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Hurray for shiny objects!
Our fourth most Promising Pick of Plasma Blast
(of 12) is
Silver Bangle.
Apparently a “bangle” is a rigid, ring-shaped bracelet
usually (but not always) without a clasp so that it can
easily slip over the hand.
Stats
Silver Bangle
is a Pokémon Tool, meaning it is also an Item and a
Trainer: Skyla
can search it,
Sableye (BW: Dark Explorers 62/108) can
retrieve it from the discard with its Junk Hunt attack,
and Tool
Scrapper can discard it (and up to one more Pokémon
Tool in play).
Pokémon Tools tend to compete with each other,
though not as badly as Stadiums and Ace Spec cards:
barring Sigilyph
(BW: Plasma Blast 41/101) a Pokémon may only have
a single Pokémon Tool attached at one time so you can
only use so many Tools at the same time.
They also eat up space and are dead if there’s no
Pokémon to use them with… and there are mass Tool
discard cards to worry about like
Chatot (BW:
Plasma Blast 77/101).
Effects
Silver Bangle
causes the equipped Pokémon’s attacks to hit for an
extra 30 points of damage (before Weakness and
Resistance) to Active Pokémon-EX unless it is attached
to a Pokémon-EX (in which case it has no effect).
A triple
PlusPower that won’t go away (at least not without
“help”) is very potent; this single card will up your
damage by the same amount as the
Hypnotoxic Laser/Virbank
City Gym combo, though Weakness and Resistance can
modify that further.
In the rare circumstance you’re using this card
in some of the older, alternate formats that involve
more than two Active Pokémon, the wording would indicate
the damage done to all of them is boosted.
Usage
So am I talking about any attackers in particular?
Yes and no; any deck with strong, non-Pokémon-EX
attackers is a legitimate contender for
Silver Bangle
unless they require you use some other Pokémon Tool.
For most major decks, the only question is if
there will or won’t be enough such attackers to bother
with Silver
Bangle.
The older (relatively speaking) big, Basic
Pokémon that are
not
Pokémon-EX may find themselves worth (or more worthy) of
deck usage again; coupled with other damage increasing
cards already commonly played or recently released, it
may be possible to create a beatdown variant not focused
on Pokémon-EX or even excluding them.
There is also the thought of combining multiple
other anti-Pokémon-EX Pokémon and just building an anti-metagame
deck around the package; which arguably might end up
being the same thing.
The new Sigilyph
mentioned earlier as well as the older
Sigilyph (BW:
Dragons Exalted 52/124; BW: Plasma Freeze
118/116) and
Bouffalant (BW: Dragons Exalted 110/124) seem
like good candidates… but what excites me are the decks
where this could finally enable them to be functionally
competitive; either more so than they used to be or
perhaps for the first time at all.
Pokémon like
Zebstrika (BW:
Next Destinies 48/99) or
Dragonite (BW:
Plasma Freeze 83/116) still won’t be hitting “hard”
with this attached, but at least against Pokémon-EX
(where they may need it the most) it would allow the
former to do 70 for (LC) and the later to do 90 for
(CCC).
Another card I’ll have to give a second look to
is
Vileplume (BW:
Boundaries Crossed 3/149);
Silver Bangle
is applied before Weakness, and so backing up a decent
Basic Pokémon with that Stage 2 and that Pokémon Tool
means +120 points of damage!
That might finally be enough to make the easily
splashed, quickly powered-up attacks finally work as
intended.
I think that is enough crazy ideas to get people
started, and if I actually hit something worthwhile, who
would believe it?
What strikes me as almost odd is that I think the best
partners for this card are
Silver Mirror
and Tool
Scrapper.
Why?
Right now the most obvious deck that can and will
reliably attack with a fast, non-Pokémon-EX that can
dish out the damage would be the iconic Team Plasma
Basics deck.
Even if not, they are quite the popular and
potent deck, so this lets you flip between offense and
defense quit handily.
Tool
Scrapper can help with that; time it well and you
can take out the one Pokémon Tool your opponent will
likely have in play (unless they get sloppy) and then
you can discard whatever you had in play for what you
need.
Beyond that, it would just be a shame if an opponent’s
Silver Mirror,
Eviolite,
etc. ruined your offense.
Speaking of Tool
Scrapper, I believe it will become a more heavily
played card again, but at the same time it might merely
mean it is still just “cycling”.
The reason I don’t think it really hurts
Silver Bangle
much is simple; you drop
Silver Bangle,
attack, and then your opponent has to be far enough
behind that they would feel the need to burn an Item
discarding a Pokémon Tool that an aggressive deck would
send to the discard pile by KOing the Pokémon it was
attached to.
Ratings
Unlimited:
This doesn’t really help FTW or lock decks, and unless
Hypnotoxic Laser
has changed things, when trying something more
straightforward my money is still on old, older, and
oldest-school Pokémon Tools, like
Expert Belt,
Solid Rage,
Cessation
Crystal, and
Focus Band!
1/5
Modified:
It isn’t an update of
Desert Ruins,
but given how hard it would be for something like that
to compete with
Hypnotoxic Laser/Virbank
City Gym; this is probably the better idea.
This becomes that card you ask “Can I not use
this well enough to justify cutting it?”
Some decks will skip it, but everyone should ask
themselves about it first.
3.75/5
Limited:
The only realistic decks I can think of that should skip
this are of the
Pokémon-EX+39; for everything else this is a must
run. 4.95/5
Summary
Those Pokémon-EX HP scores just got a little smaller
thanks to Silver
Bangle; plenty of decks will skip it but plenty will
run it, so get a play set ASAP and get used to seeing
it. This
card was actually my number two pick because I believe
it will elevate some decks that have been near misses,
make some good decks great, and become another solid
choice for still more decks that are already great.
Only decks that seldom attack with anything but
Pokémon-EX will regularly skip it.
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