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Pojo's Pokemon Card of the Day

 

Rayquaza - Deoxys

 

Date Reviewed: 03.30.05

Ratings & Reviews Summary
Unlimited: 1.25
Modified: 2.7
Limited: 2.5

Ratings are based on a 1 to 5 scale.
1 being the worst.  3 ... average.  5 is the highest rating.


Johnny Blaze
Rayquaza – Here is the last Shining from the Deoxys set and probably the most sought out Shining with prices fetching up to $45 on ebay.  It’s attacks aren’t any better than the Latios/Latias in terms of energy requirements but since it is Rayquaza it is a lot more popular.  Not to mention that the artwork is so awesome on this thing too.
 
Unlimited: 1/5 – Too energy intensive here plus a flippy 1st attack wont help much in this fast environment.
 
Modified: 2/5 – If multiple-ex decks become rampant then Rayquaza is definitely worth it.  As it is though Rayquaza wont make the cut with its 1st attack being too flippy. It’s second attack, Holy Star, might take a second glance with Firestarter Blaziken but it still takes 4 energies to pull off.
 
Limited: 1/5 – Quite useless here if a) you cant flip heads like me, and b) your opponent doesn’t play with any ex Pokemon.
 

Otaku

Name: Rayquaza*

Set: EX Deoxys

Card#: 107/107

Rarity: Pokémon*

Type: Colorless

Stage: Basic

HP: 90

Weakness: Colorless

Resistance: Water, Fighting

Retreat: CC

Pokémon* Rule: You can’t have more than 1 Pokémon* in your deck.

Attack#1: (LR) Spiral Rush [30x]

Flip a coin until you get tails.  This attack does 30 damage times the number of heads.

Attack#2: (RRLL) Holy Star

Discard all Energy cards attached to Rayquaza*.  This attack does 100 damage to each of your opponent’s Pokémon-ex.  (Don’t apply Weakness and Resistance for Benched Pokémon.)

 

Attributes: Starting with the obvious from the name, this is a Pokémon*.  That means if you want to use this, you can’t use any other Pokémon*, and you can only use one copy of itself.  Next, we see that this Rayquaza follows the previous versions by being a Colorless Basic (that wasn’t exactly apt to changeJ).  Being Colorless, as I mentioned on Monday, is pretty good.  While there is Resistance to that type, said Resistance is very rare: only two Pokémon currently have it!  Weakness is also fairly rare, but is more common than Resistance, and seen on many highly played Pokémon.  Sadly, there is a draw back, but it’s something of a “technical” thing; Crystal Shard allows any Pokémon to “fake” being a Colorless Pokémon, lessening the type advantage and also meaning that Colorless Pokémon are the only type to lack away around Resistance.

 

Rayquaza* has 90 HP.  This is a very good number for a non-Evolving Basic Pokémon (on either “end”), and may in fact “tap” into some of the “credit” it builds by being so restricted.  That is, being restricted to one per deck is a disadvantage since that means the card can’t be much of a deck focus, at least not without a lot of extra work that, say, a normal Basic wouldn’t require.

 

Rayquaza* has a Weakness to Colorless Pokémon.  This is probably the worst Weakness to have right now, as not only are there some potent Colorless Pokémon, but any Pokémon can “fake” being Colorless Pokémon, but any Pokémon can use Crystal Shard as mentioned early to exploit this Weakness and avoid Resistance.  Speaking of which, this card has a double Resistance.  Both Fighting and Water Pokémon will (barring other effects) do 30 less damage.  Both types have very solid decks behind them in Modified (and either a dominant deck or über-TecH in Unlimited), so this is very, very good and at least matches the painful Colorless Weakness.

 

Last for attributes, we have a retreat cost of two.  This is low enough you should usually be able to pay it if a situation requires it, but will usually want to use a card like Balloon Berry or Switch to avoid it when possible.

 

Abilities: Okay, Rayquaza* appears to have ever-so-slightly above average attributes when compared to a “plain” Basic Pokémon, it still hasn’t proven itself good enough to warrant being a Pokémon*.  Let’s see if it has attacks worthy of its stature.

 

Spiral Rush is a decent attack.  “Flip until tails” attacks aren’t so great when they have no minimum damage, unless they have a ridiculously high base.  This has a solid base of 30, which would be good if it was priced a little lower.  For two different Energy types (Electric and Fire), it is a hair sub-par.  It really needed to be base 20 damage with “flip until tails” for +20 per “heads”.  Still, half the time you’ll hit for at least 30 damage, and it means that there’s always a chance, no matter how remote, of a OHKO.

 

Holy Star is the real reason to use this card.  It costs a gargantuan four Energy, and requires you discard them all.  Not only that, but the attack requires two different Energy types (again, Electric and Fire).  Now, adding that all together, you should be doing a gargantuan amount of damage.  Normally, (RRLL) would yield 70-80 points of damage.  Factor in that this is a non-Evolving Basic Pokémon (with no pre-Evolutions) would get another 20 or so points of damage on top of that.  Factoring in the discard means we should be getting double the damage.  That means we need to be seeing 200 or so points of damage by now.  We haven’t even gotten to the part about it being a Pokémon* yet.  So what does the attack do?  100 points of damage for all that effort.  It’s not even a flat 100 points of damage, but rather to a single category.  Now, given how I seem to be bad mouthing this card, but my tendency to try and make you think, you know there has to be something redeeming this.  There is.  First, that “restricted type” affects all Pokémon of said category.  Yes, that is a little better.  Being able to bit multiple targets means you could be doing as much damage as required.  So what is the restriction?  Perhaps not the best restriction, but close to it: Pokémon-ex.  That’s right, the Pokémon worth the most in terms of getting ahead, and heavily relied upon for many, many decks, will get slammed for 100 points of damage.  Is that good enough?  I count over 70 Pokémon ex.  I “cheated” and used Apprentice to help me, so it’s possible I missed a few.  Of those Pokémon, a little over half of all Pokémon ex.  Of what’s left, I counted 8 Basic Pokémon-ex.  Why does that matter?  Well, excusing an Active Gengar ex (which is Colorless Resistant) and Pokémon Evolved from Fossil cards, you can de-Evolve them with Ancient Technical Machine [Rock] the next turn (using a different Pokémon, of course) to finish them.  You could also just use Desert Ruins to tack on some more damage.  So as you can see, it’s a pricey yet devastating attack when played right.

 

Uses and

Combinations: What is playing it right?  Well, aside from the above tricks, any deck that can fight a reasonable amount of Fire, Electric, or compatible replacement Energy cards (Rainbow Energy) should consider Rayquaza*, at least in Modified.  If you have a way to attach more than one Energy card at a time in those decks, it becomes a very reasonable card, much like EX Dragons’ Rayquaza ex, whom you may recall I grossly underestimated. ;) A Firestarter deck could even consider running one of these, so long as they are willing to toss in a few real Electric Energy or some Rainbow Energy.  For a more focused deck, try using it in a manner similar to how I recommended using Latios*; Electrode ex could power up this quite easily.

 

Ratings

 

Unlimited: 1.5/5-I almost never see any Pokémon ex played in this format, and there are more efficient ways of taking them out.

 

Modified: 3.5/5-I am not entirely sold upon it, as you can see by the seeming split personality of this CotD.  However, I do believe it has potential, especially if we continue to see decks with at least one Pokémon ex in the OHKO, or multiples in the “Holy Star then Stone Generator” range, or even double Holy Star for some decks.

 

Limited: 4/5-A good pull.  This is mostly because of the first attack, which is good for this format despite being so flippy, and the great stats for a Basic in this format.  I did add a bonus since Pokémon-ex are so formidable in this format, and having something so strong to possibly finish them in one shot, netting half your starting prizes, is so enticing even if it is unlikely.

 

Summary

This may be the only Pokémon* we’ve seen that was really done right, at least so far.  This definitely should be a discouraging factor for decks that would try to abuse multiple Pokémon ex: the classic and even some modern Firestarter decks fear this because, though unlikely, its Holy Star attack will likely cripple much of their offense while netting two to six prizes (six would be rare though). 

 


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