Fairy Charm Series – Pokemon Review

Otaku

Today we’re looking at the Fairy Charm series of Pokémon Tools.  Fairy Charm Ability (SM – Unbroken Bonds 171/214), Fairy Charm [N] (SM – Lost Thunder 77/214), Fairy Charm [F] (SM – Lost Thunder 176/214), Fairy Charm [G] (SM – Lost Thunder 174/176), Fairy Charm [L] (SM – Unbroken Bonds 172/214), Fairy Charm [P] (SM – Lost Thunder 175/214) and Fairy Charm UB (SM – Team Up 142/181) all have nearly identical effects and traits.  All are Trainer-Item Pokémon Tools, with an effect that protects the equipped [Y] Pokémon from the damage done by attacks from your opponent’s Pokémon-EX/GX with the correct trait: Fairy Charm Ability requires they have an Ability, Fairy Charm UB works on those that are Ultra Beasts, while the others protect against those of the Type indicated in the name.

We’re not going to review or score them, but I’ll mention there are also two Pokémon with effects that reference the Fairy Charm Trainers, Tapu Lele (SM – Lost Thunder 150/214; SM – Black Star Promos SM152) and Wigglytuff (SM – Lost Thunder 134/214).  Tapu Lele has an Ability that Confuses your opponent’s Active when a Fairy Charm card is attached to itself, while Wigglytuff knows the attack “Charmed Slap”.  For [YCC], Charmed Slap does 70 damage, plus another 70 the attacking Pokémon has a Fairy Charm Tool attached to itself.  While not brilliant, neither are these effects worthless.

The Fairy Charm Tools are good but only if you’re sure you’ll be running into sufficient Pokémon of the afflicted class.  Decks that don’t run Pokémon-EX/GX don’t have to care at all.  Decks that do run them but can interfere with the other player’s use of Trainers, Items, or Tools just have to worry about those counters being unavailable at the right times.  Additional counters to the Fairy Charms also exist: attackers that ignore effects on the Pokémon being attacked, cards like Guzma to attack around whatever has Fairy Charm attached, and decks with diverse attackers are all also options.

I’m not going to score each Fairy Charm card separately, because they are highly metagame dependent: both in terms of what they counter, and what [Y] Types are perform well with them.  After all, Fairy Charm Tools still have to compete against other Tools, which includes general power plays like Choice Band, more deck-specific tricks like Bodybuilding Dumbbells, and each other.  Collectively, I’m giving them an average score; the ones that counter current metagame threats are upwards of half a point more valuable, while the ones that don’t can be as much as one-and-a-half points less valuable.  I expect the pending Standard Format rotation to help them out, at least a little.

Ratings (Aggregate)

Standard: 3/5

Expanded: 2.5/5

Limited: 3/5