Resistance is
typical as is the Retreat Cost of [CC]; nothing to do
about the former, but the latter is low enough that
manually retreating is viable, but the cost is still
high enough you’ll prefer to avoid it when you can.
Gallade
lacks an Ancient Trait (no surprise, those seem to be
done) but enjoys an Ability (Premonition) and an attack
(Sensitive Blade). The former is basically a free
Pokédex once per turn per copy of Premonition,
though using more than one Premonition is merely there
for if you change your mind unless you do
something to your deck between uses. As there are
many cards that care about the top few cards of your
deck (including some forms of draw power), this goes
from being a good effect that improves your draw for the
next turn to a powerful play that can help you avoid
wasting certain resources while vastly improving the
yield of others. Even if you’ve got five cards you
just don’t need at the moment on top of your deck, at
least with Premonition you’ll know it. Sensitive
Blade requires [CC], allowing a single Double
Colorless Energy to easily fuel it, which means
Gallade can quite well even totally off-Type.
The attack does 60, which isn’t bad for two Energy, but
it includes an effect that states the attack does 60+70
(so 130 total) if you played a Supporter this turn.
As you will often want to (if not need to) play a
Supporter each turn, this is less a damage bonus and
more an occasional damage penalty, for those times when
you actually can’t or don’t want to play a Supporter.
The majority of the time you’re enjoying 130 damage for
just two Energy. The two effects have a surprising
amount of synergy that may not be obvious at first;
Premonition can help ensure you’ve got a Supporter for
the next turn and both are “generically beneficial”
which means Gallade can be splashed into many,
many decks.
I’m telling you now you can skip this paragraph and the
four after it unless you’re really curious or bored.
Still here? Then we’ll run through the options we
have for Ralts, Kirlia, Gardevoir
and Gallade (yup, split Evolution line!).
We have six versions of Ralts released as seven
different cards: BW: Next Destinies 55/99, BW:
Plasma Storm 59/135, BW: Legendary Treasures
59/113 and BW: Legendary Treasures RC8/RC25 are
Expanded only while XY: Ancient Origins 52/98
(reprinted with new art as XY: BREAKthrough
100/162) and XY: BREAKthrough 68/162 are
available in Expanded or Standard. We have six
Kirlia as well: BW: Next Destinies 56/99,
BW: Plasma Storm 60/135, BW: Legendary Treasures
60/113 and BW: Legendary Treasures RC9/RC25 are
again Expanded only while XY: Ancient Origins
53/98 and XY: BREAKthrough 69/162 are available
in both Expanded and Standard. Only four
Gardevoir and two are the same: BW: Next
Destinies 57/99 (reprinted with new art as BW:
Dark Explorers 109/108), BW: Legendary Treasures
RC10/RC25 are all only available in Expanded while
XY: Ancient Origins 54/98 is available for both
Constructed Formats. There are only two other
options for Gallade itself and both are Expanded
only: BW: Plasma Storm 61/135 and BW:
Legendary Treasures 81/113.
The Ralts are all Basic Pokémon with Retreat Cost
[C] and without Ancient Trait or Ability. BW: Next
Destinies 55/99, BW: Plasma Storm 59/135,
BW: Legendary Treasures 59/113 and XY:
BREAKthrough 68/162 are Psychic-Types with 60 HP,
Psychic Weakness, no Resistance. BW: Next Destinies
55/99 has two attacks, hitting for 10 at a cost of [P]
with “Psyshot” or hitting for 20 with “Smack” at a cost
of [CC]. BW: Plasma Storm 59/135 has just one
attack (Psybolt) that requires a coin flip: “heads”
Paralyze the opponent while “tails” means the attack
does nothing. BW: Legendary Treasures 59/113
also has a single attack, this time “Mind Bend” for
[PC], which does 10 damage and has you flip a coin;
“heads” means the opponent’s Active is also Confused
while “tails” means just the flat 10 damage. XY:
BREAKthrough 68/162 goes back to having two attacks
and indeed one of them is a repeat: it has “Nap” for [P]
which heals 30 damage from itself and brings “Smack”
back, still doing 20 for [CC]. BW: Legendary
Treasures RC9/RC25 is quite aesthetically pleasing,
which is good as it is part of the “Radiant Collection”
subset that was a part of BW: Legendary Treasures.
What isn’t so good is that it only has 40 HP. Its
two attacks are “Hypnotic Gaze” for [P] (which leaves
the opponent’s Active Asleep) and “Pound” for [PC],
which hits for 20 damage. XY: Ancient Origins
52/98 shakes things up by being a Fairy-Type, with 60
HP, Metal Weakness, Darkness Resistance and two attacks:
for [C] it can use “Mumble” to hit for 10 and for [YC]
it can use “Magical Shot” to hit for 20. After all
of that… none of these are particularly good. Go
with what you like but avoid the 40 HP version.
All Kirlia have a Retreat Cost of [C] and none
have either Ancient Trait nor Ability. All
except BW: Legendary Treasures RC9/RC25 have
80 HP (it has only 70) and all except XY:
Ancient Origins 53/98 are Psychic-Types with Psychic
Weakness and no Resistance (XY: Ancient Origins
53/98 is a Fairy-Type with Metal Weakness and Darkness
Resistance). BW: Next Destinies 56/99 can use
“Smack” for [CC] to hit for 20 damage (sensing a pattern
here) or for [PCC] it can use Psychic to do 40 damage
plus 10 more for each Energy attached to the Defending
Pokémon. BW: Plasma Storm 60/135 has a single
attack - Psy Bolt - for [P] and it does 20 damage and
(on a “heads”) Paralyzes the opponent’s Active (“tails”
still does the 20 damage). BW: Legendary Treasures
60/113 brings back “Mind Bend”, still priced at [PC] and
still causing Confusion with a successful coin flip, but
this time doing 20 damage (damage does not depend on
coin flip). For [PCC] it can use “Spinning Attack”
to hit for 40 damage. BW: Legendary Treasures
RC9/RC25 can use “Tiptoe” for [P], which allows you to
draw a card for each [P] Energy attached to it while for
[PC] it can use “Double Slap” to flip two coins, good
for 20 damage per “heads”. XY: Ancient Origins
53/98 can use “Calm Mind” for [C] to heal 30 damage from
itself or “Magical Shot” for [YCC] to hit for 50. XY:
BREAKthrough 69/162 can use “Beckon” to add a
Supporter from your discard pile to hand at a cost of
[P] while for [CC] it can use “Quick Turn” to flip two
coins good for 30 damage per “heads”. It is also
my recommendation, though should only attack when
desperate.
Gardevoir
(BW: Next Destinies 55/99) has actually been
reviewed
here.
That nearly four year old review was horribly
optimistic. A Psychic-Type Stage 2 with 110 HP,
Psychic Weakness, no Resistance and Retreat Cost [CC],
it proved too slow and fragile even as a Bench-sitter.
Its Ability is “Psychic Mirage”, which causes all basic
Psychic Energy attached to your Psychic Pokémon
to provide [P] instead of [PP] and that is actually
pretty good, but it wasn’t good enough. Its “Mind
Shock” attack is poor even factoring in Psychic Mirage
and terrible without it, as it costs [PPCC] to hit for
60 damage while ignoring Weakness and Resistance. Gardevoir
(BW: Legendary Treasures RC10/RC25 surprisingly
also received a
review
when it released. It has 10 more HP and a Retreat
Cost of only [C] but with the same Weakness and (lack
of) Resistance. No Ability this time just two
attacks: “Psybeam” for [PC], hitting for 40 damage and
giving you a coin flip to inflict Paralysis and “Eternal
Radiance” for [PP] which allowed you to move all damage
counters from itself to the Defending Pokémon, with the
catch that you couldn’t use it again the next turn.
That restriction didn’t matter because the card just
wasn’t good enough to bother with anyway.
Gardevoir
(XY: Ancient Origins 54/98) is a Fairy-Type Stage
2 with 130 HP, Metal Weakness, Darkness Resistance, a
Retreat Cost of [CC], an Ability and a single attack.
The former is “Bright Heal” and once per turn per copy
of Bright Heal, you may heal 20 damage from each of your
Pokémon. For [CCC] it can use “Telekinesis” to hit
one of your opponent’s Pokémon for 50 damage (your
choice which). This version didn’t manage a
review. Gallade (BW: Plasma Storm 61/135)
is a Psychic-Type Stage 2 with 140 HP, Psychic Weakness,
no Resistance, Retreat Cost [CC] and two attacks:
Powerful Storm for [CC], which does 20 damage times the
amount of Energy attached to all of your Pokémon and
“Powerful Lunge” for [PPC] which does 80 damage and
forces your opponent to switch their Active with one of
their Benched Pokémon (they get to pick which). It
was reviewed
here
and showed a little potential, but never was quite good
enough. Gallade (BW: Legendary Treasures
81/113) is a Stage 2 Fighting-Type that also has 140 HP,
Psychic Weakness, no Resistance, Retreat Cost [CC] and
two attacks. For [F] it can use “Nerve Shot” to
hit for 30 damage and it lets you flip a coin to try for
Paralysis, while for [FCC] it can use “Pandemonium
Blade” to hit for 60 damage, plus 20 more for each of
your Benched Pokémon with a damage counter on it.
It was reviewed
her;
even with all the new support since then it doesn’t seem
worth it. None of these are worth working into a
deck with today’s card, but if you insist on building a
deck involving any of the other Gallade or
Gardevoir, you probably should make a little room
for today’s Gallade.
The previous five paragraphs hardly matter, hence why I
made it clear you could skip them: you should be putting
Gallade into play via Maxie’s Hidden Ball
Trick. This isn’t just me predicting what
works; the evidence is already out there and yes,
Gallade has quickly become a common sight in decks.
Many of the cards you’d run to help control your hand
size (while still setting up at least a little) to set
up for using Maxie’s Hidden Ball Trick just so
happen to benefit from Premonition. Gallade is
often not the main attacker, but it is a Bench-sitter
that double as the secondary attacker. Sometimes
Gallade competes with Octillery (XY:
BREAKthrough 33/162) as a Bench-sitter sometimes
players successfully combine them so that when you’re
getting less than the full five cards off of “Abyssal
Hand” you can improve its quality with Premonition.
Sometimes it will be the main, though: just check out
the City Championship results on
The Charizard Lounge.
I almost didn’t because I knew a simple Ctrl+F search
would get too many hits due to its supporting nature but
sure enough, one top four finish in Expanded, six more
in Standard plus two second place and four first
place finishes for decks that apparently focused on
Gallade. Even though you won’t get the
damage boost all that often and it will have to Evolve
manually, Gallade is a great pull (and play) for
Limited well!
Ratings
Standard:
4.25/5
Expanded:
4/5
Limited:
4.75/5
Summary:
Gallade is a very impressive card; while built as
a supporting Bench-sitter it packs a strong punch and
has solid HP. Thanks to Maxie’s Hidden Ball
Trick and Double Colorless Energy, you can
never be sure you it won’t pop up. In a few it is
vital because on top of everything else it helps with
Type matching.
I’m embarrassed this card didn’t make our Top 10 list
for XY: BREAKthrough. I sold it short when
I glanced at it and was proven very wrong. Due to
the raw competition, being released towards the end of
the year and fact it got a little representation anyway
thanks to Maxie’s Hidden Ball Trick making the
list, I am only a little uncomfortable Gallade
didn’t make our Top 10 cards of 2015 list. At
least Ness had it as one of his Honorable Mentions.
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