aroramage |
With the end of the year and the
impending arrival of the Sun and Moon set, it's
appropriate really to end up taking a look at Absol.
Really though, Absol's a tricky
Pokemon to work around. Sure, Shadow Cage isn't
threatening anyone, at 3-for-60 and keeping an opponent
from retreating, but that's where Lamentation brings a
certain worry. Ideally you're looking to OHKO Absol as
to avoid losing much to the Ability, since every time
Absol takes damage from an attack it discards a card
from your hand.
Course since the ideal goal is to
OHKO Absol, let's see how hard that'll be at 100 HP!
...it won't be.
Rating
Standard: 2.5/5 (props for the
discard threat though, I can see that being useful
against some decks)
Expanded: 2.5/5 (keeping in mind
it's random)
Limited: N/A (and not available in
a main set)
Arora Notealus: I wonder if the
Pokemon Company's been consistent about printing an
Absol card out right as things are about to get a major
shake-up. Hmmm...there's the one from Plasma Freeze that
came out before VirGen decks, the one from Roaring Skies
before Ancient Origins gave us Forest of Giant Plants
among other things, Absol-EX and M Absol-EX were
released right around Roaring Skies...
Next Time: Time to just sit back,
relax, and wait for the...something.
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Otaku |
Our second promo
this week is Absol XY: Black Star Promos
XY178). As you would expect, it is a Darkness Type
Pokémon (in the video games, it can only be a Dark
Type). Some Psychic Type Pokémon are Darkness Weak
(those that correspond to the video game Ghost Type) and
so far all Fairy Type Pokémon have Darkness
Resistance, unless they are BREAK Evolutions.
There are anti-Darkness Type effects but they’ve never
proven competitive (at all). Explicit Darkness
Type support restricted to the Type has includes some
potent cards like Dark Patch and… well that is
main the one that remains relevant as others like
Dark Claw are obsolete. Some potent effects
also work with [D] Energy; while that means they can be
used totally off Type, it just becomes easier to work
with Darkrai-EX (BW: Dark Explorers
63/108, 107/108; BW: Black Star Promos BW46;
BW: Legendary Treasures 88/113) and its “Dark Cloak”
Ability or the other Darkrai-EX (XY:
BREAKpoint 74/112, 118/122) and its “Dark Pulse”
attack. Which leads us to the final benefit of the
Darkness Type: it has an excellent stable of attackers,
such as Yveltal (XY 78/146; XY: Black
Star Promos XY06; Generations RC16/RC32;
XY: Steam Siege 65/114) and Yveltal-EX (which
has only one version, so I won’t list reference
numbers). While crashing into Resistance against
Fairy Types can be an issue, I’d be more worried that
the Darkness Type has so many good cards in it, Absol
won’t be able to compete: what is normally a pro can
become a con.
Absol
is a Basic Pokémon; it can function as your opening
Active, it has a natural synergy with many card effects,
minimum time for it to hit the field, minimum space to
run it in your deck, even some fantastic Stage support.
All that goes against being a Basic is that there are
some good anti-Basic Pokémon effects. Absol has
100 HP; this isn’t great but at least it’s three digits.
Probably a OHKO, but every now and then your opponent
can whiff. The Fighting Type will have an even
more reliable OHKO, relevant as they have this tendency
to use single Energy attacks that do decent damage, then
stack additional damage buffs on top of them. In
fact using their usual tricks, they’ll probably go into
overkill territory, again even while one of their Basics
attacks for a single Energy card. Psychic
Resistance is handy but probably not game changing;
again 100 HP isn’t huge by modern standards. Still
better than having no Resistance at all. The
Retreat Cost of [C] is good; no deck should really leave
out alternatives to manually retreating like Switch
or Escape Rope, but you shouldn’t need as many of
them (at least if everything has a similar Retreat
Cost). Plus any Retreat Cost lowering
effects drop Absol to a perfect free Retreat Cost
(like Skyarrow Bridge).
Absol
has an Ability and an attack. The Ability is
“Lamentation”, a name I quite like. The actual
effect is that when this card is your Active Pokémon and
is damaged by an opponent’s attack, even if the
attack KO’s Absol, then your opponent must
discard a random card from his or her hand. I wish
it worked while Absol was Benched as well, but
overall that is pretty impressive. Yes your
opponent might be able to discard something they can
spare, have nothing in hand, or worse that they want to
discard. There is still the risk that something
“good” will get hit (barring an empty hand, which is a
victory in and of itself for you). The attack is
“Shadow Cage” and it costs [DCC] to do 60 damage and the
Defending Pokémon cannot retreat during the next turn.
Without building it into a combo, blocking your
opponent’s retreat is likely to be a non-issue. It
wouldn’t be a problem if the attack did more damage;
even 10 more would reach some critical threshold
(especially after buffs). I’d rather the attack
did more like 80 or 90 though, or else only had a cost
of like [DC] or [CC]. It isn’t horrible, but it
falls short of being mediocre, let alone adequate.
There is some small synergy here, but it relies on luck;
luck that your opponent has something that cannot hit
hard but which you may strand up front, and/or luck that
the random discard will make it harder for your opponent
to get around being unable to naturally retreat.
There are other
Absol that technically compete with today’s version
for deck space: BW: Plasma Freeze 67/116 and
XY: Roaring Skies 40/108. Their stats are the
same as Absol XY: Black Star Promos XY178)
except that BW: Plasma Freeze 67/116 is a
Team Plasma Pokémon, able to tap their support but also
vulnerable to their counters; I’ll be referring to it as
Absol [Plasma] for the rest of the review. Absol
[Plasma] has two attacks, “Mind Jack” and “Fearsome
Shadow”. The former costs [DC] and does 20 damage
plus another 20 for each of your Benched Pokémon while
the latter is “Fearsome Shadow” which costs [DCC] and
does 60 damage plus forces your opponent to reveal his
or her hand. This was the
eighth place
finisher
in our countdown of the top 10 cards of BW: Plasma
Freeze, proving important because at the time there
wasn’t another good Darkness Type attacker who was
not also a Pokémon-EX. In some ways it is
better now, as cards like Sky Field allow Mind
Jack to reach new heights, but we now have a few other
options for a Basic Darkness Type attacker, including
the aforementioned Yveltal. Fearsome Shadow
should be ignored for the most part as like Shadow Cage
it just isn’t worth the Energy. It is only legal
in Expanded play, and it is a bit of competition
for today’s Absol. Just a bit though
because you might wish to run it as a solid attacker
whereas today’s would most likely be run for the
Ability.
XY: Roaring Skies
40/108 has an Ability and an attack, like today’s
Absol. The Ability is “Cursed Eyes”, which
triggers when you play this Absol from your hand
to your Bench; you may move three damage counters from
one of your opponent’s Pokémon to another. Its
attack is “Mach Claw” for [DC], which does 30 damage
while ignoring Resistance. Cursed Eyes is
optional, so it can only backfire if you make the wrong
call. You’ll probably try to keep this Absol
in hand until you can make decent use of the Ability;
otherwise it would be likely that Cursed Eyes could
prove somewhat meaningless as there might not be three
damage counters to move, or someplace you would want to
move them. Mach Claw is definitely a filler
attack, but at least it only requires two Energy.
Just having the attack do 20 more damage would serve far
better than ignoring Resistance, barring Klefki (XY:
Furious Fists 73/111). It is the Klefki
that causes Fairy Types to have Resistance -40 instead
of -20; I don’t think Fairy decks bother with it but it
is an exception to what would otherwise be a universal
rule. Mach Claw helps get damage on the board for
the Cursed Eyes of the next Absol or (if you’re
really lucky) the same one. Cursed Eyes can help
Mach Claw score a KO since it moves damage around;
neither of these are great combos, but at least they
exist. This Absol was reviewed
here;
I thought it had good potential but so far it looks like
I’m wrong. It is still Standard legal, and
hypothetically at least could compete with today’s
Absol should a one-time shift of three damage
counters matter to a particular deck considering either
Absol.
Before we discuss
whether or not to run Absol XY: Black Star
Promos XY178), let us ask where it could come in
handy. Losing a single random card from hand may
or may not be painful; one of the ways to make this more
likely is to combine it with other forms of
disruption or control. Other effects that wreck
your opponent’s hand can set up Lamentation to wipe out
your opponent’s last card from hand, leaving him or her
topdecking. Other forms of disruption and control
can still help, though; the goal is to remove options
from your opponent. This also can combo with
Shadow Cage, though it is a bit less likely. If
you don’t want to worry about using Shadow Cage at all,
then Absol might be a partner for a hit-and-run
style attacker; use a much better attack and then force
your opponent to ignore the real threat (the attacker)
and take out Absol while losing a random
card from hand. So with these in mind, what kind
of deck can make use of this Absol?
Unfortunately, nothing is coming to me.
Hit-and-run style decks might be the most promising at
the moment, but that still isn’t a good fit; as stated
earlier the HP just means Absol takes one hit,
discards one card, and is gone. Probably a lot
better to throw up a disruptive wall like Wobbuffet
(XY: Phantom Forces 36/119; Generations
RC11/RC32). So probably not something to use in
Standard or Expanded play, and as a promo it won’t be
legal Limited. If it were reprinted in a set, then
everything about it becomes pretty solid and it would be
something to include in most decks (since it only needs
one of three Energy be [D]).
Ratings
Standard:
1.75/5
Expanded:
1.75/5
Limited:
N/A
Summary:
Hand disruption can really dominate in most TCGs.
Pokémon tends to have ample draw/search power making it
less effective, and apart from that Absol doesn’t
have the HP to be a good punching bag or the attack to
be not-quite-glass-cannon. Expanded provides more
combo opportunities than in Standard, but also more
alternatives at counters, so I’m just calling it a wash
and scoring both formats the same. All hope isn’t
totally gone, though; it is plausible (just
unlikely) that a future deck could make use of this
card.
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