2011-08-25 CL Kyogre 012/SL06

[Regis_Neo]

Today's CotD is Kyogre from CL...huh, I forgot they made shiny ones in CL, kinda tells you how bad they are. Statwise 100 HP is great for a Basic, x2 Weakness to :lightning: is meh, no Resistance is common, and :colorless::colorless::colorless::colorless: to Retreat is super expensive. His sole attack, Destructive Wave, is bad to put simply; :water::water::water::water: for a 50/50 chance of doing 40 to each of your opponent's Pokemon is bad already, but they manage to make it even worse by having that other chance hit all of your Pokemon for 40 damage. So yeah...no no no :nonono::nonono::nonono:

Modified - 1/10 (Utter crap and worthless from any perspective, especially since it has a chance to blow up in your face as well)
Limited - 2/10 (His only saving grace is that you can at least send him up and set up behind a buffer of 100 HP, but even that's kinda of a waste of a prize)
Unlimited - 1/10 (See above, but even worse)

 

[Torko4l]

Dumbest. Attack. Ever.

Finally I've attached Four water energy to this guy! Let's flip a coin to see who gets to have their bench pulverized! *Flips coin* *Lands Tails*

You: Why was I dumb enough to play this.
Opponent: Why were you dumb enough to play this?

At least it is a cool card to have in a collection.

 

[wobbufet]

Today's COTD is Kyogre (Call of Legends SL6), a 100HP Basic. I know this card is terrible, but I'll at least try to give it a fair review. The 100HP is pretty beefy for a basic, and a little above average for an unevolving one. The only good part about this card, though (besides the fact that it's binder candy). The :lightning: Weakness isn't as bad as it was last season, since the only real :lightning: Pokemon going around is Zekrom, and that doesn't even matter (OHKO anyway). The Retreat Cost is :colorless::colorless::colorless::colorless:. Terrible. Its only attack, Destructive Tsunami, costs :water::water::water::water:, and either does 40 damage to each of your Opponent's Pokemon, or 40 to each of your own, based on a coin flip. The risk is not worth it. At all. There's really not much to say about this card.

Modified: 1/10. Fetches $10-25 online, save it until you can rack up the Big $$$.
Unlimited: 1/10. Luxray kills this thing. 100HP means nothing in the Unlimited Format.

 

[Bolt]

The great and powerful Pooka used this card to defeat my Porygon-Z deck in one of our earlier bad deck battles. Yes, the card is bad if you flip tails. But you will not lose if you flip 2 heads. Think of it like Pokemon Reversal. If you flip 2/4 heads on that you'll probably win.

 

[Dragon Strife]

Well I'm pretty sure that Kyogre's attack is much better than this utterly disappointing Dialga in CoL. Kyogre still isn't good, but is better than Dialga IMO. So, I give it a 1/10

 

[LegendCallerL]

^That card actually got me 3-0 at a Prerelease. It kept me from decking out when I accidently overdid it with Ninetales' Roast Reveal.

 

[kekaw2]

allright, all of us can see that this is obviously the BDIF in about 20 years so stop trashing it.
infinity/0.00000000000001

 

[Otaku]

Another day, another Legendary! Not to be confused with a LEGEND either.

Stats
Kyogre is a Basic Water-Type Pokémon. Being a Basic is the best from the standpoint of getting a Pokémon into play (no Evolution required and minimal deck space) and manipulation (search and add to hand, search and Bench, return to the field from the discard, return to the deck from the discard… with more to come). Being a Water-Type should be fairly good. There are several popular Water-Weak Pokémon right now that Kyogre can hit for double damage, Resistance exists but sees little play, and it allows Kyogre to tap into the power of Rain Dance decks.

100 HP is quite good for a Basic Pokémon: anything higher is simply great but since we’ve recently been spoiled with five Basic Pokémon who do indeed top this, it can be easy to forget. Lightning Weakness is a concern since one of those big, Basic Pokémon is Zekrom, a Lightning Type with its own deck. Zekrom itself only benefits from needing just three damage counters on it for Outrage to be strong enough to OHKO Kyogre, saving Zekrom from smacking itself with Bolt Strike. Magnezone Prime saves itself placing a second Energy in the Lost Zone, but it’s really supporting Pokémon that benefit most. Something like Pachirisu that normally is a threat only to small Basic Pokémon can still score a OHKO! As usual I find the lack of Resistance disappointing but not crippling, but the four Energy required to retreat is certainly bad: even in a Rain Dance deck that’s going to be hard to afford. You’ll want to plan on taking out Kyogre or packing plenty of Switch.

Effects
Here is where the card is a let down, though not as much as I first thought. You need to invest a massive (WWWW) to attack, and this consigns Kyorgre to Rain Dance. When you power up, you have a 50% chance of hitting everything your opponent has for 40 points of damage. This is pretty impressive, and if you went first and set-up is practically a 50% chance of winning against something like Vileplume. It might be a shocking multi-Pokémon “donk”, leaving your opponent with only one or two half (or worse) Knocked Out Pokémon, or stripping away so much set-up that Feraligatr Prime itself can now start “one-shotting” any survivors, even if they go onto to Evolve into something massive.

The very powerful downside of course is that you can do this to yourself. Not even Kyogre is spared, as it doesn’t restrict itself to the Bench. This is also where I am a bit annoyed, because it’s an “either/or” proposition. If a player invests four of a specific Energy Type into an attack, having it not only fail to do anything to your opponent but also to hit everything you have pretty hard is just unfair to the player. There is no guaranteed damage to the Defending Pokémon or your opponent’s Bench to redeem this. For the amount of Energy involved, “tails fails” is unacceptable. The amount of good the attack would have to do you is so overwhelming that it’d become a “cheap” win if you tried to balance out the drawback. The fact that this isn’t even “tails fails” but is “tails backfires” makes it so that the positive needs to be ridiculously good. I am very disappointed by this attack.

Usage
If you absolutely insist on playing this card, and such widespread damage can be fun so I can understand why, you need Energy acceleration. 100 HP will not last long while Active, and even a slow deck should set-up and rack up a Prize or two while you manually power Kyogre up, and the most aggressive would take four. 8-X

In Modified, that leaves you with two choices: Feraligatr Prime or a Blastoise/Floatzel deck. The latter requires running multiple 80 HP Stage 1 Floatzel along side that Stage 2 130 HP Blastoise. That just begs for those backfires to be fatal: without doing anything, two failed Destructive Tsunami cripples your own deck and racks up at least two Prizes for your opponent while leaving Blastoise with just 50 HP and Kyogre with only 20. Since your opponent will probably hit Kyogre at least that hard you’re probably looking at 3 KOs minimum unless you run a lot of healing or manage to make most of your coin flips. This build is already too crowded for Serperior with Royal Heal, and I don’t like trying to work in a bunch of healing Trainers for the same reason. So clearly, the only real option is Feraligatr Prime.

With Feraligatr Prime there are some definite upsides. Rain Dance can power any Water-Type Pokémon up in a single turn, provided you can get the needed Water Energy into hand first. This allows the deck to run Max Potion and having to run a full four and recycle those with Junk Arm is at least feasible. Feraligatr Prime (or a clutch copy of the other Modified legal Feraligatr) can play clean up if you get at least one successful Destructive Tsunami as well. The deck still suffers since Kyogre might be hitting itself and even when fully healthy, it’s a OHKO for a powered-up Reshiram or Zekrom. Worse, if you hit either of those two once with Destructive Tsunami they’ll be able to turn around and OHKO even a healthy Kyogre back with Outrage. Reshiram would take 80 damage (when Active) from Destructive Tsunami due to its Water Weakness, so its Outrage would hit for 100 points of damage. Kyogre’s own Weakness means that while Zekrom only took 40 damage, its Outrage is doubled from 60 to 120!

Not to beat the card up, but then start looking at other popular attackers. Yanmega Prime can survive two successful Destructive Tsunami… and if both players hands are in synch easily nail the Bench for 40 damage on multiple times, making sure the eventual Destructive Tsunami backfire is fatal. Donphan Prime is Water Weak, but its Poké-Body means it survives one successful Destructive Tsunami if starting out uninjured. Its Earthquake attack might set-up some OHKOs for Destructive Tsunami but also means a backfire has Kyogre taking itself out. For something Kyogre has a Type advantage over, that’s pretty bad.

Now if you like taking risks in Unlimited, this Kyogre… still isn’t really worth it. Competitive play makes even Rain Dance unpalatable since you’ll have to run your own Sableye for a chance at going first, then use Broken Time-Space to get your own copies of Slowking (Mind Games version) into play to protect yourself form your opponent’s Trainer assault, and then get a stripped down Rain Dance deck working alongside all that… at which point you realize you might as well be running your own donk deck. If you are in a more casual atmosphere, you might consider it, except there are multiple spread options you could run instead, and the only real strength here is possibly hitting for 40 with one shot instead of 20 in two.

For Limited, this is a promo… but it’s a promo of a card we got in a regular set so I can talk about that one and be a little less hypothetical than I normally am at this point in a promo review. The energy required is just too great for it to be anything but you’re decks focus, and the risk of self-damage is just too great to build a deck around.

Ratings

Unlimited: 1.5/10

Modified: 2/10

Limited: N/A (but if not a promo 1/10)

Summary
As critical as I sounded in this review, I like the basic concept, but as implemented it just doesn’t work and probably could never work: if you hit hard enough to balance out the draw back, it’s practically a “heads I win, tails I lose” card, and if you under power it you get this. Also with modern power creep, the HP might need to be a few points higher (I don’t know how relevant scores compare in the video games for Legendaries).

There is something positive to say about this card, and that I consider this the right approach to promos: it’s a lovely rare alternate color of the normal Pokémon with an attractive foil treatment for the card, and even without those the underlying art is good. There’s a normal release of it in the main sets, though the timing may not have been ideal (I don’t know the exact release date for the promo). With the recent Tropical Beach fiasco and my own dislike of rarity schemes in sets in general, I’d love it if all or most promos and rare cards were like this: available more easily elsewhere, but pretty chase versions for collectors to pursue.