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Pojo's Pokémon Card of the Day

 

Exeggutor

- Roaring Skies

Date Reviewed:
Jun 1, 2015

Ratings & Reviews Summary

Standard: 1.88
Expanded: 1.88
Limited: 3.27

Ratings are based on a 1 to 5 scale.
1 being horrible.  3 ... average.  5 is awesome.

Back to the main COTD Page

Baby Mario
2010 UK National
Seniors
Champion

Exeggutor (Roaring Skies) 

Yep, this is the Pokémon that (some) people are referring to as ‘Taylor Swift’ because one of its attacks is called ‘Shake it Off’. Given the singer’s penchant for copyrighting the use of commonplace phrases in her lyrics, we could maybe expect another Uri Gellar/Kadabra style legal battle. Except that would be very, very dumb. 

Shake it Off would really be the only reason for being interested in this Exeggutor, and that would be as it is clearly intended to be some kind of blatant Shaymin EX/Rayquaza EX counter. For a single Grass Energy, you do 20 times the number of Colourless Pokémon your opponent has on the Field, which can be enough to OHKO Shaymin depending on their Bench size/Muscle Band/Silver Bangle. 

I suppose Exeggutor is playable in decks that are already running Exeggcute for its Propagation Ability, but I’m not really convinced of its merits. Shaymin isn’t exactly hard to OHKO anyway for most decks, and Rayquaza decks will usually be happy to give up a spent support Pokémon if it means you leave their attacker alone. It would be different if Seed Bomb could exploit Weakness and provide a threat to Seismitoad EX, but the three Energy cost and need for a damage-boosting Tool makes that a bit impractical. You could test it out, I suppose, but Exeggcutor strikes me as a bit gimmicky and not at all versatile. 

Rating 

Modified: 2.25

Expanded: 2

Limited: 2


Otaku

Because no one demanded it: welcome to our Grass Week for XY: Roaring Skies!

 

This time we might actually be able to adhere to formula and spread out the the cards that are “Nearly Top 10 material” with “Reviewed it because it was just barely worthy of consideration, if only to warn people away” and the varying levels in between.  Our first subject is Exeggutor (XY: Roaring Skies 2/108).  It is a Grass-Type which means there is some Type support but so far, it hasn’t accomplished much, though we already know from early reveals of the next set in Japan, some interesting stuff is on the way (won’t affect its ratings today though).  It is an in demand Weakness right now with cards like Keldeo-EX, Primal Groudon-EX and Seismitoad-EX all taking double damage from it.  Nothing Resists Grass-Types (unless you’re using cards so old they aren’t even close to Expanded legal).  All in all it is a Type looking for its next big hit with a lot of cards failing to live up to the hype. Speaking of hype, there is none for being a Stage 1; it isn’t as easy to use or as space efficient as being a Basic but compared to all the other contemporary Stages, it isn’t bad. 

Exeggutor has 120 HP, which is reasonably good; being OHKOed is still a real chance with higher HP and this is around the amount where a Pokémon is a little more likely than not to survive a hit… though if you only consider decks with a “complete” set-up, those odds plummet.  Fire Weakness is typical of Grass-Types but the Fire-Type is fairly lacking, at least right now, so its not the worst Weakness to have, perhaps even one of the “better” ones.  No Resistance on the other hand is the worst by default, but it is also the most common so it isn’t going to cost this card any points.  The chunky Retreat Cost of [CCC] does hurt its play value, but only a little; most decks right now either know they need to pack at least some alternatives to manually retreating at full price in order to shake Special Conditions and attack effects and even if not, with the amount of OHKOs in the format, again not likely to matter a whole lot. 

Exeggutor has two attacks, the first being Shake It Off for [G], which does 20 damage times the number of Colorless-Type Pokémon your opponent has in play.  Thanks to Sky Field, this attack can vary from zero to 180 damage (up to 120 without Sky Field).  This is nice, but not as impressive at it seems at first glance.  Most decks aren’t pure Colorless and even with a field full of Colorless-Types while Sky Field is in play, that 180 isn’t enough to OHKO the likes of M Rayquaza-EX (XY: Roaring Skies 76/108, 105/108) even with a Silver Bangle… though if you can tack on a Hypnotoxic Laser then you finally hit the needed threshold.  Perhaps more important is that even in mixed company, you might get decent damage thanks to the heavy amount of Shaymin-EX (XY: Roaring Skies 77/108; 106/108) being played.  The second attack is Seed Bomb which does a flat 80 for [GCC]; this used to be a solid amount back when a Silver Bangle (and later a Muscle Band) would allow you to at worst reliably 2HKO anything seeing competitive play (with maybe M Kangaskhan-EX as an exception).  It isn’t as good now, but it's adequate; when Shake It Off isn’t a good option, the card can still do something worthwhile. 

You have two choices for Exeggcute: BW: Plasma Freeze 4/116 (reprinted as the Secret Rare BW: Plasma Blast 102/101) and XY: Roaring Skies 1/108.  Both are Basic Grass-Types with Fire Weakness, Retreat Costs of [C] and no Ancient Traits.  BW: Plasma Freeze 4/116 has the minimal 30 HP we see printed on actual Pokémon (some Trainers that behave like Pokémon have as low as 10) meaning not only is it an easy OHKO while up front, but on the Bench as well.   Though not likely to matter with HP this low, this Exeggcute enjoys Water Resistance.  Propagation allows you to add it to your hand from the discard pile; it states once per turn and before you attack, but only the latter really matters as the effect apparently resets every time it leaves the discard pile.  It has a much weaker, overpriced version of Seed Bomb, hitting for 20 while requiring [GC].  XY: Roaring Skies 1/108 has 40 HP, no Resistance and two attacks: Loathe for [C] and Ram for [G]; the former is “tails fails” but when it works it switches itself with a Pokémon on your Bench while the latter just hits for 10 damage.  40 HP survives a bit longer than 30, but only a bit.  Both are fragile: 30 is low enough to be KOed by Hypnotoxic Laser and Virbank City Gym one your opponent’s first turn, but thanks to Latios-EX (XY: Roaring Skies 58/108, 105/108) and its Fast Raid attack 40 is vulnerable.  The Bench isn’t even very safe for either of these.  Between the two, go with BW: Plasma Freeze 4/116 for the fantastic Ability even if it is so fragile.  You can see an almost two year old review for it here. 

The other currently legal Exeggutor is BW: Plasma Freeze 5/116, which surprisingly we never reviewed.  While it doesn’t look all that different from today’s iteration, with 20 less HP, Water Resistance but a Retreat Cost of [CC] it too has one “special” attack and one “functional” attack.  The latter is Stomp for [GCC] hitting for 60, with a coin flip for an additional 30, weaker than the Seed Bomb on today’s version… but its first attack is Blockade for [C]; while it only does 10 damage it prevents your opponent from playing Supporters from hand, potentially grinding their deck to a halt.  This has been the basis for a deck that has seen success on the competitive scene, though I don’t have the results from this weekend’s Regionals to know the deck’s current status.  This card seems most likely to be competition to keep XY: Roaring Skies 2/108 from seeing a lot of play, but perhaps there is room for a single TecH copy in Blockade decks or in decks already running Exeggcute (BW: Plasma Freeze 4/116; BW: Plasma Blast 102/101) and a source of [G] Energy.  Otherwise today’s Exeggutor just seems a little too overspecialized to warrant serious play. 

Ratings 

Standard: 2/5 

Expanded: 2/5 

Limited: 4.8/5 

Summary: Exeggutor is an interesting Colorless counter that doesn’t quite hit hard enough to justify including it in a deck that needs to improve its Colorless match-ups.  It isn’t horrible it just is so specialized and comes a bit short of taking out the largest Colorless-Type Pokémon without additional help, namely the opponent filling the field with Colorless-Types while Sky Field is in play.  Of course if this had been a Basic Pokémon it might have been worth it.


Emma Starr

Ah, Exeggutor. The ultimate counter to Winnona. Which is actually ironic, since she’s a Flying-type Gym Leader, and Exeggutor is a part Grass-type in the games. But how does he actually hold up here? Let’s take a look.

120 HP is good for a Stage 1, but that Fire Weakness isn’t too nice. And that Retreat Cost…is just detestable. If you don’t plan on it being out very long, be sure to give it a Float Stone, or have Switch nearby. But what were you expecting? It is a living, breathing tree after all. Anyway, it’s first attack is Shake it Off, which does 20 damage for each Colorless Pokémon your opponent has in play, because it wants to damage as many Pokémon with its Taylor Swift references as possible. For one Grass Energy, that’s pretty generous; you have to give him that. But since you’re waiting for more of your opponent’s (hopefully Colorless) to get in play, you’re probably going to want to play him in the mid to late game. Which is usually…when your opponent’s biggest threats are out. But the typing is what really is the problem here. Except for the spare Rayquazas, Miltanks, or Kanghaskhan you may see, Colorless Pokémon still aren’t going to have enough of a presence to make this attack work, even with Sky Field or Winnona. If you’re lucky, your opponent could have two Colorless Pokémon out, but you’d still only be doing 40 damage. Believe it or not, this actually usually will make the 3-for 80 Seed Bomb the superior attack most times, but attacks like that are par for the course, nowadays.

Standard: 1.5/5

Expanded: 1.5/5

Limited: 3/5 (well, Colorless actually got a lot of attention given to them for once, so this could actually work here, since Winnona can be a real threat there, more than anywhere else, along with Sky Field.)


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