On the unlikely chance someone doesn't want to know some relatively basic information about upcoming TCG releases, skip down to my ratings, and read nothing else.
Stats
Shiftry is a Stage 2 Pokemon,meaning it faces hard times. The good news is it can still use
Rare Candy to get into play one turn faster, the bad news is that even with
Rare Candy we are investing three times as many cards into a Pokemon than we are with a Basic Pokemon, and hitting play at least one turn later. It will need a lot to compete.
Being a Darkness-Type is not a huge deal right now; Weakness is largely irrelevant and Type support spotty. The next set looks to be giving us the Darkness-Type support cards Japan has had since they got
Dark Rush, at which point it will be one of the best supported Types.
130 HP is a "small-average" Stage 2 Pokemon right now, just 20 below the maximum. However competing against big Basic Pokemon that sometimes clock in that high and regularly are just 10 to 20 points lower, so while it should be okay, it functions as if it were a bit low. This isn't helped by its Fighting Weakness. Granted Fighting-Type decks are no where near as common as they were when
Donphan Prime dominated, that doesn't mean you won't run into one, or simply a
Terrakion that can OHKO
Shiftry for
fighting::colorless
if
Shiftry KOed anything the previous turn.
Psychic Resistance is welcome; any Resistance is welcome but right now it basically says "
Mewtwo EX needs an extra Energy to OHKO me!". The single Energy Retreat Cost is a surprise on a Stage 2, but again a welcome sight.
Shiftry should be able to retreat with relative easy.
Effects
Shiftry has an Ability (Giant Fan) and an attack (Whirlwind). Giant Fan is a "coming into play" Ability that triggers when you Evolve one of your Pokemon in play into
Shiftry from your hand. While it is possible to repeatedly use them, it requires a combo that gets more complex the more effective it is. As such Giant Fan needs to be pretty good. The next line is that it also requires a coin toss. Okay, if it is a variable effect that is fine, but if both outcomes aren't very good (to offset being unreliable), then then one outcome better be
great.
So tails... does nothing.
Heads... let's you select one of your opponent's Pokemon and shuffle it an all cards attached to it into your opponent's deck. :nonono: Ouch. Play, that is useful, but you have to put it into perspective. It has to be something of great strategic value, since you're just "postponing" it. Yes, sending
Vileplume away to break Item lock is great! If your opponent has only one Energy accelerating Pokemon, same deal! If the target was laden with Energy, or used a
Rare Candy to Evolve, you've probably set them back a bit.
The problem is this isn't reliable. Tails fails. I know why "tails fails"; if it worked, even with this price, someone would just use a
Seeker, mass evolve into all four of their
Shiftry, and unless you had a full six Pokemon in play, your opponent just won. Okay, so if succeed at both Evolving into
Shiftry and getting "heads" as many times as your opponent has Pokemon in play, you win. That is great... but really challenging to pull off. Mostly if you get heads you set them back at least a turn, but on tails, you do
nothing.
Whirlwind could save it; I mean even if Giant Fan is hit or miss, you have a built in combo that hurls away one of your opponent's Pokemon and... does 60 points of damage for
dark::dark::colorless
, and forces your opponent to switch their Active Pokemon with one on their Bench. :frown: Okay, so if this were a Basic Pokemon that Evolves twice more, the Energy invested pays for 40 points of damage. 20 more points of damage and a mandatory
Pokemon Circulator effect are not a substantial enough bonus, especially in a format full of big Basic Pokemon that just got a Stadium to provide Retreat aid.
Usage
If you really love
Shiftry and insist on using it, you only have a single
Seedot and
Nuzleaf to pick from, but of course you could skip
Nuzleaf via
Rare Candy. Could we have a situation like with
Eeletrik and
Eelektross, lower Stages justifying the final Evolution, at least some of the time? No. Though not plain vanilla, neither that good of an effect for their attacks, and they lack Abilities. Plus to be honest, their HP scores are puny (40 and 80, respectively).
Maybe I am missing the combo potential, but all I can think to do is try to spam Giant Fan, and that will take a lot of work. You'll want a fairly robust Evolution line, because to avoid the turn delay you'll want to have a
Seedot and
Rare Candy or a
Nuzleaf already in play when you use
Seeker and/or
Super Scoop Up to bounce
Shiftry. Plus, as stated, you're going to want to Evolve multiple in a single turn if possible, since if you can get rid of everything, you win. For the rest of the deck, run
Drifblim (to guarantee their last Pokemon goes away),
Celebi and
Skyarrow Bridge (while it will help some opponent's more, you'll probably need this combo to power up
Drifblim fast enough), and...
Mewtwo EX (or
Regigigas EX if you don't have enough
Mewtwo EX) to provide a back-up attacker, since if you can't bounce stuff away, strings of OHKOs are also good.
The
Celebi/
Skyarrow Bridge may be overkill, but you
need to be sending Pokemon and bouncing Pokemon each turn. You
have to keep your opponent off balance, so even when Giant Fan is whiffing, your opponent will be too worried about the next one or
Drifblim to worry about it, and by the time they remember your big Basic Pokemon EX beatstick you've hopefully KOed their last Pokemon in play, or at least their last important one.
The good news is that it is easier to abuse in Unlimited. The bad news, I don't know if that is good enough to form a first turn win (it isn't really a donk if you're sending away their last Pokemon, right?). In a format with
Broken Time Space (Evolve as many times per turn as you need to and have the cards for) and the Trainer engines of Unlimited, you should be able to spam
Shiftry multiple times:
Seeker,
Super Scoop Up, maybe
Scoop Up and the appropriate Trainers to recycle
Shiftry from the discard or just
Mr. Briney's Compassion to send it back to the deck to search/draw yourself. If your opponent doesn't get
too many Pokemon into play during set-up or his/her first turn, it could work.
Unfortunately spamming
Seeker itself is probably more efficient, and you can then just use a single,
Boost Energy powered
Drifblim to shuffle away your opponent's final Pokemon. The saving grace is the above requires with download, and that is a Poke-Power... which
Fossil Muk shuts off. Why does
Muk matter? The nature of Unlimited is such that the majority of decks will try to win first turn, and if they don't they'll be at least one important Pokemon Power/Poke-Power/Poke-Body or Ability in play. Abilities are new to the mix, but also a smaller percentage. The rest will be stuff
Fossil Muk can shut down... but
Shiftry is an Ability. Including a 1-1 or 2-2
Muk line, you just need to successfully Evolve into it to shut down those nasty abilities, then you can push for the win even if you went second.
In Limited play,
Shiftry is okay. The entire line is low on HP with mediocre attacks, but in Limited, with decks built quickly earlier that day from the contents of six booster packs (plus however many basic Energy you need) results in lower average HP scores and damage outputs... far lower than constructed. Plus nuisance effects (like forcing the Defending Pokemon to the Bench) are much more likely to be useful. Unfortunately since
Shiftry needs at least two copies of
Darkness Energy to attack, you have to have a deck that can afford to run
Darkness Energy as at least the secondary, if not primary, Energy Type. There are only two other Evolution lines that are Darkness-Types in this set, all the end Stages are at least normal Rares, and only one lower Stage is a common.
Ratings
Unlimited: 7.5/10
Modified: 3/10
Limited: 6/10
Summary
I think the fear of allowing someone to win via sending an opponent's last Pokemon to the deck resulted in overcompensating with the cards second attack being relatively weak and Ability being unreliable. I can't say I blame them, since the opposite would be far worse for the game.
Shiftry could be used in an odd "send them all away" deck as described above, or for a clunky but functional first turn win deck in Unlimited.
