Solgaleo Prism Star – Ultra Prism – Pokemon Review

Vince

Solgaleo Prism Star shows an example of how such a Pokémon with awesome effects gets limited to using one per deck instead of the usual four. A Basic Metal type with 160 HP, weak to fire, resists Psychic, and a retreat cost of three, it has two attacks. Radiant Star costs M and states that for each of your opponent’s Pokémon in play, you attach that many M energies from your discard to any of your Pokémon. Corona Impact does 160 for MMMM and impairs Solgaleo from doing anything on your next turn unless this Pokémon switches out or retreat, thus resetting the clause. Although too much to ask for, if you put in a Choice Band, a couple of Dhelmise with Steelworker ability up to four, and Professor Kukui, you are doing 250 damage, enough to OHKO any Pokémon in the game.

Being a Prism Star Pokémon means you get only one chance to use this Pokémon because if this Pokémon ever goes to the discard pile, it would go to the lost zone instead, never to be retrieved ever again. Being KOed or being discarded from your hand or deck counts as going to the Lost Zone, so you really have to be careful of how you’re using this. Overall, this Pokémon can recover a sizeable amount of energy and can be summoned as a Basic Pokémon as opposed of being a Stage 2!

Standard: 3.5/5
Expanded: 3.5/5
Limited: 4.5/5

Retro

This is currently the best Prism Star Pokemon from this set, and I have every reason to believe that Solgaleo {*} is it. Most of the Prism Star cards here are all type specific – examples include Darkrai which helps Dark decks only, Giratina helps Psychic decks only, Super Boost Energy only helps Stage 2 decks which only comprises of mainly Gardevoir-GX and Cyrus only helps decks which can afford to put either a [W] or [M] in the active slot during the turn it’s played. So, playing by ear, what makes Solgaleo PS best of the rest?

Well, stat wise it’s hard to explain why, since it shares the same stats with the other Prism Star Pokemon. As in it’s a Basic [M] Pokemon with 160 HP, a x2 weakness to Fire and a -20 resistance to Psychic, but it has a retreat cost of 3 which makes it searchable with Heavy Ball but does leave it prone to Guzma. A nice trade here, but you can still use something like a Silvally-GX to nullify its Retreat cost. Being a Metal type means that it has multiple supports in the format; but it doesn’t really need one since, like Dialga-GX earlier it actually is a support Pokemon itself. Why?

Radiant Star, its main reason why it sees play, costs just a single [M] and it accelerates [M] energies from the discard pile to your Pokemon in any way for each Pokemon count(s) in the opposing field. So when your opponent has 2 benched Pokemon, you can accelerate 3 energies to any Pokemon in your choosing. If they have 4 benched Pokemon, you can attach up to 5 energies. If they have a full bench of 5, you can accelerate 6 energy… a very nice way to return energies back to the field when you have to liberally discard them in the setup phase or via attacks. It’s also a really good way to accelerate energy under Ability lock, the kind of decks which Solgaleo PS will often see play in, as it is an attack which cannot be disabled. As Solgaleo PS has 160 HP, it is quite hard to imagine how it will be knocked out by anything than a Fire attack, which is pretty sweet. The fact that it can accelerate energy to any Pokemon including itself does leave it open to another attack of its own; Corona Impact costs a whopping [M][M][M][M] and deals 160 damage. Solgaleo PS cannot attack during the next turn though, which means no Radiant Star next turn. This might be weird, but it allows Metal decks to have a reliable answer against EX and GX immune decks that its partners will normally have no answer to.

However, there is a downside to using Solgaleo PS. First of all, as good as it is, it’s a Prism Star Pokemon which means only 1 copy of it can be included in any deck and when you discard it, it goes to the Lost Zone. Sometimes, you really want to use Solgaleo because you have issues with drawing the recovery cards you want and needs Radiant Star.. only to realize that you just use an Ultra Ball earlier and banished the Solgaleo to the Lost Zone. That is the first bad point that Solgaleo PS has. Also Radiant Star is an attack, and it ends your turn. There are moments that you will think “I can OHKO this turn but I can’t”, but those situations are quite rare to come by since well more often than not you will use Radiant Star with the thought that I can’t OHKO anyway, so that is more a nuisance than a big weakness.

But with such raw power and board recovery potential Solgaleo {*} has, its quite hard to imagine it not jumping in many Metal decks immediately, and having it only, and only as a tech which won’t cut consistency badly will really help Metal decks in the 2 years of its Standard legality to come.

Rating:

Standard: 3.9/5
Expanded: 3.5/5
Limited: 4.9/5

21times
PokeDeck
Central

Solgaleo Prism Star (UP 89) made its debut in the meta from the Ultra Prism expansion set.  This Basic Pokemon has a single Metal energy primary attack, Radiant Star, which for one energy lets you attach as many Metal energy from your discard pile to your Pokemon in any way you want.  The only limitation is that you can only attach up to the number of Pokemon your opponent has in play.  Its other attack, Corona Impact, does 160 damage but costs four Metal energy, and Solgaleo Prism Star can’t attack during the next turn.

So the strategy for this card is pretty clear: swoop in after Dusk Mane attacks and use Radiant Star to reattach all of the energy Dusk Mane had to dump after attacking.  You can put them on Dusk Mane again or even put them on Solgaleo Prism because with a Choice Band he’ll hit for 190 which is enough to KO Buzzwole and most other Basic GX Pokemon.  And at 160, chances are your opponent is going to have to two shot you.

It’s a good card, and I think it works better than the Magnezone builds because Garbodor and Greninja can absolutely shut down Maggie, but Solgaleo Prism can keep the energy flowing.  Really, the only downside is that you can only carry one of these in your deck.

Rating

Standard: 3.5 out of 5

Otaku

Solgaleo [Prism Star] (SM – Ultra Prism 89/156) closes out this week of runners-up. It made two of our individual lists, one being a top 10 and the other a top 20, earning 29 voting potents total like Wednesday’s subject, Empoleon (SM – Ultra Prism 34/156), but losing the tie and getting an unofficial 14th place because our big blue bird appeared on one more list than our shiny kitty. Neither made my personal list, so is this another oversight on my part? I’m not going to beat around the bush: I think the answer is yes, as we did see Solgaleo [Prism Star] appear in five decks that made the Top 64 (or better) between the Malmö, Sweden and Collinsville, IN Regional Championships. I’m not sure which is more impressive: Seb Symonds managed an 18th place finish in Malmö while facing 276 other Masters Division players or Zack Martin managing only 40th place but in a field of 1066 Masters Division players. While we’ve seen more impressive performances out of cards, compared with some of our other picks for the top 10, the short-term definitely favors Solgaleo [Prism Star].

So, what is the actual card like? How was it used? As a Prism Star Pokémon, it follows special rules. I go into a little more detail here, but the short version is you can’t run more than one Solgaleo [Prism Star] in your deck, [Prism Star] is indeed part of its name, and if it would be sent to your discard pile for any reason, instead it goes to the Lost Zone. The article just tries to explain all this a little more clearly and also covers some of the other new (but not entirely new) mechanics found in this set. It looks like [Prism Star] Pokémon are meant to be more powerful, but require luck or combos to really make good use of them. Solgaleo [Prism Star] is a [M] Type Pokémon; the good news is this set gave them quite a few new toys but the bad news is most of those cards aren’t living up to expectations. [M] Weakness hasn’t vanished in the Standard Format metagame, but it is now uncommon, maybe even a bit rare. Even though Solgaleo and Solgaleo-GX are Stage 2 Pokémon, Solgaleo [Prism Star] is a Basic, so getting it to the field is both fast and easy.

Being a Basic also makes its 160 HP extra special; we’ve seen higher on Basic Pokémon, but those have been Pokémon-EX or Pokémon-GX. Scoring a OHKO is far from impossible, but also far from easy; some of the decks that normally can swing for 160 to 180 in a fast or reliable fashion do so via Choice Band, which doesn’t care about [Prism Star] Pokémon. [R] Weakness is not good, and even without [M] decks seeing a resurgence the [R] decks we thought might counter them still made the Top 8. Not knowing what everyone was playing, maybe that is why so few [M] decks delivered? [P] Pokémon aren’t uncommon, as they can punish Buzzwole-GX, so [P] Resistance is appreciated even if most decks can play around it; the 160 HP also makes overwhelming it a lot less likely than with many other forms of Resistance. That Retreat Cost of [C] can be a problem; the good news is that it makes Solgaleo [Prism Star] a legal Heavy Ball target, the bad news is that it means you’ll really be hurting if you ever have to manually retreat it.

Solgaleo [Prism Star] has two attacks: “Radiant Star” for [M] and “Corona Impact” for [MMMM]. The former is what helps it really earn its keep; for each of your opponent’s Benched Pokémon, this attack lets you attach one [M] Energy from your discard pile to your own Pokémon. It is not one Energy to each of your Benched Pokémon for each of their Benched Pokémon, but a total amount of Energy equal to the total amount of your opponent’s Benched Pokémon, distributed among all of your own Pokémon as you see fit. Not every deck fills its Bench, but most don’t run with small Benches, either; you’re probably looking at a quick three Energy attachment to divvy up as you see fit. Corona Impact has a hefty cost, so it might need that same Energy acceleration (or another) for it to be worth using, but it does do 160 damage, which a Choice Band or various other damage buffs can easily move into OHKO range of most competitive Pokémon save Evolved Pokémon-EX/GX and oddballs like Wailord-EX. Besides the hefty Energy cost, Corona Impact also places an effect on whatever used it, preventing that Pokémon from attacking again during your next turn. That greatly lowers your average damage per turn using it, but assuming the Pokémon in question survives to attack again, shaking such effects is often pretty easy (Benching and then re-promoting to the Active position is one of multiple options).

So, Solgaleo [Prism Star] has some chops, but I wasn’t that impressed by them. Where did I go wrong? Besides giving some other cards too much credit, a big thing is I forgot we had some great options to attack with Radiant Star without actually attacking with Solgaleo [Prism Star]. Mew (XY – Fates Collide 29/124) has an Ability that allows it to copy the attacks of your other Basic Pokémon in play. It might be small and fragile itself, but it is also has a free Retreat Cost and – of course – doesn’t send itself to the Lost Zone when it hits the discard pile. Mew-EX gives you another option; you give up an extra Prize when it is KO’d but its Ability can copy attacks from any Pokémon in play (belonging to either player) AND it has more HP. Finally, we saw it used to supplement Magnezone (SM – Ultra Prism 83/156) OR Metagross-GX in the ONLY two decks that used either of those cards in Malmö. It also partnered with Registeel (SM – Crimson Invasion 68/111) in two of those decks, and also in the two that placed using Solgaleo [Prism Star] in Collinsville. The Indiana decks took a different approach; while still fueling big, Basic [M] attackers, they ran Garbodor (XY – BREAKpoint 57/122) to lock down Abilities.

So, I think the two regionals have shown us how to use Solgaleo [Prism Star] in the Standard Format, and maybe in the Expanded as well. We’ll have to wait a bit for an Expanded Format using Regional Championship to get a better idea, but we run into the usual issue of “more combos, more competition, and more counters” in Expanded versus Standard. In this case, I think things like Battle Compressor – to rapidly toss basic Metal Energy cards into your discard pile – nicely balance out against the added competition and counters, so I’m going to score Expanded the same as Standard. For the Limited Format, a +39 or Mulligan build is not recommended; even with Radiant Star (assuming you have something you can use to discard Energy from your Evolution Pack) to speed up Corona Impact, even with 160 HP, taking four Prizes before being KO’d doesn’t seem likely. Building a deck with other Pokémon that compliment Solgaleo [Prism Star], however, is recommended. Use it either as a big, beatstick, to set up for other attackers, or both! Just make sure your deck can run on mostly basic Metal Energy.

Ratings

Standard: 3.5/5

Expanded: 3.5/5

Limited: 4.25/5