We end this week with Hawlucha (XY:
Furious Fists 63/111): if you don’t
have to fight the urge to pronounce it “Hawluuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuchaaaaaaaaa!”,
either in a raspy fake scream or
actually yelling… you are not me, and be
glad for that.
Breaking down Hawlucha we see
that it is a Fighting-Type (great),
Basic Pokémon (great) with 70 HP (bad in
Standard) with Lightning Weakness
(...I’ll explain later), Fighting
Resistance (good) and a free Retreat
Cost (perfect!). Its Ability, Shining
Spirit, simply causes its attacks to not
apply Weakness or Resistance: this a net
negative since exploiting Weakness (the
capacity it loses thanks to the Ability)
is much more useful than bypassing
Resistance (the benefit it gains from
the Ability). It only has one attack
printed on it, but the Ability is worded
so that if you can use a Technical
Machine or the like (as far as I know,
all possibilities only work in
Unlimited) then this effect would apply
to them as well. Its one single attack
is very good: Flying Press (besides
fitting the artwork) requires just [F]
to score 60 points of damage, however it
also has a clause stating it can only be
used against Pokémon-EX. This
restriction is significant, but not
crippling as Pokémon-EX still dominant
the role of attackers.
Which gets us into why Hawlucha
is… a pretty good card. I already
stated that the Type and Stage are
great; Fighting Pokémon are still riding
high after receiving so much support
(both direct and indirect) and Basics
have been the best Stage (again) for
years now. Its Ability is often shut
off because Garbodor (BW:
Dragons Exalted
54/124; BW: Plasma Freeze
119/116; BW: Legendary Treasures
68/113) is so popular; there is a decent
chance at least one player will be
running it. When that happens, its
attack becomes amazing versus Fighting
Weak Pokémon-EX; that may not be a huge
amount of targets, but its nice when you
can do 120 for [F] with a Basic Pokémon
against Darkrai-EX or
Thundurus-EX. A Silver Bangle
easily puts such targets into OHKO if
Shining Spirit has been switched off.
Even when you’re not hitting for
Weakness, Silver Bangle allows
Flying Press to half-KO most Pokémon-EX
(and now Shining Spirit can come in
handy, making sure even Yveltal-EX
can still feel the full impact). If
you’re already insisting on running
something like Machamp (XY:
Furious Fists 46/111; XY Promos
XY13), it requires a very unlikely
set-up but you could pump Flying Press
up to OHKO levels… at least against
Pokémon-EX.
Having a Pokémon with a free Retreat
Cost has long been handy; its actually
something that has been nerfed and
remained largely nerfed since “the old
days”: besides Basics with free Retreat
Costs being rare only relative to the
amount of Basics Pokémon released, the
original rules for this game allowed a
player to retreat as many times per turn
as he or she could pay for, meaning you
could rapidly swap back and forth to
shake off attack effects, including
Special Conditions. Even needing a
Switch or similar method of Benching
without actually retreating, it remains
a wonderfully useful trick… and
Korrina can search it out, even
alongside a Switch! In Expanded,
you don’t have to use a Supporter;
Level Ball will do the job (though
not with the bonus Item).
Diversifying your Weaknesses while
having a Resistance to one of the more
popular Types is handy, though
constrained by the cards low HP. 70 HP
is enough that Mewtwo-EX or
Beartic (XY: Furious Fists
22/111) or Virizion-EX can all
score OHKOs, but not without boosting.
Those three are among the most likely
to exploit the Weakness found on other
Fighting-Types. Similarly, a
Landorus-EX might be a threat to
finish off a wounded Hawlucha on
the Bench, but an Active one can survive
a Hammerhead even when Muscle Band
and a Strong Energy are involved.
The more skilled your opponent, the
more capable his or her deck and the
better his or her current resources
available the less relevant all
of this is… but even without misplays,
this kind of Type-matching comes in
handy (and before damage long
outstripped HP+Resistance, was quite
common).
Still is it a strong enough “glass
cannon” to justify running it? No. Is
it that important to have a “pivot
Pokémon” that Korrina can search
out? No. Is it that important to have
a second, third or fourth Weakness in
your Fighting-Type decks to help with
match-up diversification? No.
Resistance is definitely not enough to
justify running a card… but all of these
things together is, at least in a deck
that does supply the necessary pieces.
In fact there are really only three
good reasons not to run this
card, but they are significant:
-
No source of Fighting
Energy
-
Messes up “seventh
Prize” strategy
-
No room at all!
A “free-retreater” used to be a standard
component to deck builds, only
begrudgingly skipped. Even now, its
more common than it seems because we’ve
got things like Darkrai-EX (Dark
Cloak), Fairy Garden and Float
Stone faking it. The lack of space
in decks is the main reason not
to sneak in a Hawlucha, and that
is a common problem for a lot of cards.
Make room for it if you’ve got a deck
running Fighting-Type support in
Standard or Expanded. Only skip it in
Limited if you’re running a deck built
around a single, big Basic Pokémon (like
a Pokémon-EX); otherwise even if you
don’t plan on attacking with it, you
just want it for the free Retreat Cost
and decent size (for Limited).
Ratings
Standard:
3.5/5 - Composite rating; across the
board it is at least good for a three
out of five, but in decks that suit it
it spikes up to being a staple (at least
a four out of five) and its impressed me
so much that I’m leaning towards it
being pretty good.
Expanded:
3.5/5 - I am a little more worried about
it here facing more competition (and
perhaps more Lightning-Types to worry
about), but it gains access to Level
Ball, so all in all I think it evens
out.
Limited:
4.9/5 - Are you running a +39 deck?
Then skip it. Anything else? Make
room.
Summary:
Hawlucha did not make my own top
10 list from a few weeks ago, but I am
pretty sure by now that it should have.
It doesn’t do any one thing well enough
to make it a must run, but it does a lot
of little things well to make it a “must
have reason for not running” card. Of
course, deck space is a very viable
reason; isn’t that why most of us aren’t
running the useful TecH attackers to
counter various decks?
