aroramage |
Flying and soaring through the sky,
Togekiss finally makes his own EX debut! What a crazy
sort of thing to happen, am I right? Anywho, let's see
what Togekiss brings to the EX table!
Mighty Wind is actually pretty
dazzling in and of itself. At 1-for-20, it's not that
crazy offensively, but its effect is pretty amazing -
you get to just place an Energy card from your hand onto
one of your Benched Pokemon. While it's a shame it can't
go to Togekiss, since Hurricane Wing costs 4 Energy, the
lack of restriction on what kind of Energy you can put
down is really big! It's not limited to basic Energies -
you can throw down Special Energies too! Now if only
Togekiss-EX didn't require the one Fairy Energy, though
there are other ways around that for other decks...
Now Hurricane Wing isn't much to
look up to, unfortunately. At 4 Energy, it requires
flipping 4 coins and ends up dealing 50 damage for every
heads. Flippy attacks are by nature inconsistent, and on
average you're scoring out about 100 damage on those 4
coins? For 4 Energy? Yeah, no, Hurricane Wing is not
what you wanna use Togekiss-EX for at all.
Basically, Togekiss-EX is an
engorged Energy accelerator for your decks whose Energy
requirements are a bit too specific to work in most
decks. Mighty Wind is a great attack, just on the wrong
set-up. But hey, if you've got a Fairy deck, Togekiss-EX
oughta fit right in!
Rating
Standard: 2/5 (Mighty Wind is the
reason you run Togekiss-EX, and only if you're desperate
do you use Hurricane Wing)
Expanded: 2/5 (I'm sure at the very
least Fairy decks will appreciate the boost)
Limited: 4.5/5 (there's honestly
almost no reason not to play Togekiss-EX in this
format...you get a big bulky Energy accelerator for 1
Fairy Energy...nuff said)
Arora Notealus: Man, I remember
when Togekiss and the whole Togepi family was
Normal-typed. Then Gen VI came around and made them
Fairies...what a crazy turn of events, eh?
Next Time:...wait a minute, you're
not an EX!!
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Otaku |
Togekiss-EX
(XY: BREAKpoint 83/122) is our next-to-last card
this week. It is a Fairy Type, which means only
XY-era Dragon Types take double damage from it while
nothing Resists it. It won’t be legal for a bit,
but the first anti-Fairy Type card has released in the
form of Zygarde (XY: Fates Collide
52/124), but it does so in a way that it probably won’t
be worth it. If there are others, I managed to
overlook them. Fairy Type support is better for
the Energy than the Pokémon themselves, with
Aromatisse (XY 93/146) to move [Y] Energy
around your side of the field, Fairy Garden
providing an easy free retreat for anything with a
source of [Y] Energy attached, and Xerneas (XY
96/146; XY: Black Star Promos XY05) to accelerate
basic Fairy Energy from the deck. Things
specific to the Type like Wonder Energy just
aren’t very good, though it is nice you can make a Fairy
Type immune to the effects of an opponent’s attacks, but
only while it is attached; can’t get rid of ones that
are already in effect and keeping a Special Energy
attached can be more than a little difficult at times.
Being a Pokémon-EX
hasn’t changed since the last three reviews; it isn’t
just my obsessive nature that leads me to repeat how
Pokémon-EX give up an extra Prize when KOed or that
there are several counter cards floating around out
there. It is because it is so easy to neglect the
impact of giving up two Prizes instead of one,
especially for the crowd that still labels all
Pokémon-EX “broken” instead of recognizing that if
anything is broken, it is simple the top level cards
that are most of the competitive metagame and while some
of those are Pokémon-EX, some of them are not… just like
the not-so-good cards can also be Pokémon-EX.
While some anti-Pokémon-EX cards are well known, some
are not and yet the right circumstances can make even
older seemingly forgotten ones relevant. Dwelling
on beneficial effects that exclude Pokémon-EX is mostly
me being obsessive, though some of my CotDs have had to
be corrected because I’ve forgotten Wally can’t
get Pokémon-EX. As Togekiss is normally a
Stage 2, being a Pokémon-EX helps in that it is instead
a Basic Pokémon; no waiting to Evolve, one slot in your
deck is one copy of the card, etc. Being a
Pokémon-EX usually comes with at least a small HP boost
(arguably improvements for some other attributes) and
sometimes with better card effects, but as this week has
reminded us already, not every Pokémon-EX gets a major
boost (and some past ones have shown that some are very
underpowered).
Togekiss-EX
has 170 HP, enough it can often take a hit, but some of
that will be from decks with incomplete setups or which
are using alternative tactics to brute force.
Metal Weakness may actually be one of the safer ones;
while the Type certainly has a presence in competitive
play, it seems to be in a supporting role more often
than as the main attacker. Still a deck fueled by
Bronzong (XY: Phantom Forces 61/119;
XY: Black Star Promos XY21) can always work in one
of their solid attackers like Heatran (XY:
Phantom Forces 63/119) even if something else is the
real star of the deck. Togekiss-EX does get to
enjoy Resistance, and its even to a prominent Type right
now: Darkness. An effective 190 against OHKOs
instead of a 170, an even larger (effective) buff
against smaller hits may not always matter, but your
opponent will really have to be careful when crunching
numbers with cards like Yveltal-EX. The
Retreat Cost of Togekiss-EX is just [C], which is
good. Obvious a free Retreat Cost is the best and
with Fairy Garden as a probable Stadium, a high
Retreat Cost wouldn’t have mattered, but Fairy Garden
isn’t always going to be there.
Togekiss-EX
has two attacks, but no Ancient Trait or Ability, just
the the rest of the cards we’ve looked at so far this
week. For [Y] it can use “Mighty Wind” to attach
an Energy from your hand to one of your Benched Pokémon;
it doesn’t specify “Basic” so you can drop Special
Energy cards like Double Colorless Energy,
Rainbow Energy, Wonder Energy, etc. as well.
The attack also does 20 damage, so your can accelerate
while still mounting some form of offense. The
second attack is “Hurricane Wing” for [YCCC]; flip four
coins and score 50 damage per “heads” (“tails” are worth
nothing). You know the drill; with four coin flips
there are 16 possible outcomes; so 6.25% chance of
whiffing totally versus the same odds of a stellar 200
damage, 25% of a mere 50 damage versus a 25% chance of
an impressive 150, and the most likely is getting a
mediocre 100 points of damage as that is 37.5% of the
possible outcomes. You always have the risk of
underperforming balanced against the risk of over
performing, with the added complication that anytime you
end up with overkill, it goes to waste. Reliable
attacks end up in overkill territory all the time, but
by being reliable it doesn’t come across as a “wasted”
lucky shot. So one small, good attack plus one
large, not-so-good attack means what exactly?
Togekiss-EX
may have some potential as an opener in decks with a
good source of [Y] Energy. You’re not any Energy
ahead if you only managed to pull off a single Mighty
Wind, but you do have Togekiss-EX doing 20 while
hopefully taking the hit instead of what you’re setting
up, and sometimes that is enough. Its main
competition is the aforementioned Xerneas, as
even if it is just two basic Fairy Energy cards
(since no Special Energy provides [Y] while in the deck)
and its “Geomancy” attack has to attach them to two
different targets on the Bench, it is still two Energy
versus one and if your opponent does manage to KO the
130 HP Xerneas, it’s only worth a single Prize.
Its second attack (Rainbow Spear) is costly as it needs
[YYC] to do 100 plus it discards an Energy card from
itself, but at least that’s reliable in a deck with a
lot of [Y] Energy. As far as Fairy Type Basic
Pokémon-EX go, while they haven’t proven much there are
still better attackers among them when it comes to
damage. All isn’t lost for Togekiss-EX
though; again it could hypothetically find some use in
decks that need the Special Energy acceleration over
basic Energy, which could mean working off Type, though
that [Y] Energy requirement is troublesome there.
If someone ever gets Florges (XY: BREAKthrough
103/162) to work, its “Calming Aura” Ability drops the
cost of Mighty Wind to zero Energy; if you go first you
might avoid ever having to pay for Mighty Wind… but such
a deck is probably focused on other cards that can now
attack for zero or one Energy, so not much point to it.
So neither Standard
nor Expanded look all that great for Togekiss-EX,
how about Limited? Energy acceleration is almost
as valuable as draw or search in Limited, so yeah,
unless you absolutely cannot make room for
whatever else you want to run plus Togekiss-EX
and some basic Fairy Energy cards, you should be
including it. You should be able to get off multiple
uses of Mighty Wind before you just retreat out of the
Active slot to whatever you were building. A bit
risky as your opponent may be able to hit the Bench and
still claim a sweet two Prizes (and you only play with
four Prizes in Limited!), but I think it is worth it.
What isn’t worth it is using it on its own in a +39
build; if this is your only Basic in your 40 card
Limited deck sure you are guaranteed to open with it,
but there won’t be a Bench to receive any extra Energy
attachments. That means Togekiss-EX is just
doing 20 for a few turns before hoping you flip a lot of
“heads” with Hurricane Wing. You’re giving your
opponent three turns to take out most of the bonus HP
Pokémon-EX enjoy, and they’ll have another three turns
to finish the deal. Just doesn’t seem worth the
risk.
Ratings
Standard:
2.75/5
Expanded:
2.75/5
Limited:
4.25/5
Summary:
Togekiss-EX provides a way to accelerate any
Energy from hand to your Bench, but only one Energy at a
time through a single attack per turn. This just
isn’t going to cut it but mostly due to the competition
for deck space; if Xerneas wasn’t already the
go-to opener for Fairy Transfer decks, Togekiss-EX
would have a reasonable shot.
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