aroramage |
And hitting my top spot on Greatest
Names for Abilities in Pokemon TCG, Giratina comes along
for the ride at the tail end of our promo week! What
exciting powers does he bring to the table?
...well, he's got more lockdown.
Giratina has an expensive attack in
Shadow Claw, a 4-for-110 that can discard a card in your
opponent's hand at no extra cost! That's good, just wish
it wasn't so expensive - probably would help if
Dimension Valley is around. On top of that, he has the
Ability DEVOUR LIGHT, which cancels out the Abilities of
Pokemon BREAK. It's a fairly niche area to begin with,
but what all does it include?
Well, there's Greninja BREAK for
starters, with Giant Water Shuriken getting rendered
useless. You could negate Starmie BREAK's Ability too,
but come on, why would that matter? Other than that,
there's not too many Pokemon BREAK with Abilities...at
least, not on their own. Trevenant BREAK and Carbink
BREAK can both evolve from copies of their non-BREAK
selves with Abilities of their own, and since the BREAK
Evolution covers the name of the original up,
technically it does adopt the Abilities of the Pokemon
before it - which means Giratina's DEVOUR LIGHT will
negate those Abilities as well! Wow!
While he counters a very specific
threat and thus is relegated to being regarded as tech
at best, Giratina does what Giratina's been known for as
of late - disrupting the opponent from playing a group
of cards, and that makes him usable in the few decks
that want him around.
Rating
Standard: 2.5/5 (his relevant
Ability will keep him in a couple of decks for now)
Expanded: 3/5 (but once the BREAK
Evolutions are out of the spotlight, so will Giratina as
a tech)
Limited: N/A (such is the nature of
cards designed to counter specific niche cards)
Arora Notealus: Giratina's gonna be
around in the format for a little while, but from what's
been seen coming up on the horizon, there aren't that
many BREAK Pokemon to counter. It would be nice if they
stayed a little more relevant to the idea as a whole,
but we'll see if Giratina does his job against the decks
that need to pack counters to him or else fall by the
wayside to him.
Weekend Thought: What cards from
this week will you be trying out in your own decks, if
any? Think one of these cards will make it big or that
they'll all fall by the wayside? Are the new ones great?
Is the reprint outdated? Nah, I'm sure it'll be fine.
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Otaku |
We conclude our
week with Giratina (XY: Black Star Promos
XY184), yet another promo card released in the twilight
of 2016, seems like we ought to cover it before the dawn
of Sun & Moon. This is another Psychic Type
and I haven’t experienced a dramatic shift in opinion
since yesterday; the best thing about the Psychic Type
is exploiting Weakness in Standard, as the best Type
support is in Standard play. It is a Basic
Pokémon, and that is still the best; the only drawback
is artificial (Basic Stage counters). Its 130 HP
is 10 shy of the maximum we’ve seen printed on regular
Basic Pokémon; it isn’t guaranteed to survive but based
on my anecdotal experience, this is just a tiny bit more
likely to survive an attack than be OHKO’d.
Darkness Weakness does Giratina no favors; while
they hit hard and fast, it isn’t quite so fast that
doubling damage won’t help Darkness Type attackers on
your opponent’s first few turns. Any Resistance is
welcome and Fighting Resistance could matter with its
130 HP. The Retreat Cost of [CC] is low enough you
probably can pay it but high enough you’ll prefer
finding a workaround. Giratina has an Ability
and an attack. The former is “Devour Light”, which
shuts down the Abilities on Pokémon BREAK, be they from
the BREAK Evolution or underlying Stage. The
latter is “Shadow Claw”, and for [PPCC] it does 110
damage while randomly discarding a card from your
opponent’s hand. The attack may be decent; the
Energy cost isn’t easy to meet, the damage is a bit low
for the investment, and a random discard can backfire
somewhat easily, but with the right deck it could be
functional. What I want to draw attention to,
however, is the Ability.
Devour Light is one
of the few effects that reference Pokémon BREAK, and a
lot of them will not care in the slightest because
neither they nor any of their prior Stages possess
Abilities. Then there are oddballs like Crobat
(XY: Phantom Forces 33/119) and Crobat BREAK;
as mentioned
Monday
Crobat BREAK technically has the “Surprise Bite”
Ability if it Evolves from that Crobat, but
the timing is wrong and it has officially been ruled
that BREAK Evolving won’t re-trigger Surprise Bite.
There are two high profile cards that do care;
Greninja BREAK due to its own potent Ability and
Trevenant BREAK due to Trevenant (XY
55/146). So is Giratina the new must-run
TecH to crush those decks? Depends on the kind of
matchup you’re already facing. A deck would have
to have a surprising amount of spare room to justify
Giratina if the matchup was already favorable, and
it can only do so much if the matchup is already quite
bad. Still, I tested it out first hand, and while
I didn’t rack up enough experience with it to make me an
expert, it worked better than expected. I’ve been
using Bunnelby (XY: Primal Clash 121/160),
Raticate (XY: Evolutions 67/108), and
Houndoom-EX. I refer to it as BRaH for short,
because I have a horrible sense of humor. It is a
control/mill deck, discarding an opponent’s Energy in a
supposedly strategic manner so that milling two cards
per turn can actually deck an opponent out before he or
she takes six Prizes.
How is this
relevant to Giratina? I have been using the
deck for Standard play, where I run into Greninja
fairly often. Prior to adding Giratina, it
was what I consider an auto-loss; I could win but
it required bad luck and/or decision making on my
opponent’s part plus good luck and decision
making on my own. Without the “Giant Water
Shuriken” Ability of Greninja BREAK, its
“Moonlight Slash” attack falls short of scoring a OHKO
against Houndoom-EX. Oddly enough,
Giratina has also been useful as a meat shield; due
to the slow nature of the deck, a 130 HP Basic can help
you win simply by sitting there. So I know
Giratina can work wonders in a deck that needs it,
but I also doubt most decks need it in either Standard
or Expanded play. As a promo, it cannot be used at
all for the Limited Format, but if it were surprisingly
reprinted in a set, it would be a good inclusion for any
deck that could work in Psychic Energy.
Ratings
Standard:
3/5
Expanded:
3/5
Limited:
N/A
Summary:
This is a niche card, but it is one I was able to test
first hand so I’m convinced. I could even be
lowballing Giratina; should an appropriate
Pokémon BREAK dominate, it could become a common bit of
TecH, even though Silent Lab is a ready counter
for this counter. So for being great in a few
places and underwhelming everywhere else, I’m giving it
an average score. Expanded does its usual thing:
more competition for deck space, but added uses for the
card. Not a bad way to end the week, I think.
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