Silvally – Extradimensional Crisis
Date Reviewed: June 6, 2025
Ratings Summary:
Ratings are based on a 1 to 5 scale. 1 is horrible. 3 is average. 5 is great.
Reviews Below:
Otaku
The best new card of Extradimensional Crisis (A3a) is Silvally (A3a 061, 074)! This Colorless, Stage 1 Pokémon evolves from Type: Null. Silvally has 110 HP, (F) Weakness, (C) Retreat Cost, and the attack “Brave Buddies”. For (C)(C), Brave Buddies allows Silvally to do 50 damage to the opponent’s Active, plus 50 if the Silvally player used a Supporter during that turn. Silvally is available as a ♦♦♦ rare and ★ rare.
The Colorless Type cannot exploit Weakness, because [C] Weakness doesn’t exist in Pocket. Ilima (A3 149, 191) is the only piece of true (C) support, letting you bounce one of your injured, (C) Pokémon into your hand. There are no anti-Colorless effects in Pocket. There is no Stage 1 Pokémon support, but the “Primeval Law” Ability on Aerodactyl ex (A1a 046, 078, 084; 03a 101) potentially counters any Evolution, by preventing an Active Pokémon from evolving.
Silvally has 110 HP, crossing an important damage threshold. Not just because that’s where I draw the line between “medium” and “heavy” attacks. Rather, it is because its where enough of the current metagame falls just shy of a rapid, reliable, and/or repeatable OHKO. This is not the same thing as being able to reliably tank a hit the whole game. It means decks are going to have to rely on attacks that are either pricey, unreliable, or slow to ready.
Silvally is (F) Weak, which isn’t too bad. It matters, but the dominant (F) Type attacker right now – Rampardos (A2 089) – already OHKOs Silvally with 20 damage to spare. There are still plenty that enjoy a OHKO or 2HKO that they would have otherwise missed, but they’re not major decks at the moment. The Retreat Cost of (C) is very good. X Speed (P-A 002) or Leaf (A1a 068, 082) can zero it out, and a decent amount of the time, you’ll be able to afford to retreat even without aide.
Brave Buddies is very good. 50 for (C)(C), with no effect, would be filler. Not the worst filler, but filler nonetheless. Fortunately, it can be changed to the great 100-for-(C)(C) if you satisfy a condition, and that condition is… something you wanna do more turns anyway. Wanting to do something isn’t the same as reliably doing it every turn, but over all, it’s a great deal. 2HKO anything1 in the game for two Energy, on a Stage 1, so long as your deck is humming along.
Type: Null (A3a 060) is our only option for reaching Silvally and… it’s actually solid. A Colorless, Basic Pokémon with 80 HP, (F) Weakness, and (C) Retreat Cost. It only knows one attack – “Quick Blow” – that costs (C) and does 20 damage with a coin flip. “Tails” means the attack just does the base 20, but “heads” means it does 20+20 (40 damage). If this is filler, it’s at least quality filler; formulaic while still being functional.
There’s one more card for this family: Gladion (A3a 067, 081)! This Trainer-Supporter lets you randomly add a card named “Type: Null” or “Silvally” from your deck to your hand. It makes setting up Silvally just that much more reliable. My only quibbles are that I’d hope a Pokémon search Supporter that was random would just grab any Pokémon from your deck… and if we get a hypothetical “Silvally ex” down the road, the wording is such that it wouldn’t be a legal target.
So what decks are using Silvally? Quite a few, and up first is Silvally/Rampardos. With a 535 Count, 14.45% Share, and 55.38% Win Rate, it just might be the overall best deck in the metagame. There are decks with better win records, but they’ve all got tiny Counts. That doesn’t prove them to be bad, but the lower the Count (instances of a deck being used), the less reliable it’s Win Rate. Could be better, but it’s more likely to be worse in my experience.
It makes sense for Silvally/Rampardos to do well. Neither is a Pokémon ex, while both are cost efficient. The five I sampled – all among the best performing – were always 2 Silvally, 2 Type: Null, 2 Rampardos, and 1 Cranidos (A2 088). Since Cranidos evolves from Skull Fossil (A2 144), you have to start with a Type: Null. You can decide whether to build it into a Silvally or use it as a meat shield while you try to ready Rampardos, but either way, you’ve got Energy efficient attackers.
Next is the 10th most used deck, Charizard ex (A2b 010, 080, 108). Unless your luck (or skill) are rubbish, odds are good you should have a Silvally or a Charizard ex ready to attack by your second turn… though the Charizard ex will be using it’s attack to attach three (R) Energy to itself. If you do lead with Silvally, you might even be able to build Charizard ex up manually on your Bench. Either way, Silvally can help with (W) attackers and Oricorio (A3 066, 165). This one only has an 83 Count, or 2.24% Share, with a 50.96% Win Rate.
After that, we drop to decks with three dozen or less Counts. I won’t list them, but they help emphasis that Silvally is just that flexible an attack partner. It’s so good, you have to be careful it doesn’t prop up a bad deck. It won’t make garbage golden, but it could help a mediocre partner Pokémon seem competent, and something competent feel strong.
Rating: 4/5
The only caveat is, part of this is due to Silvally being a new, good generalist attacker. Meaning, I don’t know if this will persist as the Extradimensional Crisis metagame unfolds, or if it could drop off once more technically minded decks become better understood. Oh, and while probably not an issue, since Silvally’s attack requires you play a Supporter, be mindful of opposing players using Gengar (A1 122; A3 222), Gengar ex (A1 123, 261, 277; A3 234), and Psyduck (A1 057) to prevent you from using yours!
1Disregarding various protective effects.
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