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Pojo's Pokémon Card of the Day

 

Hydreigon

- Phantom Forces

Date Reviewed:
Jan. 19, 2015

Ratings & Reviews Summary

Standard: 3
Expanded: 2
Limited: 4

Ratings are based on a 1 to 5 scale.
1 being the worst.  3 ... average.  5 is the highest rating.

Back to the main COTD Page


aroramage

Man, Hydreigon has always been a beast. He went straight to the OU tier back in Gen V as one of the coolest and strongest Dragons ever! And then just like that, he dropped to UU here in Gen VI. The answer to why is plain to see: Fairies came in, to which Hydreigon has the unfortunate dubious 4x weakness to their attacks, being Dragon/Dark. Still, he's one of the coolest Pokemon I know of and definitely one of my favorites.
 
Fortunately for him, Fairies haven't been terribly prominent as of late in the TCG, but he's usually been reduced to a supporter because of his Abilities. Sure, there have been a couple Hydreigon without Abilities, but you haven't seen them over in competitive play, have you? This one's Ability is reminiscent of his Ability from Dragons Exalted and Legendary Treasures, only instead of moving Dark Energy already on the field around with Dark Trance, you now get the option to put Dark Energy from your discard pile straight onto your Active Pokemon with Dark Impulse!
 
When you see Hydreigon's Crazy Headbutt, you can see what they were going for; you'd power up Hydreigon like mad to 4 Energy (1 Psychic and 1 Dark then whatever else you want) and then keep smashing with Crazy Headbutt for an unboosted 130 and then discard an Energy from him - usually a Dark Energy so you can just reattach it to him again. The scary thing is is that this could work, since all you need after that is some Muscle Band and HTLBank to allow him to OHKO most Pokemon-EX!
 
The biggest problem Hydreigon has though: he's remained a Stage 2 for all this time. If this were an EX, he'd be pretty powerful, but you have to set-up to get to him, and while his attack means he's crazy powerful, I get the feeling an Ability like his would be better suited to Bench-sitting - you know, where most Pokemon that end up as "Energy Retrievers" end up. That's the other thing though, Hydreigon is a Stage 2 Dark Patch that works only on the Active Pokemon - he's a lot of effort if all you're using him for is his Ability, whereas most other "Energy Retrievers" are Stage 1s.
 
Hydreigon has promise though - they just really need to get around to making an EX version of him! I wonder when that'll be...
 
Rating
 
Standard: 3/5 (good Ability and good attack, but just a lot of effort to put into getting him there)
 
Expanded: 2/5 (if you're running him for the Ability, then you're not using Dark Patch for some reason)
 
Limited: 4/5 (pretty powerful here, and with a constant 130 damage output and a Fairy weakness, he's pretty good - not too many Fairies here!)
 
Arora Notealus: I know it's kind of an unspoken policy to design cards of the same Type the same exact way in terms of Weakness/Resistance (looking at you, Fire, Electric, old Dragons, new Dragons...), but when you've got someone like Hydreigon here, you could at least consider throwing on a Resistance based on his other Type! Weak to Fairy sure, but why not Resistant to Psychic? It's flavorful AND accounts for dual-Typing. That's why Poison-types early on used to be in Grass - most Grass types were also Poison, so they were weak to Psychic!!
 
Next Time: If you chill it, it's like a fridge, but if you heat it up, it's more like an oven!
And a Happy MLK Day to you all!


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