aroramage |
Clearly when you've got a card that
has two attacks that only cost 1 Energy, that's
definitely something to worth noting. Just like if a
Pokemon could use any of their attacks for just a DCE!
Looking at you, Tauros-GX.
But let's ignore that for a moment
and talk about Golduck, the Stage 1 evo of everyone's
favorite confused duck. He's got two attacks, the first
of which is Scratch at a vanilla 1-for-20. Not a great
start. Then there's Double Jet, which for 1 Energy gives
you the option to discard up to 2 Water Energies and
deal 60 damage for each. Now 1-for-120 is great, but
consider that you're going to minus off of this attack
greatly while potential fueling up your discard pile for
Energy acceleration that Water decks...don't honestly
have, last I checked. Best case is you're using
Fisherman to combo with this, and that means you're
running a Supporter for a Stage 1 that does in an attack
what Greninja decks do with their Abilities.
Hmmm...Golduck's got potential, I
suppose, but is now the best time for the duck? Cause
otherwise he's still got a Free Retreat Cost.
Rating
Standard: 1.5/5 (personally, I'm of
the opinion that Golduck has potential...but not right
now)
Expanded: 1.5/5 (the reliance on
discarding Energy consistently to use his attack, which
is potent, is a bit of a letdown)
Limited: 3.5/5 (even though doing
120 for 1 Energy is AWESOME)
Arora Notealus: 2HKOs are a
treasure in this day and age, and Golduck does offer an
interesting cheap variant - heck, even a cheap OHKO
against Fire-types. But to that end, it's hard to really
see how you'd be able to consistently and effective
cycle through Double Jet's cost in order to make things
work. Don't get me wrong, it could work...just not all
the time.
Next Time: Wait a sec, this card's
not even FROM this set?! What's going on?!
|
Otaku |
Today is the
birthday of George Washington and (over two centuries
later) of my sister. Happy birthday Jennie!
Today is also the
day we look at Golduck (Sun & Moon
29/149). This is a Water Type, so it can exploit
the Weakness found on nearly all Fire and some Fighting
Type Pokémon. Water Resistance was still a thing
back in the BW-era, where many Grass Types had it, but I
can’t recall any examples of it on XY-era or new Sun
& Moon cards. There are some anti-Water
effects, but you’re not likely to see them in most
competitive decks except Parallel City;
that Stadium is run for its Bench-shrinking effect but
applies a 20 point damage reduction to Grass, Fire, and
Water Type Pokémon and sometimes, your opponent will be
able to endure or even want to shrink his or her Bench.
Water Type support includes some nice tricks, like
Archie’s Ace in the Hole (probably not relevant
here), Dive Ball, Rough Seas (shared with
Lightning Types), and Splash Energy (if you can
keep it from being discarded). Water Energy tricks
that are not also restricted to Water Pokémon
include the infamous Blastoise (BW: Boundaries
Crossed 31/149; BW: Plasma Storm 137/135;
BW: Plasma Blast 16/101), Manaphy zeroing out
Retreat Costs for Pokémon with a source of [W] Energy
attached, and Palkia-EX (XY: BREAKpoint
31/122) accelerating Energy. Finally, for the
Water Type, it is home to both great Water Type
attackers and Bench-sitters, including some that qualify
as both: Glaceon-EX, Keldeo-EX, Regice,
Seismitoad-EX, etc. These cards are often
included in multi-Type decks but also benefit greatly
from being in a deck focused on their own Type (as is
usually the case).
Golduck
is a Stage 1 Pokémon, so while it isn’t as fast or
space-efficient as a Basic, it isn’t dramatically slow
or clunky; many Stage 1 cards have proven themselves,
even recently. They even have a few bits of
Stage-specific support, like Flareon (XY:
Ancient Origins 13/98), Jolteon (XY:
Ancient Origins 26/98), and Vaporeon (XY:
Ancient Origins 22/98). I don’t think that
last one is going to matter to Golduck, but the
first two might. Golduck has 90 HP, high enough
to be out of what I think of as
“All-but-guaranteed-OHKO-range!”, but unless the
opponent is still setting up I would expect it to go
down in one shot most of the time. There is a
small upside to this, as - assuming you’re not running a
deck that ought to run (more?) Dive Ball and/or
Ultra Ball instead, you can use Level Ball
to fetch it. The Grass Weakness isn’t as bad as it
might be specifically because of the HP; anything doing
90+ already has a OHKO, anything doing 40 or less still
whiffs on the OHKO, so only attacks that do 50, 60, 70,
or 80 really benefit. Lack of Resistance is a bit
disappointing but expected, so we’ll move onto the
perfect free Retreat Cost! Golduck has two
attacks, the first of which is “Scratch”; it costs [C]
to do 20 damage and is on the border between low quality
and medium quality filler. Probably would have
been safe to give it a little something better, but let
us look at the next attack, “Double Jet”; for [W] you
may discard up to two [W] Energy from hand to do 60
damage per each you discarded. This isn’t
brilliant, and even could be a bit pricey used over and
over again, but with the right support it has some
potential; one Energy (attached) and two (from hand) to
do 120 is somewhat good.
Before we consider
how to work with Golduck, we should explore the
rest of its Evolution line. For Psyduck we
have BW: Boundaries Crossed 32/149, BW:
Boundaries Crossed 33/149, XY: BREAKpoint
16/122, and Sun & Moon 28/149. When it
comes to other Golduck, we can pick from BW:
Boundaries Crossed 34/149, BW: Boundaries Crossed
35/149, and XY: BREAKpoint 17/122. There is
also Golduck BREAK (XY: BREAKpoint
18/122); I normally don’t include the set name and ID
number for cards with a unique name, but I find these a
little too easy to miss so there it is. All of
these are Water Type Pokémon with no Resistance, while
all Psyduck are also Basic Pokémon with just one
attack, and all Golduck are Stage 1 Pokémon with
two attacks. BW: Boundaries Crossed 32/149 is
only legal for Expanded play, has 60 HP, Lightning
Weakness, Retreat Cost [C], and the attack “Dazzle
Dance” for [C] which has you flip a coin to try and
confuse the opponent’s Active. BW: Boundaries
Crossed 33/149 is also Expanded-only with Lightning
Weakness but has 70 HP, a Retreat Cost of [CCC], and the
attack “Firefighting” that discards a [R] Energy
attached to the opponent’s Active. XY: BREAKpoint
16/122 is legal in either Expanded or Standard play, has
60 HP, Grass Weakness, Retreat Cost [C], and the attack
“Stampede” for [CC], doing 20 damage. Sun & Moon
28/149 is also legal for both the Expanded and Standard
Formats, has 70 HP, Grass Weakness, Retreat Cost [CC],
and the attack “Confuse Wave” for [C] that leaves both
Active Pokémon Confused. As usual, none of these
are good, but with an eye on surviving to Evolve, I
think Sun & Moon 28/149, even with its Retreat
Cost of [CC] due to its 70 HP and guaranteed Confusion
(even though it hits itself as well).
Golduck
(BW: Boundaries Crossed 34/149) has 80 HP,
Lightning Weakness, a free Retreat Cost, the attack
“Confuse Ray” which costs [C] and Confuses the
opponent’s Active, and the attack “Water Gun” which
costs [WG] and does 30 damage. The Retreat Cost is
the highlight and only good point of this card; we
actually reviewed it
here
when it was new and everyone who chimed in
(myself included) gave it the minimum allowed score of
one-out-of-five. Don’t use this one! Golduck
(BW: Boundaries Crossed 35/149) has the same
stats as today’s Golduck except with
Lightning Weakness. Its first attack is “Amnesia”
for [C], doing 20 damage preventing the opponent’s
Active from using one of its attacks (your choice if
that Pokémon has more than one attack) during your
opponent’s next turn. For [WW] it can use “Aquafall”
instead to do 90 damage but has to discard all Energy
attached to itself. I actually had high hopes for
the card at the time, probably because Landorus-EX
debuted in this set, was as good or better than we
expected, and so something that could exploit its Water
Weakness was extra tempting. Guess it was a good
thing I missed
that review,
given how wrong I was. Amnesia and Aquafall
actually looked decent on paper at the time but proved
to be insufficient. The previous two are
Expanded-only options; Golduck (XY: BREAKpoint
17/122) is our only other Standard-legal Golduck.
It sports 100 HP with Grass Weakness, and has a Retreat
Cost of [C], making it just barely the largest but the
only one that does not Retreat for free. Its first
attack is “Derail” for [W], which does 20 damage and
discards a Special Energy from the opponent’s Active (if
it has one attached). For [WCC] it may use “Hydro
Splash” instead to do 70 damage. Derail is nice
but Hydrosplash is overpriced.
Looking at all
three older Golduck, I don’t think there is a
reason to use any instead of Golduck (Sun &
Moon 29/149), but what about Golduck BREAK?
As the BREAK Evolution of a Stage 1, it acts like a
Stage 2, but without the perks. It has 140 HP,
though, and carries the Ability “Hyper Transfer” which
allows you to move a Basic Energy card from one of your
Pokémon to another as often as you like during your
turn, as long as it is before you attack.
Essentially, it is like you have an Infinite supply of
Energy Switch. Golduck BREAK will also
retain access to the attacks of the Golduck from
which it Evolved (if any had Abilities, it would retain
those as well), and will use their Weakness, (lack of)
Resistance, and Retreat Cost as its own. I don’t
think Hyper Transfer does much (if anything) for these
attacks but it might be useful for other Pokémon
being run alongside Golduck and Golduck BREAK;
that 140 HP is the main reason to run it, I believe, as
that is a significant jump that keeps Golduck
from being an easy OHKO. It still isn’t enough to
keep it from being a OHKO much of the time, and it
interferes with how I think Golduck (Sun &
Moon 29/149) may be best utilized, though not enough
to completely rule it out. You can see our more
in-depth thoughts on Golduck BREAK here,
where I entertained some hope its Energy moving
shenanigans would have already made it competitive.
I know people have tried, but I don’t recall any meeting
with significant success.
So how do I think
Golduck (Sun & Moon 29/149) has a chance?
Double Jet really is a solid attack, at least right now
while we’ve got the likes of Professor’s Letter,
Energy Retrieval, Fisherman, and VS
Seeker. Streaming Psyduck and
Golduck shouldn’t be too challenging either, so a
string of 2HKO’s is quite doable against most decks.
That isn’t enough to be competitive, however, which gets
us back to Flareon (XY: Ancient Origins
13/98) and Jolteon (XY: Ancient Origins
26/98). With these two, we are covering three
Weaknesses, with each currently relevant to competitive
play. The only real problem is… why not just use
an Eeveelutions deck? Vaporeon (XY: Ancient
Origins 22/98) can be included so another Stage 1
hits these same three Weaknesses plus whatever
matches its own Type. For a pure Eeveelution deck,
Espeon-GX and Umbreon-GX add Psychic and
Darkness Weakness. Some have been trying to make
Vespiquen (XY: Ancient Origins 10/98) once
again work with Eeveelutions as well, and we already
mentioned Lurantis-GX backed by them is another
anticipated deck. The most recent Regional
Championship, held in Anaheim, California this past
weekend didn’t see these decks make the top 32.
That could be even worse for a more niche
version, or it could mean there is still a void for
Golduck to fill. It is also important to
remember that sometimes, a deck works for just one or
two events because everyone already dismissed it, which
might work in the favor of a Golduck deck.
So that is how I
think it might work in Standard; what about in the
Expanded format? The same kind of deck would be
possible, and it even gains some useful cards that could
help it but also faces a lot more competition, and
possibly more diverse Weakness spreads. For now,
I’m just going to call it even, but knowing I am doing
this somewhat reluctantly, for want of actual data, is
why reading more than just the Ratings and Summary pays
off. This Golduck looks like a great
pull for Limited play. As with any Stage 1, you’ll
need Psyduck as well, but Psyduck also is
a little better here. You won’t be able to pull
off Double Jet as easily or as reliably, but that 120
damage is huge here, and even just discarding one
Energy for 60 won’t be bad. The need to run a lot
of Water Energy does make it a little less able
to be run off Type than it looks just based on its
actual attack costs. You also can enjoy this card
in the “Bright Tide” Theme Deck, though sadly it is only
included as a single. The deck only uses Water
Energy cards, though, so if you can get it up and
running, only the usual instability of most Theme decks
is likely to stand in your way.
Ratings
Standard:
2.75/5
Expanded:
2.75/5
Limited:
3.75/5
Theme:
4/5
Summary:
Golduck is a new glass cannon, and the metagame
may be just right for it to be worth giving it a shot.
I actually had higher hopes for this card when When I
first saw this card, I gave it a “D+”, but a second
glance left me bumping it up to a “C”. Today’s
score would be a “C-” on that grading scale, so I’ve
gone a bit more negative on the card with a third look.
Try it if you want something fun, and maybe if you’re
looking for a surprise deck for a smaller event.
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