aroramage |
BUT IT IS!! Another Grass-type GX
to bring ruin upon the masses!
Decidueye-GX is another of the
starter evolutions that got a GX, alongside of course
Primarina-GX and Incineroar-GX, who didn't make it up to
the Top 10 list this time around. Of the three though,
it looks like it was no contest to see which one stood
out on top - and wouldn't you know it, he's got an
Ability! Maybe that helped out a lot, but let's take a
look at what else he brings to the table!
While being a Stage 2 would
normally make Decidueye-GX as slow as Primarina-GX or
Incineroar-GX, he is a Grass-type meaning he gets access
to Forest of Crazy-Growing Plants, so he's as good as
active on Turn 1 in the right hands. His main attack
isn't terribly impressive though; clocking in at a
3-for-90 vanilla strike, Razor Leaf isn't the type of
attack that makes you say, "This is definitely one of
the best cards in the set." No, Razor Leaf is probably
the most boring part of the card - but everything else
is fantastic!
His Ability, Feather Arrow, is a
super simple one - once per turn, hit an opponent's
Pokemon for 20 damage. That's it! It's a small number,
but if Muscle Band is anything to go by, hitting that
extra 20 damage could mean the difference between a 3HKO
and a 2HKO, or a 2HKO and a OHKO! And since there's no
restriction on how many Feather Arrows can activate in a
turn, you could have multiple Decidueye-GX in play all
shooting out these pesky arrows for up to 80 damage
every turn!
...not that, you know, anyone would
reasonably run 4 of these guys and the whole line-up,
but details.
But of course as a GX, he's also
got a GX attack, and it's arguably one of the best ones.
Hollow Hunt GX only costs 1 Grass Energy, and it lets
you get back 3 cards from your discard pile and add them
to your hand. Once again, simple enough, but the
applications of such a maneuver are extraordinary! You
can get back valuable resources, a powerful Supporter, a
much-needed Pokemon, even those Special Energies that
are so hard to keep a hold of! And since all 3 cards go
back to your hand, they can be used again on your next
turn! Ain't that just crazy?
Feather Arrow alone makes Decidueye-GX
worth playing, but with Hollow Hunt GX, you oughta
expect him to be a headliner in a variety of Grass decks
in the new format!
Rating
Standard: 4.5/5 (quick evolution
thanks to Grass Stadium, a solid Ability, and a great GX
attack)
Expanded: 4.5/5 (his only real
drawback is his Fire Weakness at that point!)
Limited: 5/5 (which means against
anything else, he'll dominate)
Arora Notealus: I wonder if they'll
ever make a Psychic-type version of Decidueye. I mean I
know he's a starter and he's Grass, but you ever think
they'd make the starters with their other Type? Or even
bring back Dual-typing for these guys! Water/Fairy
Primarina, Fire/Dark Incineroar, Grass/Psychic (for
Ghost) Decidueye - it's these sorts of possibilities
that really get those creative juices flowing!
Next Time: And the GX that took our
#1 spot on this list is...
|
Otaku |
At last, it is time
to countdown the top 10 cards of Sun & Moon, as
determined by the aggregate efforts of aroramage, Zach,
and myself! As usual, each reviewer submitted his
own personal top 10 list, and the results were averaged
out to produce the list we are actually using.
Reprints were not permitted for the list; we
already know a card like Ultra Ball is good (and
actually pretty hard to top)!
So do I make a joke
about CW’s The Arrow or Hawkmon/Shurimon?
That is right, taking second place in our countdown is
Decidueye-GX (Sun & Moon 12/149). So
far - remember, even including Japanese releases we’ve
got less than two full sets to reference - being a
Pokémon-GX always means giving up an extra Prize,
enjoying +50 or more HP over your regular counterpart,
and either an Ability plus two attacks or three attacks,
with either option including one GX attack you may use
only once per game. Decidueye-GX is a Grass
Type, so like yesterday it does a solid job exploiting
the Weakness found on many Water and Fighting Types
(though far from all of either of those Types). No
worrying about Resistance, either. Anti-Grass Type
effects aren’t all that good, but they do exist, so that
could be worse. Grass Type support is great… in a
sense. Broken Vine Space Forest of
Giant Plants technically helps Evolving Grass Types,
but Decidueye-GX Evolves from a Grass Type, so it
hits the field possibly in a single turn: pretty
amazing.
The rest of the
Grass Type support is hit or miss, or at least deck
specific for those things. Shiinotic (Sun &
Moon 17/149) is a good example; its Ability allows
you a once-per-turn search for a Grass Type but
you’re running a Stage 1 to get that effect. That
space could just go for more search Items, which you can
still use even when Abilities go offline. The Type
doesn’t lack useful Grass Types to try and combo with,
but I am uncertain if any really complement a Stage 2
Pokémon-GX. Decidueye-GX has 240 HP, just 10
under the maximum. This is still enough to
frequently survive a single attack, sometimes two if you
get a bit lucky. Fire Weakness is no surprise, but
it is also quite dangerous. Volcanion-EX can
jack up the damage from Basic attackers with its
Ability, all but ensuring a OHKO if Abilities are
working and they have enough Fire Energy to meet
the discard costs. Flareon (XY: Ancient
Origins 13/98) means any Stage 1 can suddenly
become a Fire Type and exploit Weakness as well (though
again, only if Abilities are working). Lack of
Resistance is typical; it may have come in handy, but
likely wouldn’t have made a major difference if present.
The Retreat Cost of [CC] is high enough you can pay it
but low enough you’d prefer not to; just another reason
to include some alternatives to retreating at full
price.
Decidueye-GX
has one Ability and two attacks. “Feather Arrow” may be
used once per turn, prior to attacking, and allows you
to place two damage counters on the one opposing Pokémon
of your choice. As is often the case, “once per
turn” doesn’t mean overall; we’ve had some effects like
that, but each instance of Feather Arrow may be used
once per turn. That means if you can get enough
copies of Decidueye-GX into play on your first
turn, you might be able to win via Ability based donk.
Otherwise, it is still great just to have the rest of
the game; it can function as support or it can also take
KO’s in and of itself. “Razor Leaf” costs [GCC] to do
90 damage. This is a vanilla attack, and almost
feels like filler; almost, but not quite, as the
return is just enough to be a viable threat, especially
when backed by Feather Arrow. Last up is the GX
attack, “Hollow Hunt-GX”, which costs [G] and allows you
to put three cards from your discard pile into your
hand. This can get any kind of card, and
they go directly to your hand, which is very nice.
At the same time, being a GX attack means you will have
to use it wisely as cannot spam it. That doesn’t
make it bad, just (hopefully) makes it balanced; I would
not want a Standard legal equivalent Puzzle of Time
being constantly recycled via Sableye (BW:
Dark Explorers 62/108) and its “Junk Hunt” attack.
None of these three effects are reliant upon each other,
but they do complement each other when used well.
Forest of Giant
Plants
allows Decidueye-GX to hit the field ASAP, but
you still have to run the lower Stages. We have
two options for Rowlet: SM: Black Star Promos
SM01 and Sun & Moon 9/149. Both are Basic
Grass Type Pokémon with Fire Weakness, no Resistance,
Retreat Cost [C], and no Ability. SM: Black Star
Promos SM01 has 50 HP and “Fury Attack” for [G],
which lets you flip three coins and does 10 damage per
“heads”. Sun & Moon 9/149 has 60 HP, and two
attacks: “Tackle” for [C] which does 10, and “Leafage”
for [GC] to do 20. The attacks are all filler, so
take the +10 HP of Sun & Moon 9/149. Rare
Candy cannot be used with the effect of
Forest of Giant Plants, so Dartrix (Sun &
Moon 10/149) is the only option. It is a Stage
1 Grass Type Pokémon with 80 HP, Fire Weakness, no
Resistance, Retreat Cost [C], and two attacks: “Sharp
Blade Quill” costs [C] and allows you to hit one of
opposing Pokémon of your choice for 20 damage, while
“Leaf Blade” costs [GCC] to do 50 damage plus flip a
coin, where “heads” gives you +20 damage while “tails”
does just the base 50. You also have an alternate
Stage 2 option, Decidueye (Sun & Moon
11/149). It is still a Grass Type, has 140 HP,
Fire Weakness, no Resistance, Retreat Cost [C], and two
attacks. For [G] it can use its version of Leaf
Blade to do 30 damage. +30 damage if you get “heads” on
the coin flip, and for [GCC] you can use “Brave Bird” to
do 120 damage, but Decidueye does 20 damage to
itself. Though Decidueye-GX and
Decidueye count as two different Pokémon (you may
run up to four of each in your deck), sharing lower
Stages means you can only have four total in play at a
time. I’d stick with just Decidueye-GX.
So how and where do
you use Decidueye-GX? Though not what it
once was, Crobat (XY: Phantom Forces
33/119) was used in a variety of decks, either to spread
damage about or to offset lower damage to the opponent’s
Active. Its Ability “Surprise Bite” places three
damage counters on one of the opponent’s Pokémon of your
choice, but only triggers when you Evolve one of
your in play Pokémon into said Crobat. Golbat
(XY: Phantom Forces 32/119; Generations
31/83) has a similar Ability that triggers when you
Evolve one of your Pokémon in play into it: “Sneaky
Bite” then places two damage counters on the opposing
Pokémon of your choice. Before factoring in
combos, counters, etc. Golbat plus Crobat
places a total of five damage counters spread out over
two turns, while Decidueye-GX would need three
turns just to place the first two (remember, we aren’t
factoring in Forest of Giant Plants yet).
Two more turns (so five total), and Golbat/Crobat
aren’t placing any more damage counters via their
Abilities, but Decidueye-GX now reaches six
damage counters and can place even more each consecutive
turn.
When we start
adding combos, it matters exactly what ones we include.
Golbat and Crobat have “okay” attacks
which cost only [C], so Dimension Valley allows
them to attack for free. Usually, though, the
Stadium has nothing to do with the Crobat line,
instead, the Stadium is whatever something else in the
deck requires. What is included at least
partially, if not primarily, for the Crobat line
are various bounce effects: AZ, Super Scoop Up,
and (often) Scoop Up Cyclone. This allows
you to reuse the Abilities of Golbat and
Crobat, sometimes right away if you have a different
Zubat and Golbat in play, ready to Evolve.
These cards are also often used by a low Energy attacker
in the deck as well. Other Pokémon in the deck may
also join in, such as Shaymin-EX (XY: Roaring
Skies 77/108, 106/108) or more specialized deck
choices. Decidueye-GX technically doesn’t have
to use Forest of Giant Plants, but the speed
really makes it tempting. I may be mistaken, but
you might make use of those same bounce cards,
especially if Forest of Giant Plants is still
in play: leaving play ought to reset the Ability (it
isn’t worded in a manner to prevent this). I
believe Devolution Spray could be substituted in
Standard, as (again) with Forest of Giant Plants
you could immediately re-Evolve and use that instance of
Feather Arrow again that turn. Probably not worth
it, unless you are trying to create a donk deck.
So actually using
it to backup another attack just depends on it
significantly benefitting from the extra damage counter
placement, and Crobat provides a good model. Seismitoad-EX/Decidueye-GX
is already a thing in Expanded play, and you might try
it with a nice selection of Fighting Type attackers like
Landorus-EX, Lucario-EX, and/or Zygarde-EX.
With the former, it is because you want to lock down
Items with “Quaking Punch”, which doesn’t do much damage
itself, while with the latter it is because these
attackers actually do good damage for just one
Energy. You can build them beyond that, but
the main idea is that you just wreck your opponent, with
damage counter placement allowing you to focus on
multiple targets at once as opposed to just focusing on
the Active (as you would just boosting damage via the
Ability on Regirock-EX). You may even
consider not maxing out the entire line; even a
1-1-1 line might be nice as a small damage buff.
Something to remember, especially in Standard play, is
dealing with Ability denial. Garbodor (XY:
BREAKpoint 57/122) usually isn’t rushed to the field
via Wally, so if your opponent doesn’t Bench
multiple Trubbish at once, you can try to take
out whatever Trubbish your opponent is trying to
run. Otherwise, you’ll have to hope your main
attacker can OHKO a Garbodor you force up front
(such as with Lysandre), or include Beedrill-EX
to discard Tools. This threat is why I resist the
idea of running Decidueye-GX sans Energy, just
using the Ability to take KOs and spamming healing
cards. You also have to be ready for things like
an opponent dropping a Hex Maniac to buy a turn
of no Feather Arrow. It is also great for Limited
play, assuming you can pull the entire line. Run
it even if it is totally off Type and you cannot attack.
If you are on Type, the regular Decidueye can
come in handy, fleshing out the rest of the line.
Ratings
Standard:
4.35/5
Expanded:
4.5/5
Limited:
4.25/5
Summary:
I worry I am not doing this card justice; just
resuscitating Seismitoad-EX as a deck focus
yet again in Expanded play is a huge deal. The
competitive present of Fire Types and Ability denial in
Standard play are actually what cost it taking first
place.
Decidueye-GX
received 19 voting points, tying with tomorrow’s number
one pick. Once again, both cards appeared on two
of the three personal top 10 lists (one of which was my
own), so I couldn’t break the tie by which card appeared
on more lists, or according to which card was closer to
making my own list. That means once again, I used
a six-sided die and rolled to see which card finish
first, and which card would finish second. Wait!
Didn’t I say that Fire Weakness and Ability denial in
Standard play kept Decidueye-GX from taking first
place? On my own top 10 list, Decidueye-GX
also took second place, for those reasons; if
those had not been an issue, Decidueye-GX would
have taken first place on my list, and thus received one
more voting point and taken first place overall.
Then there would have been no need to roll a die to
break the tie!
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