aroramage |
Finally rounding out our week here,
we've got Noivern BREAK! He's certainly
got...well...gold!
I dunno what I'm gonna do with him-
Alright, so the thing about Noivern
BREAK is that he was given an attack that would work
well in tandem with a certain Noivern card that got
released in this set. Noivern BREAK himself is equipped
with the Synchro Woofer attack, which is 3-for-70 damage
and adds on an extra 80 damage when you've got the same
number of cards in your hand as your opponent does.
...really, game?
I've already talked about this sort
of problem before - while it can be done, the Ability to
do so isn't always guaranteed. Players may play out most
of their hand because it's Items or Pokemon, that sort
of thing, and then the other player trying to match it
might not always be capable of doing so, such as with
getting stuck with Energy because you've attached one
already or a Supporter that you drew into thanks to
Sycamore. It isn't going to come up often, but when it
does, it's usually because of cards like Noivern BREAK
that want you to monitor your opponent's hand.
Now to be fair, the Noivern in this
set does have an attack that aims to alleviate this in
the form of Tuning; for 1 Energy, you can reshuffle your
hand back into your deck and draw cards equal to your
opponent's hand. The only problem is that this doesn't
guarantee Noivern BREAK getting Synchro Woofer off,
since the opponent can still play their hand down, and
depending on what you drew due to Tuning (or didn't
draw, if the opponent had no cards in hand), you may be
putting yourself at a disadvantage. Not that you'd ever
aim to use Air Slash from this Noivern anyway.
Personally, I'd match Noivern BREAK
with the Noivern from Furious Fists with Echolocation -
that way you've got some form of protection and a mass
attack, then you can use Synchro Woofer for those
moments when the stars align and you and your opponent
have the same number of cards in hand. Outside of that
strategy, Noivern BREAK is a good enough example of a
BREAK Evolution that's...mediocre at best.
Kinda like how Megas started.
Rating
Standard: 2/5 (his attack is
reliant on you monitoring your opponent's hand in order
to deal more damage, which is a bit tricky)
Expanded: 2/5 (doable, but tricky)
Limited: 3/5 (you'd really only aim
to use it in formats like this one)
Arora Notealus: My only question
about BREAK Evos at this point is why they get all that
Thunder Armor. And if you've watched a certain episode
in the anime, YOU KNOW EXACTLY WHAT I'M TALKING ABOUT.
Weekend Thought: Feeling
electrified after this week's round-up? What's your
opinion on some of the BREAK Evolutions? Do you think
the mechanic bolsters Evolving Pokemon, or does it just
make those decks clunkier and less consistent? And does
that impact the competitive usage? Would you run BREAK
Evos competitively if they were strong, or are the
current ones just not up to the standards of
competition?
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Otaku |
We end
the week, and effectively the month, with Noivern
BREAK (XY: BREAKthrough 113/162). As I
am paranoid concerned that new and some older
(especially returning) players might have some issues
with the BREAK Evolution mechanics, let’s run through
those quick. “BREAK” is both the card’s Stage and
a part of the card’s name, hence why I italicize it as
part of the name. This means you can have up to
four Noivern BREAK in a deck alongside four
regular Noivern. Longtime players may
remember the old Level-Up mechanic which confusingly
gave us cards with things like “LV.X” after the name, in
a different sized font, and thus did not count as
part of the name, which in turn meant the Level-Up cards
counted as having the same name as that from which they
Leveled Up. Unlike BREAK Evolutions, Level-Up
cards were not considered Evolution cards, having
their own specific rules to be put into play as well as
counting as whatever Stage the underlying card had been.
BREAK Evolutions are their own Stage, even though
some BREAK Evolutions Evolve from a Stage 1 (like
today’s card) while others Evolve from a Stage 2 (like
Florges BREAK, which we have
already reviewed).
BREAK
Evolutions follow all the normal rules of Evolution save
being played sideways (so that their art and text are
rightside-up) and still referencing the bits of the card
beneath that still show (which should be any Abilities,
attacks, Weakness, Resistance and Retreat Cost on the
previous Stage). Though the BREAK Evolution of a
Stage 1 is practically a Stage 2, (needing you to play a
Basic, wait a turn, Evolve into a Stage 1, wait a turn
and then finally BREAk Evolve) like the BREAK Evolution
of a Stage 2 it is neither a Stage 1 nor a Stage 2.
Effects that refer to Evolutions in general apply to
BREAK Evolutions, but those that cite a specific Stage
have no effect (good or bad) on BREAK Evolutions.
You cannot put a BREAK Evolution into play without the
previous Stage. While not relevant to Noivern
BREAK, this means a Fighting-Type or Water-Type
BREAK Evolution can’t use Maxie’s Hidden Ball Trick
or(respectively) Archie’s Ace in the Hole.
You cannot use Rare Candy to Evolve from
Noibat to Noivern BREAK, but you can use
Evosoda or Wally to on Noibat to get
to Noivern and/or Noivern to get to
Noivern BREAK. When dealing with the BREAK
Evolution of a Stage 2, you can use Rare Candy
to go from Basic to Stage 2, then Wally into the
BREAK Evolution or wait a turn to manually Evolve or use
Evosoda. If an effect bounces the highest
Stage of Evolution, it will hit the BREAK Evolution on a
card because again BREAK Evolutions count as
their own Stage.
With
that out of the way, Noivern BREAK is going to
function like a Stage 2 Pokémon without the usual
benefits. No card effects currently refer to BREAK
Evolutions directly, that is neither benefit for a
detriment. Noivern BREAK is a Dragon-Type, which
means no exploiting Weakness except against BW-era
Dragon-Types (a small pool of candidates), no dealing
with Resistance, rarely dealing with cards that are
explicitly anti-Dragon-Type (there are a few, but they
aren’t really worth playing), and benefitting from what
Dragon-Type support is available (more on which bits
matter later). 130 HP is the lower of the two scores
we’ve seen on BREAK Evolutions that Evolve from Stage 1,
but the high is just 140, which is only marginally
better. Basically Noivern BREAK has a solid
chance of surviving an attack, though that includes
lower damage decks focused as much or more on attack
effects than damage. What strikes me as odd is
that, looking at the Stage 1 forms with BREAK
Evolutions, Noivern have more HP than any of the
others (either 100 or 110), so I’m not sure why it got
the lower HP score for its BREAK Evolution.
Weakness, Resistance and Retreat Cost are provided by
whichever Noivern you Evolved from, so let’s move
on.
Noivern
BREAK
brings a single attack called “Synchro Woofer” which
requires [PDC] and does 70+ damage. The “plus” in
this case is that if both players have the same amount
of cards in hand, the attack does an additional 80
damage. The cost to use is a bit of a pain but in
general, 70 for three is only lackluster and not truly
horrible… and that’s the attacks lesser result. If
you can even up hands then 150 for three is a really
good return. With a Muscle Band, assuming
no other effects reduce or prevent damage or otherwise
prevent a OHKO, Synchro Woofer can one-shot anything
other than Wailord (BW: Dragons Exalted
26/124), Chesnaught BREAK, the larger half of
Basic Pokémon-EX, and all Mega Evolutions. For
what is effectively a Stage 2, this isn’t hugely
impressive but with the right support, it might be
functional. Before we talk about that, we should
discuss the path to reaching Noivern BREAK.
Noibat
comes in four varieties: the confusing to designate
XY: Trainer Kit Noivern Half-Deck 12/30 (and 23/30),
XY: Furious Fists 87/111, XY: BREAKthrough
131/162, and XY: BREAKthrough 132/162. All
are Colorless-Type Basics with Lightning Weakness,
Fighting Resistance, Retreat Cost [C], no Ancient Trait
and no Ability. All but XY: BREAKthrough
131/162 have 60 HP; it has 50 HP. XY: Trainer Kit
Noivern Half-Deck 12/30 can use “Super Sonic” for
[C] to flip a coin with “heads” inflicting Confusion on
the opponent’s Active and “tails” doing nothing, while
for [CCC] it can use “Wing Attack” to hit for 30 damage.
XY: Furious Fists 87/111 can use “Tackle” for
[C] to hit for 10 damage or “Gust” for [CC] to do 20. XY:
BREAKthrough 131/162 can use “Blot” for [C] to do 10
damage while healing 10 from itself. XY:
BREAKthrough 132/162 needs [C] to use Mysterious
Beam so that you may flip a coin and if “heads” discard
an Energy attached to your opponent’s Active Pokémon
(“tails” does nothing) while also sporting Gust for [CC]
to do 20 damage. XY: Trainer Kit Noivern Half-Deck
12/30 and XY: BREAKthrough 132/162 are probably
the best picks; you’re more than a bit desperate if you
are attacking with Noibat in the first place
depending on what your opponent is running, Super Sonic
or Mysterious Beam might disrupt their strategy or be
pretty meaningless.
Noivern
has three options: XY: Trainer Kit Noivern Half-Deck
13/30 (and 30/30), XY: Furious Fists 77/111, and
XY: BREAKthrough 112/162. All are Stage 1
Dragon-Type Pokémon with Fairy Weakness, no Resistance,
Retreat Cost [C] and no Ancient Traits.
Interestingly, all have attacks with a [PDC] cost, like
we saw on Noivern BREAK. XY: Trainer Kit
Noivern Half-Deck 13/30 has 110 HP and two attacks.
For [CC] it can use “Second Bite” to do 20 damage plus
another 10 per damage counter on the opponent’s Active
Pokémon. This is a solid attack useful as a
finishing blow. It’s [PDC] attack is “Sonic
Bazooka”, which does 60 damage and has you flip a coin:
“heads” does 30 more damage and Confuses the opponent’s
Active while “tails” just means the base 60 damage.
This is not a good attack: without the coin toss
it would be acceptable but unimpressive. XY: Furious
Fists 77/111 has 100 HP with an Ability and single
attack. The Ability is “Echolocation”, which
allows you to flip a coin anytime “this Pokémon” would
be damaged by an attack and if it is “heads”, the damage
is prevented. “Tails” means the damage still goes
through and it doesn’t do anything against attack
effects. It is potent even if it is flippy.
It’s [PDC] attack is “Boomburst”, which does 30 damage
to each of your opponent’s Pokémon. It shouldn’t
often matter but the attack doesn’t apply Weakness or
Resistance for Benched Pokémon. This attack is
overpriced with multiple cards that can do less but cost
a lot less, do the same but are Basics, and do
something similar for less. Once again though that
doesn’t mean the attack is worthless, it just is a lot
less effective than it should be. This one
actually got a review
here.
XY:
BREAKthrough
112/162 also has 100 HP, this time with the two attacks
and nothing else. For [C] it can use “Tuning” to
shuffle your hand away and draw a number of cards equal
to your opponent’s hand. Even though it lacks a
coin flip requirement like so many other effects we’ve
covered, this is very hit-or-miss. Your opponent
needs a sizable enough hand that copying it will be a
benefit worth using an attack on a Stage 1 that doesn’t
have much chance of surviving. Most decks keep a
moderately sized hand between turns not out of planning
but because said decks are trying to quickly set-up, so
only a few cards are held in hand in reserve for the
next turn. While you could always combine this
with an effect that increases your opponent’s hand size,
nothing does so affordably enough to create a good
combo. At least it’s [PDC] attack is actually
solid, doing 120 damage though you do have to discard an
Energy card from itself (which only matters if it
survives the next turn). 120 for three is a solid
foundation for a couple combos, but at the very least
should be a solid 2HKO against almost everything in the
format (the exception being Wailord-EX and
Pokémon with protective effects and HP buffs).
So
first and foremost, should you use Noivern BREAK
at all? I’m not sold on it but once again, we’ve
got City Championship results to give us some extra
guidance. Once again I am relying on
The Charizard Lounge
because they have supplied the data in a convenient form
and without hiding some of it behind a paywall.
They also have an article discussing the results that is
worth a read as well. Getting back to Noivern
BREAK, it managed one Top 8 finish for all of the
Masters Division City Championships and one Top 4 finish
in Expanded. That is low enough that it could be a
solid deck that just needs more (and/or more skilled)
players running it to claim more of the metagame or it
could mean it simply had a few lucky, high finishes.
If you’ve got the time and the cards, this looks like it
might be worth trying. If you do, which Noivern
ought you to use? We don’t have details on that
from those few lists that did well, so I can only guess.
A hint
might be that Noivern (XY: Furious Fists
77/111) that shows up three times (with one unspecified
Noivern) in Top 8 finishers, some Standard and
some Expanded. It even manages a third and a
fourth place win. It operates with backup. I
would have expected something like a clutch Bronzong
(XY: Phantom Forces 61/119) plus Double Dragon
Energy and maybe Smeargle (XY:
BREAKthrough 123/132) for Energy acceleration, but
it looks like just Double Dragon Energy and/or
Yveltal (XY 74/146; XY: Black Star Promos
XY06) using its “Oblivion Wing” attack. From there
the deck seeks to exploit the damage spread by using
Dusknoir (BW: Boundaries Crossed 63/149;
BW: Plasma Blast 104/101) or Meowstic (XY:
Flashfire 43/106) to move the damage counters around
or Gengar (XY: BREAKthrough 60/162) as the
follow up because it’s “Creep Show” attack will score a
KO via effect against anything with three or more damage
counters on it. If you are lucky with coin flips,
you might even just spam Boomburst until you eventually
rack up sufficient damage, though you’ll need to mind
effects that block damage to the Bench (like Mountain
Ring). So with this, perhaps using Noivern
BREAK well is as simple as tacking it on to the
strategy; when Echolocation works, you’ll have an
undamaged Noivern from which to BREAK Evolve and
then it will take a slightly bigger attack to score the
OHKO when Echolocation fails. Or maybe you just
run cards like Judge and possibly something to
effectively increase damage so that Synchro Woofer
starts scoring OHKOs.
So that
covers Standard and Expanded play. In Limited
play, if you pull what is needed to run Noivern BREAK,
the only reason not to go with it is if you pulled so
many useful but incompatible cards that you can’t fit
them all in the same deck… or of course a nice, big
Basic Pokémon-EX that can just be it’s own deck.
The [PDC] attack costs will take time to build up to but
you do get two Noibat to work with (and both are
better here) and Noivern (XY: BREAKthrough
112/162) also functions much better, with both attacks
often being worthwhile.
Ratings
Standard:
2.25/5
Expanded:
2.25/5
Limited:
4.5/5
Summary:
Noivern BREAK offers 30 or 40 HP boost and an
“okay” attack to Noivern decks, but there weren’t
a lot of Noivern decks in the first place.
There were some though, as we discussed, that did show
up during City Championships and a handful that managed
Top 8 finishes. All in all, this leaves me a bit
less impressed than I was with Raichu BREAK, and
a lot of its usefulness owes to how potent Raichu
(XY 43/146) remains in competitive play. Noivern
BREAK is far from hopeless, itself managing to show
up in the Top 8 for two City Championships. That
might be a fluke, or that might mean it is a solid deck
that just needs a little luck… and just like you can’t
rely on luck to keep your deck going, you can’t rely on
it to fail your opponent, either. Overall, keep
this card in mind and if you’ve got the resources,
experiment.
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