|
Hey, I remember this card! I
actually ran it in my builds with Blastoise and Groudon-EX
from Dark Explorers once upon a time! Ahhh,
memories......I'm really not competitive with this game.
Anywho, Heavy Ball is a useful card
in some decks and...well, unused in others. The ones
that do use it, of course, want it because of what it
does: retrieves a Pokemon with a Retreat Cost of 3 or
higher. This was useful in ye olden days with stuff
like, again, Blastoise, retrieving it quickly and going
straight into Rare Candy to play out your Energy-laden
hand. Nowadays, there are a few new Pokemon that can
make use of it.
The first couple of suspects I
think of would be Primal Kyogre-EX or M Tyranitar-EX,
since both of them are very bulky in their Retreat
Costs. Primal Groudon-EX is another great example of a
huge Pokemon that can benefit from a little Heavy Ball
action, but then there's also M Ampharos-EX or Machamp-EX!
Sure, stuff like M Rayquaza-EX and M Sceptile-EX can't
make use of it, but then again, they're not why Heavy
Ball's here, are they?
Okay, so a lot of Megas can take
advantage of Heavy Ball, but you could just as easily
run Hoopa-EX and retrieve them with ease! We're looking
for other examples too, right? How about Magnezone from
BREAKThrough? He's got a Retreat Cost of 3! And we can't
forget about the ever-present Regice, can we? All we
needed was a way of getting him out faster so we could
put up Resistance Blizzard even quicker than before!
I suppose one downside to Heavy
Ball is that it can't locate BREAK Pokemon - no
searching for Zoroark BREAK or Florges BREAK here, since
the cards themselves don't have a Retreat Cost,
inheriting their own from their previous evolution. Not
that that's really going to have much of an impact as of
yet, I would say. Other than that, Heavy Ball's really a
niche card for a niche purpose, and hey, it can get to
more targets than Hoopa-EX.
...not that that should stop you
from running Hoopa-EX in an EX-heavy build.
Rating
Standard: 3/5 (some good cards have
come out to work with this nifty Item!)
Expanded: 3.5/5 (hey, it was good
before, it's still good now...in some decks)
Limited: 3/5 (there are only a
handful of Pokemon that can make use of it here, in
which case if you get one, I suppose you could run it,
but otherwise it doesn't seem so great here)
Arora Notealus: I think I've had
commentary before about potentially throwing in other
balls that haven't been translated into cards...prolly
on Dive Ball or something like that. In any case, it'd
still be really cool, though I doubt people are gonna be
all up in arms that Heavy Ball got a reprint rather than
a whole new card making it on the scene.
Weekend Thought: Which of the
Trainers from this week works best in your deck? You
gonna be running a full play set of any, or just stick
with one-offs at best? There might be some potential
with a few of them, though I can't speak for every one
of them.
|
