aroramage |
Today's card is...interesting. Not just for being a
Grass/Ghost type in the games, and not just for being
partially based off of a jack-o-lantern, and not just
for coming in all sorts of sizes for all your crazy
needs. It's interesting for many different reasons, but
is Gourgeist just an interesting card to work with or
can he be competitive?
Let's start with this Ability, Gourgantic. Normally
you'd be running Psychic Energy in a deck with Gourgeist
just based on his Type, but with this Ability, he gets a
huge HP boost when he's got a Grass Energy attached to
him. Luckily you don't have to run any crazy hybrid
Psychic-Grass decks (unless you're really feeling a
Giratina-EX (DEX) deck) in order to use this Ability -
all you need is the Rainbow Energy, and it'll fulfill
all of Gourgeist's needs! And give him 200 HP to start
with, meaning he needs twice as much damage to get KO'd!
The other interesting bit is his attack, Horror Note.
It's a hefty 3-Energy for what it is, and it's a
variable damage-dealer based on the number of cards in
your hand. If it were 20 damage per card, it'd be usable
after a Professor Sycaper, or even if it worked with the
cards in your opponent's hand - I think the designers
might have been overcompensating for the power of this
attack when they started whacking it with the nerf-stick.
So is Gourgeist good enough to pass by with these
interesting pieces? Probably not; Enhanced Hammer can
reduce Gourgeist's HP back to 100 if he's using Rainbow
Energy, and you'd have to hold back on a lot of cards to
make Horror Note even remotely worthwhile which won't
matter cause without that Grass Energy Gourgeist will
get quickly swept under the rug. He's a fun casual deck
at best, definitely not a competitive powerhouse.
Rating
Standard: 2/5 (interesting, but not viable)
Expanded: 2/5 (same here)
Limited: 3/5 (the extra HP will allow for great stalling
here, but again I wouldn't rely on that Horror Note)
Arora Notealus: So Gourgeist just kinda wander around
town on a new moon and sing songs that curse people as
they're walking around...that's a bit harsh, don't you
think? Who knows who might be out hanging around for a
nice evening stroll when a Gourgeist waltzes by singing
its merry tune?
Weekend Thought: Which one of this week's Pokemon would
you give the EX treatment? Would you change their
attacks to help out, or would you give them some super
powerful attacks?
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Otaku |
The final review for this week is Gourgeist (XY:
Phantom Forces 45/119). I will admit up front I’m
gonna be biased in favor of this card simply because
I’ve grown fond of Gourgeist (XY 57/146
and the confusingly numbered XT Trainer Kit: Noivern
Half Deck), which I use regularly on the PTCGO. In
fact… I actually had this card on my Top 10 list for
XY: Phantom Forces, though I quickly realized I had
grossly overestimated it. So did I call a good, a bad
or a mediocre card “great”?
Being a Psychic-Type is fairly good; XY: Phantom
Forces added to their support, plus thanks to the
popularity of Pokémon like Mewtwo-EX, exploiting
Psychic Weakness is most valuable. Psychic Resistance
can be a pain as it is found on most Darkness-Types and
Metal-Types, but as you know if you’ve either been
paying attention to the actual game or reading these
CotDs, Resistance is no where near as significant as
Weakness, so in the end, this is definitely a net
positive for Gourgeist. Being a Stage 1 is not,
however; while they are in far better shape than Stage 2
Pokémon right now, Basic Pokémon rule the roost as they
are faster and require less space.
Gourgeist
has 100 HP, which is relatively small but not horrible;
it might survive a hit if the opponent’s deck isn’t
focused on good damage or has an incomplete set-up,
including simply whiffing on a Muscle Band or the
like. If you read the card before this, you’ll know
that this HP score won’t always be relevant, but more on
that when we get to the Ability. Darkness Weakness is
one of the worst forms of Weakness for a card to have
right now, probably right after Fighting, possibly
before, after or tied with Psychic. There is little
hope you’ll survive a hit from a Yveltal-EX or
even regular Yveltal (XY 78/146; XY
Promos XY06); either just need a Muscle Band
for their smaller attack to do the job. Gourgeist
does enjoy Fighting Resistance, and while -20 doesn’t
mean a lot at least it is to a commonly played Type that
often relies on precision KOs. The three Energy needed
to retreat is chunky and needs to be dealt with;
fortunately most decks already have good reason to run
multiple cards to lower and/or bypass manually
retreating, so it doesn’t burden things as much as it
might have years ago when that wasn’t a “thing”. Slight
upside is if you’re using this in Expanded, it will be a
legal Heavy Ball target.
So the Ability I alluded to earlier is the wonderfully
named Gourgantic; if Gourgeist has any [G] Energy
attached, Gourgantic jumps its maximum HP to 200! As
Pokémon uses damage counters on the cards to track
damage, if this Ability is disabled, not only will it
shrink back down to 100 HP but all the damage it has
taken will remained; a half-KOed Gourgeist with
Gourgantic in effect and 10 damage counters on it will
become a KOed Gourgeist if the opponent can
discard all your attached [G] Energy or simply turn off
the Ability completely. These are very real risks for
the card, plus its Darkness Weakness from earlier is
still a concern; Yveltal-EX can easily hit for
100 damage with good set-up. Resistance can help
stretch out that massive HP, which is nice. Backing all
of this up, Gourgeist has the attack Horror Note
for [PCC], which does 10 damage times the number of
cards in your hand. You’ll need at least nine cards in
hand to get a decent return on the Energy and ideally,
you’d want something like 15 cards in hand so that with
a Silver Bangle you’d be scoring a OHKO. That is
really unlikely, so this card needs help to be more than
a meatshield.
Gourgeist
Evolves from Pumpkaboo, of which there are two
currently legal. Both are Psychic-Type Basic Pokémon
with 60 HP, Darkness Weakness, Fighting Resistance,
Retreat Costs of [CC] and no Abilities. XY
56/146 (reprinted twice in the confusingly numbered
XT Trainer Kit: Noivern Half Deck) can simply
Confuse the Defending Pokémon for [P]. When you’re
desperate, this slightly elevates your chances of
survival. XY: Phantom Forces 44/119) can do 10
for [P], but has Night March at a price of [CC], doing
20 damage times the number of Pokémon in your discard
with Night March. There is also one other legal
Gourgeist I already mentioned: you can see its
original CotD
here,
though I hadn’t returned to reviewing yet at that time.
It has the same attributes save for a Retreat Cost of
just [CC]. For [P] its Eerie Voice attack places two
damage counters on each of your opponent’s Pokémon while
its Spirit Scream for [PP] drops both Active Pokémon to
10. It has shown some merit for competitive play
(though not a lot) as it can both spread a lot of damage
counters (instead of easily blocked damage spread) with
Eerie Voice as well as score a OHKO via Hypnotoxic
Laser and Spirit Scream.
The two Gourgeist don’t strike me as playing well
together as they serve different purposes and the
support that works best for them doesn’t always work
well for the other. Even in terms of just Energy
required, the older Gourgeist uses nothing but
[P] while the new one will also need [G] to trigger its
Ability… and as I’m about to explain, probably won’t
actually need [P] to attack. So whether they are used
as a focus or just a strange supporting attacker, they
don’t really belong together. To use today’s version, I
am thinking the best approach is to build a Night March
deck where Gourgeist is your main attacker via
Celebi-EX. Coupled with Dimension Valley,
this would allow Gourgeist to attack for [CC] for
big damage, more easily than maintaining a monstrous
hand size for Horror Note. Another piece of the combo
is Virizion-EX; not only will any [G] Energy
attached to a Pokémon then protect it from Special
Conditions (via Verdant Wind) but Emerald Slash can help
prep multiple Gourgeist at once with two basic
Grass Energy cards, so that the deck isn’t as
vulnerable to cards like Enhanced Hammer. I’ve
seen this deck in action and it is scary if you don’t
have the correct cards to counter it.
I don’t think its one of the top competitive decks.
Night March so far seem solid and at least somewhat
competitive… but remember how much I went on about
Battle Compressor, Lysandre’s Trump Card and
VS Seeker? Well that combo tends to make life
miserable for a Night March deck, but I’ve run into
enough to think most people either haven’t been running
it so its hard to say if Night March will remain strong
because I was flat out wrong or if it will wane once
people realize they should already be running Battle
Compressor and VS Seeker, so one more slot
for Lysandre’s Trump Card is probably worth it. Gourgeist
doesn’t seem to be the top Nightmarch deck, though as
the glass cannon approach with the easily OHKOed
attackers is more straightforward and reliable, winning
due to the Prize Advantage of something so small OHKOing
Pokémon-EX. Expanded might improve Night March decks
(I’m not sure) but not enough to raise the score for
this card. Night March is amazing if you pull enough of
them for Limited… but if not Horror Note and Gourgantic
should still make this a formidable Pokémon, well worth
running unless you’ve got a good +39 candidate or you
just can’t make room for a Psychic-Type Stage 1, the
basic Psychic Energy it needs to attack and some
basic Grass Energy so you can trigger the
Ability. The Ability is needed as it compensates for
how Horror Note is still not all that great in a format
where your hand might be huge or tiny, but probably
mostly the latter. Honestly, my main concern for it is
how it is dependent both on Abilities and Items, making
it vulnerable to both Garbodor (BW:
Dragons Exalted
54/124; BW: Plasma Freeze 119/116; BW:
Legendary Treasures 68/113) and Seismitoad-EX,
especially when the two are run together.
Ratings
Standard:
2.5/5
Expanded:
2.5/5
Limited:
3.5/5
Summary:
Not quite as good as it needs to be, overall
Gourgeist at least shows effort on the design team’s
part and doesn’t miss by as much as many cards we’ve
reviewed before (some this week). Don’t forget about it
in case some worthwhile combos emerge in the future, or
if the ever changing metagame renders this the best
Night March deck without gutting Night March decks in
general.
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