Galarian Obstagoon – Fusion Strike
Date Reviewed: January 19, 2022
Ratings Summary:
Standard: 3.50
Expanded: 3.00
Ratings are based on a 1 to 5 scale. 1 is horrible. 3 is average. 5 is great.
Reviews Below:
Vince
Galarian Obstagoon from Sword & Shield Fusion Strike makes another appearance in the competitive scene with two extremely cheap attacks, both costing a single Darkness energy!
Silence does 30 damage and you can choose 1 of your opponent’s Pokémon’s attacks and that Pokémon can’t use it during their next turn. Unless they decide to switch their Active Pokemon, they may have to use one of its weaker attack (or not at all if they only have one attack). Merciless Strike does 60 damage plus 90 more damage if your opponent’s Active Pokemon already has damage counters on it.
Its first attack is situational while the second attack needs a bit of external help to put these damage counters. Some of the cards that can help you place damage counters are Galarian Zizzagoon’s Headbutt Tantrum and Inteleon’s Quick Shooting, and saddening dealing 150 damage for 1 Energy is easier than ever. Couple with extra damage counter placements, and Galarian Obstagoon can actually 2HKO anything. True, this does require two different Stage 2s in your deck, but that hasn’t stopped the other Obstagoon/Inteleon from seeing play two years ago.
Obstagoon might be a better single prize attacker than I initially gave credit for. Makes Max Potion not so much of a drawback in Expanded for Obstagoon since it’s only a manual attachment away from attacking.
Ratings:
Standard: 3/5
Expanded: 3/5
Blocky
Dragon
Galarian Obstagoon is a Darkness type Pokemon from Sword and Shield: Fusion Strike. First of all, it is a Stage 2, which means it has to either evolve twice (Galarian Zigzagoon to Galarian Linoone to this card) or it can use Rare Candy to instantly evolve into itself from Galarian Zigzagoon. The latter option requires you to have both a Rare Candy card and a Galarian Obstagoon card in your hand, while the former option takes a while. Either way, it should take considerable investment to get Galarian Obstagoon in play.
Galarian Obstagoon is a Galarian Pokemon, which means it can get more HP from Galarian Chestplate and maybe some other cards, but I can’t list them off the top of my head. It is a dark type, which is great for exploiting weakness as many Psychic types are weak to Dark types, including the currently infamous Mew-VMAX. I’m pretty sure barely anything is resistant to Dark, so that’s a bonus.
Galarian Obstagoon’s weak to Grass, which isn’t too bad since there aren’t many strong Grass type attackers currently in the game. It has no resistance, which is standard. Its retreat cost is 2 Energy, again average. This can be zeroed out with Air Balloon, but it is still somewhat annoying to pay to manually retreat, especially since its attacks only cost a single energy, so if you want to retreat, you have to attach another energy just to retreat. Hiding Energy also removes its retreat cost.
Galarian Obstagoon has 170 HP, which is slightly above average for a Stage 2. Medium sized attacks won’t OHKO it, but many of the bigger attacks commonly seen on VMAX Pokemon will. So don’t rely on it surviving more than 2 turns in the active spot.
As for attacks, Obstagoon has two, both of which cost a single Darkness Energy. Hiding energy can be used to eliminate its retreat cost, and it pays for both of its attacks. Obstagoon’s first attack is Silence, which does 30 damage and lets you stop your opponent from using one of the Defending Pokemon’s attacks during their next turn. 30 is very bad, but the effect can be useful, especially if the other active Pokemon only has one attack, in that case it can’t attack at all. This sounds too good to be true, but this effect can be removed via evolution, moving to the bench, or simply removing the effect. Most people will retreat the pokemon and then switch it back. In general, this effect isn’t great as there are a multitude of methods to remove this effect. Obstagoon’s other attack, Merciless Strike, also costs one Dark energy, and it does 60 damage plus 90 more if the defending pokemon already is damaged. 60 for one is still bad, but 150 for one is amazing. First of all don’t even think about having Obstagoon attack twice, as that is too slow and clunky, plus its 170 HP can be taken down fairly quickly, The best way to go about this is to either use an Ability to get damage on your opponent’s active Pokemon before Obstagoon attacks to instantly get Obstagoon to be able to do 150. Or, you can have a Pokemon with a spread attack hit lots of your opponent’s Pokemon, making them all vulnerable to Obstagoon’s Merciless Strike. The first choice is definitely more realistic in my opinion, and can be done with Chilling Reign’s Inteleon with its Quick Shooting ability that lets you place 2 damage counters on one of your opponent’s Pokemon each turn. This can trigger Merciless Strike’s additional damage. Galarian Zigzagoon’s Headbutt Tantrum abiltiy can also be used to trigger Merciless Strike. As long as you can get damage on your opponent’s active before attacking, Merciless Strike can OHKO pretty much all single prize pokemon, and it can 2HKO pretty much all Pokemon in the game. I said pretty much because Merciless Strike is just a tiny bit short of doing those OHKOs or 2KHOs against the beefiest single prizers/Pokemon in general, even after taking into account the damage that is already on the opponent’s active due to Quick Shooting or Headbutt Tantrum. But this can be fixed with more QS/HT abilities, some quick spread, vitality band, and so on and so forth.
Overall, Galarian Obstagoon is a solid single prize attacker that can OHKO Mew VMAX due to weakness, but the fact that you are 2HKOing the majority of attackers in the game, coupled with the difficulty of getting a Stage 2 in play and Obstagoon’s somewhat flimsy HP pool, means that it can definitely be countered. I don’t really play Expanded or Limited so no ratings for those, but I will give a Standard rating along with a rating for the card art. Speaking of the card art, the art on this Galarian Obstagoon could have been a lot better, and it just isn’t very interesting to me, so I’m giving it a low score.
Standard: 3.5/5
Art: 2/5
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