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Pojo's Pokémon Card of the Day

 

Top 10 Fates Collide

#1 - Regirock EX

- Fates Collide

Date Reviewed:
May 20, 2016

Ratings & Reviews Summary

Standard: 4.25
Expanded: 4.25
Limited: 4.75

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

Back to the main COTD Page


aroramage

Long ago in an ancient time, three great statues were erected and brought to life, each composed of one of three elements: metal, ice, and rock. Only one has been graced with the power of the legendary EX, and now the second great golem is graced with the greatness of EX-dom! Ladies and gents, Regirock-EX!

Regirock-EX carries over the 180 HP score of most EX and brings an Ability and an attack to the table. Bedrock Press isn't terribly exciting, at 3-for-100 and the effect of reducing damage by 20. Not to say that's a bad attack, honestly it's one of the better ones I know of, but all things considered it's not what makes Regirock-EX so exciting to talk about. No, that belongs to his Ability of course, Regi Power. 

Aptly named, Regi Power gives Regirock-EX the power to tack on an extra 10 damage to every Fighting Pokemon's damage score, outside of any Regirock-EX. Sounds familiar, right? Well it should, since Deoxys-EX (PLF) had the exact same Ability for Team Plasma Pokemon! This made Plasma decks a bit more troublesome to deal with, as back in those days they had to deal with Plasma's power and the threat of HTLBank. 

There is one major difference between Regirock-EX and Deoxys-EX though, and that's mainly in what he supports. Deoxys-EX only helped out a certain kind of Pokemon, the blue-bordered Team Plasma Pokemon, whereas Regirock-EX helps out Fighting-types. And if there's one thing about Fighting-types that everyone knows, it's that they are ALL about that damage boosting! Strong Energy, Fighting Stadium, and now Regirock-EX! 

Regirock-EX is going to do a lot for Fighting decks, so if you're a big Fighter, bring along anywhere from 3-4 of this guy, cause every little bit counts! 

Rating 

Standard: 4.5/5 (the power Regirock-EX brings is no doubt the best part about him, even if he won't bring it to himself) 

Expanded: 4.5/5 (the power...THE POWER!!) 

Limited: 5/5 (if you're lucky enough to pull Regirock-EX, you should probably run him with any Fighting types you've got!) 

Arora Notealus: We're entering another bit of aggressive deck building - rejoice! Or flail about with me as we try and figure out how to live in the new world. Personally, I welcome our new Regi-Overlords. 

Weekend Thought: Do you agree with our Top 10 list? Think some cards should have been higher? Think some of them ought to be lower? Think there's some that should have been on the list while others taken off? Who knows what the future holds, but one thing's for sure - there's going to be some interesting decks in these first few weeks.


Otaku

According to the collective efforts of the Card of the Day crew here at Pojo, the number one best card from XY: Fates Collide is… Regirock-EX (XY:Fates Collide 43/124)!  We’ve already mentioned it a few times in the other reviews leading up to today, and as I am usually not the first listed review, you’ve also probably already had much shorter explanations given, but we are still going to run through it all so that you know exactly what it is we have here. 

The Fighting Type is the best Type for a Pokémon to be right now.  Almost everything a Type can have going for it, Fighting does: Weakness to the Fighting Type is found on most Colorless Types, nearly all Darkness Types, and nearly all Lightning Types.  That would be good in general, but Fighting Types gain access to a lot of direct support, which includes tricks to boost damage like Fighting Stadium, Strong Energy and of course Regirock-EX itself now; already explosive starts become OHKOs when Weakness is involved.  Additional support comes in the form of cards like Korrina to provide both Pokémon and Item search at the same time, Focus Sash for when you do need to think more defensively by potentially denying the opponent a OHKO, and Carbink BREAK if you can hold off on unleashing your really big attacks for a few turns to instead do less damage while attaching Energy from your discard.  Less direct is Maxie’s Hidden Ball Trick as while it doesn’t do Regirock-EX a lot of good (still a legal target though) it makes Evolved Fighting Types more competitive and better able to use Regirock-EX, Scorched Earth to help set up for Carbink BREAK while providing a little extra draw power, and a plethora of potent pugilists for Regirock-EX to power up.  The minimal drawbacks are that while “no Resistance” is the most common, next after that is Fighting Resistance and while -20 damage isn’t much it does matter in a tight situation, and (from what I can find) two anti-Fighting Type cards: Cryogonal (BW: Noble Victories 32/101) and Walrein (XY: Primal Clash 48/160).  They simply have attacks that hit Fighting Types a bit harder, which hasn’t been enough for them to see competitive play. 

Being a Pokémon-EX on the other hand is mostly drawbacks, at least for what is guaranteed; unless a specific Pokémon-EX includes something to counteract it, they always give up an extra Prize when KOed (as per rules text on each Pokémon-EX), are specifically targeted and countered in some capacity by several cards (well established in the card pool), and they cannot make use of certain otherwise beneficial cards (less numerous but still already present in the card pool).  This is why the Pokémon-EX that not only see competitive play but often dominate the metagame tend to have good (if not great) attributes and effects.  For attributes, this usually manifests with the HP.  Regirock-EX enjoys 180 HP, the higher of the two typical amounts for Basic Pokémon-EX.  This is 60 or 70 higher than the two most recent “regular” Regirock cards and will make Regirock-EX an unlikely KO.  In this case, that means the decks that are geared for OHKOs will still manage it, those focused on attacking for effects or spread won’t, and most in the middle will be have the capacity but not to score a OHKO rapidly, regularly, or reliably. 

I was a bit surprised to see Grass Weakness on this card.  The short (by my standards) version is that video game Regirock are Rock Types, which are Fighting, Ground, Steel, Water, and Grass Weak.  I thought the TCG had moved towards standardizing the Rock Type based TCG Fighting Type Pokémon with Water Weakness but I appear to have been mistaken.  The Metal Weakness translates directly from the Steel, and would have been both interesting and potentially a bit safer; no Weakness is the only safe one, but with 180 HP there will be some instances where Grass Weakness will matter, though it mostly means a OHKO with less resources required than without and might be more relevant for enabling supporting Pokémon like Virizion-EX to manage a 2HKO instead of a 4HKO.  Regirock-EX has no Resistance, which is typical so I won’t be docking points.  It actually has four in the video games (Normal, Flying, Poison, and Fire) though, while I get skipping Psychic since it includes not only Poison but video game Psychic and Ghost Types, I can only assume it is the aversion to having anything Colorless or Fire Resistant causing either of those to be excluded (Colorless is Normal plus Flying).  The Retreat Cost of [CCC] is chunky; make sure you have an out to avoid paying it, or at least paying it at full price.  It does allow Regirock-EX to use Heavy Ball and Heavy Boots, and Heavy Ball may actually prove relevant. 

Regirock-EX made the list for its Ability “Regi Power” that increases the damage your Fighting Pokémon do by 10.  The attack specifically states it does not increase the damage done by cards named Regirock-EX.  Especially for long time players, it can be easy to forget this does not just apply to that particular copy of Regirock-EX, but any and all cards named Regirock-EX.  So even if you have four it play, they can’t help each other out, only Fighting Types with a different name.  Also well worth noting is that this boost applies before Weakness and Resistance, which is how it generally works when the boost happens because of an effect on the attacking Pokémon.  It means against Fighting Weak Pokémon you get an effective +20 damage, and against Fighting Resistance you have a better chance of punching through.  Regirock-EX does have a single attack as well, called “Bedrock Press”.  Perhaps showing my age, that sounds like a Flintstones newspaper to me.  The attack requires [FFF] and does 100 damage, while reducing the damage Regirock-EX (that is, “this Pokémon”) takes during your opponent’s next turn by 20 after Weakness and Resistance.  The damage and effect are at best adequate for what you are investing, but underwhelming is far better than something blatantly overpriced.  If you use it, besides needing to remember Regi Power can’t boost it, you also need to remember that with Weakness applying first, you’re only effectively reducing the damage from Grass Types by 10. 

There are no other cards named Regirock-EX; I’ll use this as an excuse to remind players who are experimenting with older cards that Regirock-ex (EX: Hidden Legends 98/101) and Regirock-ex (EX: Emerald 99/106) are considered to have different names: capitalization matters.  If you are really new to the game, so does the “-EX” suffix in general: Regirock (XY: Black Star Promos XY49) and Regirock (XY: Ancient Origins 40/98) also are totally separate cards from Regirock-EX as far as the TCG is concerned.  You could run four Regirock-EX alongside four copies of either Regirock (or a combination of those two), and in Unlimited you could even run four copies either Regirock-ex (or a combination of those) as well.  Not something I expect would do all that well in Unlimited play, where last I checked there were still plenty of decks that could win first turn even without attacking, but it does bring us to an important point for all Fighting Type cards that are still legal in the Expanded and Standard card pools; it is time to give them a look again.  Most are not going to get enough of a boost to matter, or even if it does matter running them in a competitive deck precludes room for Regirock-EX (either due to Bench space, specific deck requirements, or both). 

Regirock (XY: Black Star Promos XY49) provides an example of something that would like to increase its damage but which can’t afford to have Regirock-EX on the Bench.  Thanks to Puzzle of Time, without relying on having some other Pokémon in play or a coin flip, you may now recycle your Ace Spec card twice during a match.  Regirock (XY: Black Star Promos XY49) has the Ancient Trait “Ω Barrier” so both it, the Energy attached to it, and any Pokémon Tools attached to it are protected from the effects of your opponent’s Trainers that are not put into play.  This means you can load Regirock up with Strong Energy, slap a Focus Sash on it, and barring a few non-general tricks, your opponent cannot OHKO your Regirock and also cannot easily get rid of anything attached to it.  You try to open with a Wobbuffet (XY: Phantom Forces 36/119; Generations RC11/RC32), maybe include Robo Substitute if you need another punching bag to feed your opponent, and once you get started Regirock tries to swing for a OHKO and whether it succeeds or fails, you Scramble Switch all that Energy onto the next Regirock, heal the original, and repeat.  It has a very slow set up and I don’t know if it will finally graduate into a competitive archetype (retroactively becoming an official rogue deck) by winning or at least placing well at an event, or if the only reason people know about it is because it is a tricky match even if you know it is coming and difficult if you blindly stumble into it so it has received some hype.  What I do know is that I wanted to share it with our readers and it ended up being a good example of a deck that would love the damage boost, but just cannot afford to have Regirock-EX on the Bench.  The entire point is that once the deck gets going, there is nothing your opponent can Lysandre up front for a KO. 

Where it should work are already strong attackers that can spare the Bench space.  Landorus-EX, Lucario-EX, the new Zygarde-EX; all of these make sense to run with Regirock-EX sitting on the Bench, added to the pile of damage buffs.  For the single Energy strikes, this is mostly a matter of ensuring the 2HKO against bigger targets, though a few cards now fall into OHKO range that did not before.  The bigger attacks though can finally rise to the “OHKO everything” level.  Well, everything but cards like Jolteon-EX if it just used “Flash Ray”.  It is also important to remember that not every deck will need to shoot for four copies on the Bench.  Think back to Deoxys-EX; while you had some Plasma Decks that did want to get four copies to the field ASAP, some just needed one or two in order to ensure big attackers their OHKO against Mega Evolutions.  With Carbink BREAK for Energy acceleration and Maxie’s Hidden Ball Trick to allow Evolutions to hit the field faster, a lot of decks that were near misses, functional but not competitive enough to reliably top cut, are worth another try.

For Limited play, this can really do wonders if you have one of the Evolution packs that include Fighting Types.  If you get no other Fighting Types worth boosting, the question is whether your deck can still make enough room for enough basic Fighting Energy for you to be able to afford Bedrock Press.  If Everything else has mostly Colorless costs it is plausible, but much less appealing.  You might consider running it completely on its own; the bad news is that your opponent will get two turns to attack Regirock-EX without any fear of retaliation.  The good news is that after you get Bedrock Press up and running you’ll take 20 less damage while doing 100 per turn.  You only play with four Prizes instead of the usual six in Limited; if your opponent isn’t able to set up an Evolution or their own big Basic during that time, you’ve probably secured the win by then.  The real risk is your opponent also building a deck around a lucky big, Basic Pokémon-EX pull; Zygarde-EX is not something you want to see on your opponent’s field, especially as his or her opening Basic. 

Ratings 

Standard: 4/5 

Expanded: 4/5 

Limited: 4.5/5 

Summary: Regirock-EX has such broad usage within the Fighting Type that I found it easier to give an example of a Fighting deck that could not make good use of it instead of trying to focus on the ones that could.  This card is like Deoxys-EX, except instead of working with the new gimmick (at the time Team Plasma cards) it works with a Pokémon Type that already has so much going for it.  Unless we get another major instance of power or HP creep so that it no longer can speed up KOs, we should be seeing lots of it. 

Did it deserve to be the number one pick?  It definitely earned the most voting points at 34, but that amount is actually about what it would have earned if everyone had also ranked it as their fourth or fifth place choice.  In fact I did rank it fifth on my own list.  Being an effective Bench-sitter isn’t glamorous, and bumping damage by 10 isn’t overly creative or exciting, but it is obviously good.  So obvious that this was the card where we all not only agree, but at a higher level than any other card, though Carbink BREAK came close.  So while not thrilling, that does seem like a satisfactory conclusion for the list.  Regirock-EX is probably the only card on this list where I recommend getting a full four (and where the others might agree).

the
grovyle
kid

Regirock-EX is pretty simple. When it's in play, it adds 10 damage to your Fighting Pokémon's attack. This is inherently good for Fighting-type Pokémon, as the extra 10 damage adds up quickly and can let you knock out things you wouldn't normally be able too. And that's about it for Regirock. There isn't really any creative applications for the card, it just adds damage.
 
I had Regirock-EX as my seventh place pick.


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