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Pojo's Pokémon Card of the Day

Chesnaught BREAK - BREAKthrough
Date Reviewed: May 8, 2017

Ratings & Reviews Summary
Standard:
1.88 / 5.00
Ratings are based on a 1 to 5 scale. 1 being horrible.  3 ... average.  5 is awesome.

Back to the main COTD Page


21times

Chesnaught Break (Breakthrough, 12/162) broke out from the Breakthrough expansion set back in November of 2015.  Chesnaught Break has a very impressive 190 HP.  Its attack, Tough Hammer, has a four energy attack cost (two Grass and two Colorless).  Tough Hammer additionally does 30 damage to one of your opponent’s benched Pokemon, but it also does 30 damage to itself.  Chesnaught (Breakthrough, 11/162) also has two quality attacks.  Spike Lariat does sixty damage (120 if the opponent’s active already has any damage counters on it), and Adamantine Press does 100 and reduces your opponent’s damage by twenty during the next turn.  Spike Lariat costs one Grass and two Colorless, and Adamantine Press costs two Grass and two Colorless.  In play, I used Spike Lariat most frequently and only used Adamantine Press and Tough Hammer once or twice each.

Breakthrough (for some odd reason) contains three different options for Chespin (Breakthrough, 8/162).  I prefer number eight which has the attack Work which does ten damage for one Colorless energy.  This leads well into Spike Lariat, and I had a number of occasions where I hit for 120 because I had just nipped him for ten in a previous turn.  Actually, I managed to donk my opponent a couple of times thanks to the help of Forest of Giant Plants (Ancient Origins, 74/98).  With the aid of Forest, it’s not hard to get Chesnaught or Chesnaught Break out within a turn or two.  I went 4-6 in ten matches, but two of the four wins were quick donks where I punished my opponent for failing to get out more than one Pokemon early in the game.

I did play a good match against Lapras GX (Sun & Moon, 35/149) and another one against Passimian (Sun & Moon, 73/149) Mew (Fates Collide, 29/124), but overall this deck did not do particularly well.  It’s somewhat enjoyable to play, but the attack costs are simply too high.  Plus, being a Break built on top of a Stage 2 Pokemon, it eats up fifteen or sixteen card slots.  Combine that with the twelve energy that I was running in the deck (eight grass and four DCE) and you just don’t have a lot of slots left for draw support, Poke balls, and other Trainer cards that many other decks have available to them because they don’t have to dedicate as much space to Pokemon.  This is another example of the disproportionate scaling that Pokemon has built into its design of evolution cards.  Chesnaught and Chesnuaght Break’s attack costs should be significantly lower than what they are.  If they were, then Chesnaught would compete at a higher level than it did for me.

Rating

Standard: 2 out of 5

Conclusion

Chesnaught Break isn’t bad, and if its attack costs were lower it could play a few more Trainers and get off a few more attacks.  As it is, though, it’s just not competitive against the best decks in the format.


Otaku

What’s this?  We aren’t looking at a Sun & Moon card today, but neither are we jumping to SM: Guardians Rising; instead are covering Chesnaught BREAK (XY: BREAKthrough 12/162).  Don’t worry, our next Top 10 is coming, but we wanted to wait until we were working with scans of the actual cards and not mere translations.  Plus, now we’ll have at least the chance to actually playtest a little, instead of operating on pure Theorymon.  If it really annoys you, feel free to let us know.  So why Chesnaught BREAK?  Seems like the BREAK Evolution mechanic is done, so I thought we might as well knock out the few we have left to review (hint hint). 

Chesnaught BREAK is a Grass Type, which isn’t as important as it sounds.  The Grass Type has access to one broken piece of Type support in the form of Forest of Giant Plants, but it focuses on the Pokémon being Evolved, not the Evolution itself, and as such doesn’t care about the Typing on Chesnaught BREAK but the Chesnaught from which it Evolves.  Fortunately, the entire line is Grass Type so speedy Evolution is here.  Otherwise, the Type has a few useful tricks, hits most Water and Fighting Types for double damage (via Weakness), and never has to deal with Resistance (we aren’t worried about Unlimited Format-only cards).  There are some anti-Grass Type effects floating around, but nothing dramatic.  Being the BREAK Evolution of a Stage 2 means Chesnaught BREAK is essentially a Stage 3; Stage 2 specific effects won’t apply,’t apply, but general Evolution and BREAK Evolutions specific ones do.  Even with Forest of Giant Plants, you still have to accommodate the massive card investment.  Its 190 HP is some compensation, enough to make Chesnaught BREAK a tricky OHKO. The last thing Chesnaught BREAK itself supplies is an additional attack, “Tough Hammer”, which costs [GGCC] and hits for 160 damage.  Tough Hammer also does 30 damage to Chesnaught BREAK itself, plus 30 to one of your opponent’s Benched Pokémon.  30 to the Bench could be handy, could be a waste, and similarly, 30 to itself could be negligible or could be disastrous; specific matchups will determine if these margins matter; personally I would have preferred a flat 160 damage than a combination of hindering and helping effects. 

So what about the rest of the Evolution line?  First, the common factors; all are Grass Type Pokémon with Fire Weakness, no Resistance, and no Ancient Trait.  Fire is big right now, but once SM: Guardians Rising officially becomes legal, they might be doused thanks to the serious boost the Water Type gets from the set.  There have been seven Chespin released, with six actually being distinct, and none particularly worthwhile.  If you need a recommendation, go with Chespin (XY: BREAKthrough 9/162); it can search out a [G] Energy from your deck and add it to hand, at a cost of [G], with its “Tree Climb” attack.  Yeah, our other options are that underwhelming.  Quilladin is in a similar boat, only we only have three options from which to pick.  Quilladin (XY 13/146) is our pick here, for its “Scrunch” attack; if you get stuck with this Quilladin Active, at least you can pay [C] to flip a coin and (if “heads”) protect itself from being damaged by an opponent’s attacks during the next turn.  Of course, this version is only legal for Expanded play; you’ll have to use XY: BREAKthrough 10/162) if you want to run Chesnaught BREAK in Standard.  Well, you could use Rare Candy to skip from Chespin directly to Chesnaught but while you can still run Forest of Giant Plants to then immediately Evolve into Chesnaught BREAK, you cannot directly combine the two Trainers effects; you’ll have to wait a turn to Evolve Chespin via Rare Candy. 

For Chesnaught, we again have three options, and it’s a matter of being the best of the worst.  Chesnaught (XY 14/146) has 160 HP, the highest we see on Stage 2 Pokémon and sturdy; it can be OHKO’d but it isn’t easy (unless you’re a Fire Type).  The massive Retreat Cost of [CCCC] will require deck resources to avoid Chesnaught or Chesnaught BREAK being stranded up front.  It has a night Ability, “Spiky Shield”, that forces an opponent’s attacking Pokémon to place three damage counters on itself if it damaged Chesnaught.  The attack has a fun name but not much else going for it: [GGCC] pays for “Touchdown” to do 90 damage to the opponent’s Active while healing 20 from Chesnaught itself.  This is worth maybe [GC] or [GCC], but for four Energy, the attack needs to do 100-120 damage.  The healing could stand to be a bit more as well, but it isn’t vital.  This Chesnaught is only available for Expanded play, so what about our only Standard legal option, Chesnaught (XY: Black Star Promos XY68; XY: BREAKthrough 11/162)?  It has the same stats as XY 14/146, but with two attacks.  For [GCC] it can use “Spike Lariat” to do 60 damage, plus another 60 (so, 120 total) if the opponent’s Active already has any damage counters on it.  For [GGCC] it can use “Adamantine Press” to do 100 damage and reduce the damage it takes during your opponent’s next turn by 20, but that is after Weakness and Resistance and only applies to attack damage.  Either of these attacks is better than Touchdown, but not better than Spiky Shield, which is a problem. 

With that, we come to the heart of the matter: currently, there is no Chesnaught worth using with Chesnaught BREAK.  A single, competent Chesnaught could give us a brand new deck that is at least remotely competitive.  Why?  Let us jump back to the 190 HP and (of course) Forest of Giant Plants.  While not perfect, the powers-that-be behind the Pokémon TCG do make it a little easier to damage stuff like Pokémon-EX and Pokémon-GX, so that 190 HP is just a tiny bit more durable than the same score on a Pokémon-EX or Pokémon-GX.  With Forest of Giant Plants for speed, we just need a worthwhile attack to complement the whole package.  A deck that can power up Tough Hammer is plausible, but doing so quickly and reliably is unlikely.  If you do get it going, Spiky Shield or Muscle Band can set up OHKOs (or effective OHKOs) again many Basic Pokémon-EX, and soon Choice Band (possibly with a Professor Kukui) can bring all but the larger Pokémon-EX and Pokémon-GX into range as well.  For now, you can really only enjoy it in Limited play, provided you are fortunately enough to pull the entire Evolution line.  Skip it for Standard or Expanded. 

Ratings 

Standard: 1.75/5 

Expanded: 1.75/5 

Limited: 3.5/5 

Conclusion 

Not the most exciting start to the week, but you never know when we’ll revisit the starters from a prior generation, so don’t forget Chesnaught BREAK exists, especially while Forest of Giant Plants is in the same format.


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