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Pojo's Pokémon Card of the Day

 

 Sylveon EX

- Generations

Date Reviewed:
April 27, 2016

Ratings & Reviews Summary

Standard: 3.00
Expanded: 2.75
Limited: 3.90

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

Back to the main COTD Page


aroramage

Sylveon...also looks oddly familiar. 170 HP, 2 attacks that are 2 Energy and 3 Energy apiece...right down to the 2-cost Retreat! At least the Fairy Typing still generously gives her a Dark Resistance. 

On top of that, Dress Up is completely Colorless in cost! Course, it's only a 2-for-30 strike (sounds...familiar?). Additionally, it can get an extra 30 damage if there's a Tool attached to it! That's not that bad, especially if you put Muscle Band or Fighting Fury Belt on her - then she's dealing 70-80 damage for only 2 Energy! Not too bad, Sylveon! 

Then there's Precious Ribbon, a nifty 3-for-100 damage. Not that bad, and Sylveon-EX can move her Fairy Energy off to another Pokemon to charge them up while also recovering 50 HP if she does so! Prepping your Pokemon just in case Sylveon-EX is pretty good, and healing 50 HP isn't too bad on the scale of healing honestly. All in all, it's pretty neat! 

...though that doesn't mean Sylveon-EX is exceptional. Again, not a bad card - probably one of the better Eeveelution-EXs - but not one of the absolute best EX. There's nothing really game-breaking about Sylveon-EX like there have been on EX cards in the past. The Tool bonus on Dress Up just makes her more offensive while Precious Ribbon, while dealing more damage, is almost more defensive in its capabilities and supportive of anything that can take her place. And Sylveon-EX does need those extra Tools to deal enough good damage all around. 

So in short, take another look at Sylveon-EX for her prowess as a good EX, but don't expect her to be topping tournaments solo. 

Rating 

Standard: 3/5 (an all-around good EX that does what it can do fairly well) 

Expanded: 3/5 (it's just hard to gauge what more she can do without the right support of her own) 

Limited: 3.5/5 (and on her own? well, she'd at least do well in Limited) 

Arora Notealus: I do like the Eeveelutions all getting their own EX cards. I wonder if they'll continue pumping out new EXs until they start hitting the lower end...Kricketune-EX? Chatot-EX? Luvdisc-EX? I guess they can't hit the absolute bottom, but at least get me Snorlax-EX and Slaking-EX! 

Next Time: Speaking of fire!!...I was a day late on that one.


Otaku

Sylveon-EX (Generations RC21/RC32, RC32/R32) is our third review this week.  This time we are looking at a Fairy Type, a Type which currently can only strike Weakness against XY-era Dragon Types, but at least nothing is Fairy Resistant.  If there are any explicitly anti-Fairy Type cards, I’m missing them.  It is easier to find the Fairy Type support, though there still isn’t a lot of it and the effects that specifically reference Fairy Type Pokémon aren’t too thrilling.  When it comes to manipulating [Y] Energy, there we get some cards that can really help the Fairy Type, usually better than they can help other Types.  Xerneas (XY 96/146; XY: Black Star Promos XY05) is used as attack based Energy acceleration, Aromatisse (XY 93/146) to move [Y] Energy around, and Fairy Garden to zero out the Retreat Costs of Pokémon with a source of [Y] Energy attached.  Not the most thrilling of Types, but it definitely isn’t bad.  Being a Pokémon-EX means giving up an extra Prize when KOed while being explicitly targeted by some detrimental effects and excluded from a few beneficial ones.  This is usually offset by having better attributes (usually HP) and/or effects, but the previous three things I mentioned are guaranteed by the premise of being a Pokémon-EX or the card pool while those benefits vary from card to card.  There is one other bonus that applies to Pokémon which get the Pokémon-EX treatment and are Evolutions (but not Mega Evolutions): they get to be Basic Pokémon! 

Being a Basic Pokémon is the best; yes there are some potent anti-Basic Pokémon effects but the Basic Pokémon support, inherent strengths of requiring less time (and/or cards) to be put into play, and improved synergy with various card effects (when compared with other Stages) has created a tremendous advantage for this Stage over all others.  Sylveon-EX does cash in the the expected HP boost, possessing 170 HP; the regular versions of Sylveon only have 90 HP.  170 is the lower of the two typical HP scores for Basic Pokémon-EX, but is still good and sturdy.  Nothing is safe from being OHKOed, and many decks are shooting for this amount or more.  That isn’t the same as rapidly and reliably doing 170+ damage, so you’ll still have good odds of surviving a hit, especially against a less than complete setup and of course the decks focused more on effects than attacks.  The Metal Weakness on Sylveon-EX isn’t great, but it might be one of the less harmful Weaknesses to have right now; there are some Metal Type decks that are still doing well, but they aren’t overly prominent.  Sylveon-EX has Darkness Resistance, a nice change of pace from the previous two subjects.  This may even end up with some synergy with one of the card’s attacks, but more on that later.  The Retreat Cost of [CC] is low enough you can probably manage if you have to pay it at full price, but high enough it is better if you can avoid doing so. 

Sylveon-EX has two attacks.  The first is “Dress Up”, which costs [CC] and does 30 damage, plus an additional 30 damage if Sylveon-EX has a Pokémon Tool attached to it.  30 for two is poor but 60 for two is solid, and it is quite likely you’ll want a Pokémon Tool attached to Sylveon-EX anyway.  Again as a change of pace from the previous two Pokémon-EX Eeveelutions, Dress Up can be powered by any Energy, which means that Double Colorless Energy can provide an instant boost from “zero” to “attacking”.  The second attack is “Precious Ribbon”, which costs [YYC].  It does 100 damage and then moves a [Y] Energy from Sylveon-EX to one of your Benched Pokémon.  Assuming you can do that, you’ll heal 50 damage from that Pokémon.  If you have no Bench this effect won’t trigger, but if you have a target that cannot receive the Energy (such as a Safeguard Pokémon) then it will attempt to move the Energy, fail, and the Energy will be discarded.  100 for three isn’t great but it’s reasonably good; without boosts you’ll still easily score 2HKOs against similarly sized Pokémon-EX and with a simple Muscle Band you’ll either OHKO or 2HKO anything that isn’t protected, buffed, or Wailord-EX.  The healing isn’t great but it isn’t bad, and moving an Energy to the Bench can be a benefit or a drawback, as explained above.  The main concern is that it costs [YYC] instead of [YCC], so you know how Dress Up can use Double Colorless Energy?  Probably not the best idea. 

No other Sylveon-EX to compare or compete with, and we know there are some amazing Basic Pokémon-EX beatsticks with which Sylveon-EX cannot hope to compete, so let us look at other Fairy Type Basic Pokémon-EX beatsticks.  Yet again, the situation is different from that of Leafeon-EX and Vaporeon-EX; the Fairy Type is still pretty new so there just aren’t as many Fairy Type Basic Pokémon-EX to compete with, let alone good ones.  Most just aren’t great at attacking or at least require enough effort to set up and keep going, there is an opening for something else.  Thanks to its second attack, though, Sylveon-EX can actually work with the worthwhile options (or anything else that can make use of [Y] Energy).  Fairy Transfer decks can take advantage of Precious Ribbon to reduce the loss of Energy should your attacker be KOed and easily exploit the healing effect.  Some have been experimenting with Sylveon-EX and some of the other solid Fairy Type attackers (not sure which would actually count as that) to get a Fairy Type deck that does not run Aromatisse for Fairy Transfer, but I haven’t tried it, nor have I seen or heard of it working.  Still, at least it is something.  This is also a great pull for Limited, either run on its own or alongside other Pokémon, though it isn’t like you’ll have much of a chance of using Generations for a Limited event in the first place. 

Ratings 

Standard: 3/5 

Expanded: 2.75/5 

Limited: 4.35/5 

Summary: Sylveon-EX is a solid card, though I worry I’m overrating it a bit just because it seems like a fresh of breath air compared to the last two reviews.  Solid attributes and two more-or-less good attacks are appreciated, especially when not being released into a crowded field.


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