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Lucky number seven
on our countdown of the Top 20 Cards Lost To Rotation is
Dimension Valley (XY: Phantom Forces
93/119). This is our fourth Trainer card this
week; while cards that affect a particular class or
subclass of Trainer are reasonably common in the TCG (in
either Expanded or Standard play), those that affect all
Trainer cards are not. Possibly because experience
has taught the designers that such cards tend to be
quite, quite potent. Older cards like Item
Finder and Dark Vileplume (Team Rocket
13/82, 30/82) apply to all Trainers simply because they
predate any future divisions, while Chaos Gym and
Slowking (Neo Genesis 14/111) still
predated the creation of Supporters: we still were able
to use these cards alongside some later Trainer
additions and so this isn’t hypothetical; affecting
all Trainer cards is potent. Right now there
are only a few standouts like Dowsing Machine,
Skyla, and Trainers’ Mail, all of which are
support: even I am comfortable glossing over the
underperforming general Trainer counters of the modern
card pool. General Stadium support is almost
non-existent: an attack here or there like on
Regirock (XY: Black Star Promos XY49).
Attacks that discard Stadium cards are uncommon but out
there. Countering Stadiums is much easier to find;
Paint Roller gives us an Item that discards a
Stadium in play then lets you draw a card, while
Delinquent gives us a Supporter that discards a
Stadium then three cards from your opponent’s hand.
There are also some
effects like that both help and hurt Stadiums:
Giratina-EX (XY: Ancient Origins 57/98,
93/98), Gothitelle (XY: Furious Fists
41/111), and Ninetales (XY: Primal Clash
21/160) usually help the player using them but also
counter the opponent’s Stadium cards as well (and
careless usage of Ninetales can block you from
playing your own Stadium cards). This is a nice
lead in to how Stadium cards are their own counter;
between both players you may only have a single
Stadium card in play. The instant someone plays a
Stadium card any Stadium card already in play is
discarded. You also may only play a single Stadium
card on your turn and it must have a different
name from the Stadium card already in play (if there is
one). Stadium cards usually apply an effect more
or less equally to both players, though besides the
owner choosing when to play it and having had the chance
to optimize his or her deck for it, a few have two
different effects split between both players, determined
by which way the card is oriented; right side up means
one effect while upside down means the opposite effect
applies to that player. Stadium cards are usually
among the least run Trainers, even in formats where they
are considered vital. Why? The rules
involving them makes their usage even more constrained
than that of Supporters. You can
effectively run more than one Stadium card; if you have
room and your deck doesn’t revolve around a particular
Stadium I actually recommend splitting them; not only
can your extras be dead in hand, but your opponent may
need that same Stadium card more than yourself.
The corollary is that running more than two Stadium
cards is likely to prove too unreliable or space
consuming.
Experienced players
already knew what I just said, but it was important not
just for the newbies but so that we keep all of this in
mind while evaluating card effects. Plus if you’ve
read even a handful of my reviews you can probably tell
I’m a creature of habit and prone to over-explaining
versus under. Dimension Valley reduces the
attack costs on Psychic Type Pokémon by [C], effectively
making it a form of Energy acceleration as it still
enables you to attack more quickly and effectively.
At a glance this might seem like a must-run for Psychic
decks, but like bumping up damage dealt or reducing
damage taken, Dimension Valley still has to shift
the attack cost into a “sweet spot”. For example
an attack that needs [PPCC] doesn’t get much help from
Dimension Valley; you would only need [PPC] but
while it is one less Energy, the original cost of [PPCC]
could be met with three Energy cards (two basic
Psychic Energy and a Double Colorless, plus a
few other options). It still may help a little,
since now a manually Psychic Energy attachment
from hand and two successful uses of Max Elixir
can do the job but you are using up your Stadium
for a mediocre return. Making a [C] attack free,
[CC] into [C] or [CCC] into just [CC]; needing no
Energy, just one Energy, or just one Double Colorless
Energy is pretty spiffy. Where [X] is a
non-Colorless Energy requirement, changing [XC] to [X]
or [XXC] to [XX] also tends to make a difference, though
not always.
We’ve seen attack
cost reducers before, though off the top of my head I
don’t remember it as a Stadium effect. This is
where the first half of this review earns its keep.
While it means all of your Psychic Types with
appropriate attack costs can cash in, so too can your
opponent’s. With some Types this wouldn’t be too
big of a deal, but the Psychic Type doesn’t seem to stay
out of the spotlight for too long in the Pokémon TCG, at
least since the BW-era. Both Mew (XY:
Fates Collide 29/124) and Mew-EX with their
attack copying ways, as well as the various versions of
Mewtwo-EX and M Mewtwo-EX can take at
least some advantage of Dimension Valley, with
Mew, Mew-EX, and Mewtwo-EX (BW:
Next Destinies 54/99, 98/99; BW: Black Star
Promos BW45; BW: Legendary Treasures 54/113)
making some significant gains. Night Marcher
Pumpkaboo (XY: Phantom Forces 44/119) would
have been just more discard fodder without Dimension
Valley allowing it to attack for a single Double
Colorless Energy. All of this means that
Dimension Valley is not a Stadium to casually toss
into a Psychic deck (after all, many have Psychic
Weakness) but at the same time it will also be
worth running in many (most?) of them. It tends to
be vital to strategies, so you’ll run the deck heavily -
splits are unlikely to work - and you need to be careful
not to waste them. That doesn’t mean some won’t
end up as discard fodder, but if you’re counting on it
to enable attacks (or at least affordable attacks) you
may really pay for dropping one too soon. The good
news is that since we are talking about attacks, you
cash in on the effect on your own turn; if you
hit for a good amount of damage, Dimension Valley
won’t have gone to waste even if your opponent
immediately discards it.
I believe it is
still a near staple for Psychic Type decks in Expanded,
but take this with a double grain of salt: Karen
became legal between Regionals - hard counters Night
March and Vespiquen (XY: Ancient Origins
10/98) - and even if I had not been busy and
barely able to play the last few weeks, remember I’m a
PTCGO player - it isn’t a totally alien metagame but
despite being international, it behaves more like a
“local” metagame instead of something more broad.
If you pull it in Limited, run it: even if you pull no
Psychic Types that can make use of Dimension Valley,
you would likely have the space to make it worth
including just to discard an opponent’s Steel Shelter
(the other Stadium this set).
So what if
Dimension Valley was still Standard legal?
Decks built around M Gardevoir-EX (XY: Steam
Siege 79/114, 112/114) strike me as the only ones
that really could make good use of it in Standard
play. Said deck has other Stadium cards worth
using as well, but with it you can use the “Despair Ray”
attack on it for just [Y], which is pretty great since
that’s 110 damage on a decent sized Mega Evolution with
the option of pushing for up to 160 with its own built
in effect (Despair Ray allows you to discard Pokémon
from your own Bench to do +10 damage per). We
probably need to get around to reviewing that card… but
back to the discussion at hand, most of the other decks
that had been making great use of Dimension Valley
in Standard prior to the rotation lost other
cards, badly nerfing or completely eliminating them.
Night March is totally gone (and Karen would be
an issue for it had it stuck around) and Trevenant
BREAK decks lost Trevenant (XY
55/146). M Mewtwo-EX (XY: BREAKthrough
64/162, 160/162) has become the star attacker of its own
deck, but even though it is a Psychic Type it gets only
a mild benefit from Dimension Valley being in
play. This is another deck I haven’t been able to
run first hand, so maybe it would value using its
“Psychic Infinity” attack for just [C], but since that
attack does more damage based on the Energy attached to
all Active Pokémon, you’re just burning your Stadium to
attack with on less Energy attachment and for 30 less
damage than if you had used a Mega Turbo,
Double Colorless Energy, etc. so that M Mewtwo-EX
could just attack with Psychic Infinity at the full
price. Mewtwo-EX (XY: BREAKthrough
62/162, 158/162, 164/162) might like dropping its
“Damage Change” attack’s cost down to just [PP], but
the deck already likes Shrine of Memories so that
M Mewtwo-EX can use that attack instead.
Ratings
Standard:
N/A
Expanded:
3.75/5
Limited:
3.5/5
Summary:
Scores might seem out of synch with my review; being
awesome on Type but pointless (or backfiring) everywhere
else but having an overall score tends to do that.
On Type Dimension Valley is usually
awesome, but sometimes even there it is just nice or has
the potential to backfire: many Psychic Types are
Psychic Weak, so if it really helps out your
opponent but somewhat helps you, s’bad. Off Type,
the only reason it would have any use is because it can
discard other Stadium cards. Vital to some decks,
mediocre in a few, and almost pointless in the rest?
Overall that means it falls a bit short of “four out of
five” territory. If we get another killer deck
that absolutely needs it? That quickly changes for
the better: it is just that kind of card.
Dimension Valley
managed to earn 35 voting points; a point above
yesterday’s
Korrina and a point below tomorrow’s 6th place
finisher. So what about my own list? I had
this as my 14th place pick: it is good Type support and
perhaps I should have had it a few slots higher, but I
kept finding so many cards that were either even more
important to their niché, mattered to more cards that
did not rotate, or were killer cards for general
deck building.
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