Baby Mario
2010 UK
National
Seniors
Champion |
Focus Sash
A quick glance at today’s card might well bring back
some bad memories for players who were around in the Neo
days, when Focus Band + Baby Pokémon meant having to
flip two heads in a row to get a KO. Focus Sash is a
similar card, but nowhere near as powerful/annoying as
its ancient relative . . . and that’s probably just as
well.
Focus Sash has two restrictions that weren’t present on
Focus Band: firstly, it must be attached to a Fighting
Type Pokémon, and secondly, that Pokémon must have full
HP to trigger the effect of this Tool. If those
conditions are met, then your Pokémon is saved from a
single hit KO! You discard Focus Sash and your Pokémon
has 10 HP remaining. It doesn’t protect against two (or
more) hit knock outs, and it won’t save your Pokémon if
the opponent uses Burn or (more likely) Poison to finish
it off between turns . . . to put it another way,
Hypnotoxic Laser gets around
this card, as does Startling Megaphone, of course.
Because of these restrictions, Focus Sash seems like it
would be useful only in a very limited and fairly
uncommon set of circumstances: when an undamaged
Fighting Pokémon is facing a
OHKO. I suppose it could save something like
Lucario EX/Mega
Lucario from
Mewtwo EX, and if that
happened then Focus Sash could be very clutch.
Unfortunately, I think its low general utility will mean
that it won’t make the cut in many lists. It may be
tried as a quirky one-off card with the power to make a
difference in a match, but I suspect that most players
will prefer to use the slot to bolster the consistency
of more aggressive strategies.
Rating
Modified: 2.25 (too specific for general use)
Expanded: 2.25 (see above)
Limited: 2 (OHKOs are not the norm here)
|
aroramage |
Hey all, another week of cards to go through once
again! Today's card is another piece of Fighting support
that we've yet to go over, Focus Sash. Is it worth
running in the newly offensive Fighting deck? Or does it
have more potential in other Fighting decks?
Focus Sash acts like it does in the game pretty much,
just that it's restricted to Fighting-types. If that
Pokemon would be KO'd while it's at full health, Focus
Sash keeps it around for another turn with 10 damage
left, and after that it gets discarded. Now while it's
not often that something like Lucario-EX will get one-shotted,
the smaller Fighting-types like Landorus and Hawlucha -
heck, even Hawlucha-EX - will find a lot more usage for
this card.
If you can keep a Hawlucha around, he can decimate more
of your opponent's Pokemon-EX. If you can keep Landorus
around, he charges up your Fighting-types in the back.
Hawlucha-EX will take the strike, Counterattack, and
then can still throw down a Moonsault Stomp! This card
has a lot of utility with smaller Fighting-types, more
than it would with the bigger Pokemon-EX (170-180 is
still a large number to invest damage in, after all).
My only gripes with this card are that 1) it's
restricted to Fighting-types so only Fighting decks
benefit from a good effect, understandable given the set
but everyone could use a card like this, and 2)
Hypnotoxic Laser exists, and that's the primary counter
that comes to mind with Focus Sash. Even if they survive
the intense onslaught, with only 10 HP remaining, they
almost instantly succumb to the poison damage between
rounds. HTL could also be used earlier to lower the HP
value, sacrificing a turn to strike but guaranteeing the
KO, but that's a bit of a waste; you might as well just
use a weaker attack to do the same thing.
I'm almost positive HTL still sees play for
damage-dealing, so Focus Sash has had it pretty rough
anyway. Still not a bad card by any means, though, and
aside from competing with other Trainer cards for deck
space, I can imagine justifying running up to 2 of them.
Rating
Standard: 3/5 (put it on the right Pokemon and pray for
no HTL)
Expanded: 3/5 (about the same here, HTL just has a lot
of presence)
Limited: 3.5/5 (there aren't a whole lot of
opportunities for OHKO-ing without Muscle Band and HTL,
but for weaker Fighting-types going up against a Lucario-EX,
it's gonna be worth it)
Arora Notealus: You know, I wonder how a flimsy little
ribbon keeps a Pokemon from getting KO'd. Do you tie it
around your head like a Focus Band or something? Does it
just glow with radiant light to shield you from fatal
damage? I wonder...
Next Time: Magmortar's down! Who'll tag in for him?
|
Otaku |
Hello readers! We begin the week with a card that is a
call back to something much older. Focus Sash (XY:
Furious Fists 91/111) is a new Pokémon Tool, and the
first thing we notice is that its effect begins by
saying “If the [F] Pokémon this card is attached to…”
meaning that you can attach it to anything, but if it
isn’t a Fighting, the card itself has no effect. The
next condition we notice is that this effect only
triggers if the Fighting-Type in question is at full HP.
Even Pokémon-EX tend not to last long, so while this is
definitely a further restriction, its one we might be
able to meet reasonably often.
The sentence continues with “...would be Knocked Out by
damage from an opponent’s attack…”: this third condition
whittles away on when this card is going to do anything
even more. OHKOs are far more common than I like in
this format, but many of them are pseudo-OHKOs: Poison
damage from Hypnotoxic Laser, capitalizing on
“bonus” Bench damage from an earlier turn, Abilities
that mess with damage counters, etc. This is the third
condition and it might end up being quite significant,
but if the rest of the effect is good enough, it might
be worth it. The rest of said effect is… the
Fighting-Type Pokémon in question is not KOed but
instead ends up with 10 HP and discards Focus Sash.
The self-discarding clause is a mixed blessing;
something like Landorus-EX and Lucario-EX
have single Energy attacks worth using and so already
occasionally make use of Max Potion; Focus
Sash just makes that into an even more effective
combo, but also makes you wish Focus Sash was
sticking around to be used again. Most of the time
though, it just gets itself out of the way so that you
have the option of attaching another Pokémon Tool, be it
a Float Stone to get the injured out of the way
or a Muscle Band to pump up for one last crucial
attack before your opponent is forced to re-KO it the
next turn.
Before I explain whether I think this is good or bad,
I’d like to tell you of what significantly older card
this reminds me of: Focus Band. You can even
read a review of it
here
that dates back to 2002, though the card in question was
released as Neo Genesis 86/111 (December of
2000). I wasn’t reviewing cards back then so I don’t
know what took so long to get to it. Focus Band
is perhaps the greatest Pokémon Tool ever released,
though I question how well it would do in this format.
Why? Focus Band is like Focus Sash
except it works for any Pokémon-Type, doesn’t require
the target be at full HP but does require a successful
coin flip to work. It being “tails fails” is another
example of “Effects supposed to be balanced by a coin
flip that weren’t.” Not giving up a Prize is well worth
a 50-50 chance. Which brings us to Focus Sash as
it suffers from the same concerns as Focus Band
would if Focus Band were legal, in addition to
the conditions placed on Focus Sash that we
discussed earlier:
-
Focus Band
didn’t have to contend with Startling
Megaphone; discarding Items is
amazingly easy by comparison. Even the
effects back then that could do it often
weren’t reliable or on something overly
strong in its own right.
-
While Focus Band did have to
worry about Poison and (eventually) Burn
bypassing it, there wasn’t something
like Hypnotoxic Laser in the
format.
-
There weren’t as many potent/competitive
“other” effects (attacks placing damage
counters, Abilities moving damage
counters, etc.) to worry about back
then… and I am well aware that they
aren’t exactly common right now either.
-
Neo Genesis
was the first set to contain Pokémon
Tools; Focus Band established
itself before it had much competition,
while Focus Sash is coming in
when many decks already have something
in their Pokémon Tool “slots”.
-
Neo Genesis
also introduced the original “Baby
Pokémon”: protected by a “rules text”
effect printed on the card (as opposed
to an attack or Ability-predecessor)
that forced a player to flip a coin when
his or her Active Pokémon attempted
attacked an Active Baby Pokémon; “tails”
on that flip meant the attempt didn’t
just fail, but the attack flat out
didn’t happen and your turn ended
without an attack. This thankfully
doesn’t exist in Standard to combine
with Focus Sash!
So… Focus Band would actually have issues right
now, the main one being its “passive” nature that means
it would too often get discarded before it had a chance
to go off, or be bypassed by Hypnotoxic Laser or
similar effects even if left in place. Focus Sash
faces the same concerns plus it can be thwarted if
something damages a Pokémon before it gets attacked for
a KO and only works for Fighting-Types in the first
place.
Despite all of this, Focus Sash has a place in
the format. As it is simply a Pokémon Tool, it isn’t
too hard to tech in a copy, as insurance against decks
that do score OHKOs against whatever Fighting-Type you
want to try and save, as well as being a nasty surprise
in general. Focus Sash can serve as a bait or
pressure card; your opponent either needs to burn up
other resources to deal with it or have a Prize they
might have claimed “voided”, and even lends itself to a
few combos… Virizion-EX and Espeon (BW:
Dark Explorers 48/108; BW Promos BW92), with
some finesse can protect against some of the workarounds
I cited earlier. There may also be some gimmick decks
that can make use of Focus Sash, though sadly all
that springs to mind is Rhydon (XY
60/146), reviewed
here
and the two sets released since then have just made the
deck baby_mario describes slightly less incredulous.
For Expanded, am not thinking of any major combos the
extended card pool enables;
Pokepedia
has had two major updates recently which were timely as
it allowed me to do a quick search of the Fighting-Types
available in Expanded and… I didn’t notice anything
especially compelling. Still this card is a bit better
because Expanded (based on what little information has
emerged for it now) is at least seeing some “big damage”
decks that aren’t available in Standard, and thus
surviving a OHKO becomes more significant. I really
think of Lucario-EX facing a Mewtwo-EX
backed by Eelektrik (BW: Noble Victories
40/101). For Limited, the only reason to skip this is
if you pull absolutely no Fighting-Types worth using,
and even then Focus Sash might an otherwise less
desirable Fighting-Type worth including.
Ratings
Standard:
3.25/5 - Focus Sash has a lot of issues, but it
also has a potent effect when you can get it to work.
While it only works for Fighting-Types, that is the
current popular type with support including Korrina
and Strong Energy, which have some basic synergy
with Focus Sash. In the end, this means for
decks with a strong Fighting-Type presence, its on the
happy side of “average”.
Expanded:
3.5/5 - As above, but I think raw damage OHKOs are going
to be a bit more common in this format, making a Tool
that turns them into simply a near-OHKO more appealing.
Limited:
4.75/5 - You should have the space for both
Fighting-Types, some Fighting Energy and Focus
Sash in most decks; the big exceptions are +39 decks
not built around Lucario-EX and unfortunate
pulls. You probably won’t get the effect all that
often, but your deck should have enough room that its
worth the slot “just in case”.
Summary:
Focus Sash is a card that is simultaneously
potent and yet fragile. When the effect works, it is
amazing. Keeping Focus Sash attached and not
having it bypassed by something your opponent does, on
the other hand, can be rather trying. Still it can be
useful even indirectly, forcing an opponent to
prematurely use up a Startling Megaphone (for
example). I honestly keep changing my mind about this
card; sometimes multiple times in a single day! I don’t
expect it to be big, but it might be worth keeping an
eye on it. Who knows, maybe next Worlds it will be the
equivalent of a surprise Hard Charm?
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