So on my birthday we look at
Gigalith! A Fighting Stage 2? Does it stand a prayer of seeing play?
Stats
Being a Stage 2 has sadly become a big hurdle again for the TCG.
Rare Candy takes some of the sting out of Evolving, but we have far to many big, Basic Pokemon. With their strong and fast attacks coupled with
Pokemon Catcher, it is very hard to keep the Basics in play long enough to Evolve, at least without playing multiples and giving up a Prize.
Being a Fighting-Type doesn't provide a whole lot of Type support, but there is at least one card for it and at least right now there isn't another Stage 2 Fighting Pokemon with a strong deck to out muscle
Gigalith. 150 HP is good, though it should be great if not for the power creep that still plagues the game. Few Pokemon will hit that hard in a single shot unless it involves a huge set-up or is exploiting the Weakness on
Gigalith, which is Grass. Mind the
Virizion.
No Resistance is the worst and a Retreat Cost of four is the worst we've seen recently (although five is the record for maximum printed Retreat Cost).
Gigaleth really could have used a favorable match-up that Resistance could supply and with a Retreat Cost like that, make sure your deck can power-up fast or run something to get
Gigalith out of the Active slot. Even when it is Active, something to heal it would be tempting.
Effects
Two attacks, which had better be spectacular for this card's sake. Core Cannon actually
is spectacular: a snipe attack that does 20 points of damage for each :fighting: attached to
Gigalith. With a single Energy, the attack is far better than nothing, but definitely not worth playing a Stage 2 line for. Getting 40 for :fighting::fighting: is okay but still a little weak. Once you get three or four :fighting: Energy you start manhandling your opponent's set-up... assuming they aren't fulling set-up and manhandling
Gigalith.
Power Gem is filler. It does 90 for
fighting::colorless::colorless::colorless
which is just 10 more than Core Cannon would do, and of course without the option of sniping. At first it seems great that it only needs one of those Energy actually be :fighting:... but what other Energy Type would be the focus of
Gigalith deck? It is a Stage 2, so more than likely
Gigalith must the be the deck's focus! Yes you can even use
Double Colorless Energy but again, Core Cannon is the attack worth using a Stage 2 for, not this. You might as well use
Terrakion from the same set if you just need a reasonably large Fighting-Type with a big straight forward attack.
Usage
Since this is a Stage 2 Pokemon, I should say which of its lower Stages I prefer, but honestly the available
Roggenrola and
Boldore seem about even in usefulness, so besides including
Rare Candy as well use whatever versions you prefer, probably splitting between the two for those odd times one or the other is useful.
There has got to be a good Fighting deck for this card, but I sadly can only guess at it. If we get any actual Fighting Energy acceleration (unless you count than the slight acceleration you get from shifting Energy to
Machamp Prime), well that is all this card needs.
As is, the best idea I can come up with is trying a dangerous pairing of
Gigalith with
Conkledurr (Ability version),
Electrode (Energy Mite), and
Shaymin. You have to try to detonate
Electrode for decent Energy acceleration, then use
Shaymin to move Energy around: when one of the Stage 2 Pokemon would be KOed, shunt it all to the other, drop a
Switch and a
Max Potion. Perhaps this is even overkill. Perhaps you just need one Stage 2 or the other backed by
Electrode/
Shaymin/
Terrakion (previously mentioned versions). You'd start out in a bit of a Prize deficit but after that you might be able to control the game... at least for a few crucial turns. On top of all of this, at least you can smack
Zekrom hard.
Something I missed and that Carvhanha (the person, not the Pokemon
) pointed out is that
Landorus can make for a solid opener in a
Gigalith deck. Opening with
Landorus, as long as you can discard at least one basic
Fighting Energy before hand and still attach :fighting: to
Landorus, you may use its Abundant Harvest attack to attach a basic Energy from the discard, namely a
Fighting Energy you can either leave on
Landorus to attack next turn with Gaia Hammer, or
Shaymin to shift it all to
Gigalith. Gaia Hammer (if you choose to use it, and you likely will) hits all Pokemon on both Benches for 10, and as such also lightly set-ups for sniping.
Using this combo seems to mostly be about predicting your opponent's moves and doing what is worst for them... a common strategy, I realize. If
Landorus is practically KOed (but not actually KOed) between turns, you can (ideally) shunt the two Energy and either Bench
Landorus somehow or perhaps even
Max Potion it and just go for two more Energy. Almost certainly more effective than what I initially proposed.
For Unlimited... this might actually be worth using! Scary, I know, but if you get beyond (or at least set-up before) a First Turn Win deck, and get into an over-powered slug fest, many many decks will have relatively small Bench-Sitters.
Electrode ex sets up for
Rocket's Admin (crippling opponent's hand size) and strong Core Cannon, allowing you to easily snipe anything without a
Focus Band. Well, not exactly anything but the probable targets like spare Baby Pokemon or
Neo Genesis Slowking.
For Limited play, he only works if you're drafting
Emerging Powers with
Noble Victories, as
Noble Victorieslacks it lower Stages. If you do, the fact this is a double line is beneficial, and within the lines there is some synergy. Also, Power Gem becomes useful since it is very hard to run a pure Fighting deck and thus you probably will have to use some non-Fighting-Type Energy cards.
Ratings
Unlimited: 6/10
Modified: 6.75/10
Limited: N/A unless paired with
Emerging Powers, at which point it becomes 9/10.
Summary
Another Fighting-Type Pokemon just waiting for a speed boost so it can compete with the current crop of big Basic Pokemon and other oddball speedy Stage 2 Pokemon. Sadly all we see are even bigger Basic Pokemon on the way, and the usefulness of this card decreasing.
