Heavy Is the Head that Wears the Stellar Crown — Set Review
Hello everyone! Stellar Crown has released, and online tournaments are in full swing with the new set. It’s full of interesting cards, and it’s sure to significantly shake up the game. I am a little worried about this set making certain decks too strong, but as always, I’m sure the meta will develop around these decks and things will smooth out eventually. Today I want to take a look at the set and offer my perspective on how these cards will affect the meta. Hopefully this will help provide some direction for testing out the new stuff, as well as prepare you for what you’ll end up facing in tournaments. Let’s get right into it.
Mow Rotom
Mow Rotom seems to be an overlooked card from the new set. Its attack is incredibly convenient and easy to use. This card will certainly be handy for control decks, giving them a simple and efficient tech against Lugia VSTAR. Control actually saw a bit of play at the recent Baltimore Regionals, and it can certainly struggle against Lugia. Mow Rotom is a very low-maintenance, high-efficiency answer. On top of that, it’s easy to recover and use again if it gets KO’d. If you’re worried about Iron Hands ex, you can easily protect it from Amp You Very Much with Bravery Charm. Unfortunately, it runs into the same problem as Haxorus in that it doesn’t work against Mist Energy , so you’ll sometimes need Temple of Sinnoh or Enhanced Hammer along with the Rotom. Mist Energy counts are going down a little bit, though.
One of the best things about Rotom is that it isn’t exclusively useful against Lugia. You can also use it to discard Energy against the likes of Iron Thorns ex and Terapagos ex. Furthermore, it gets rid of opponents’ Tools, such as Gravity Gemstone and Sparkling Crystal. I had written off Pidgeot ex Control before Baltimore Regionals, yet it had a better showing than I expected. Perhaps the control enthusiasts will continue playing the deck. If they do, I’m certain that Mow Rotom and Temple of Sinnoh will be included if Lugia remains a relevant threat.
Hydrapple ex
On the surface, Hydrapple ex does not seem like anything special. However, I think it actually has a lot going for it. It has obvious synergy with Teal Mask Ogerpon ex, tons of HP, and an attack that can reasonably one-shot anything and everything. Unfortunately, it is a Stage 2 and very high-maintenance. Hydrapple demands a lot of Energy, which can be difficult to manage in a deck that already has to set up a Stage 2 Pokemon. That said, it has some potential as an anti-meta deck. The archetype most likely isn’t strong enough on its own to naturally be a top contender, but it can target some of the perceived frontrunners. Charizard ex is obviously weak to Grass, and Hydrapple is easily capable of one-shotting Pidgeot ex as well. Radiant Charizard will be of some concern, but it doesn’t come online until you’ve taken a few Prize cards, and at that point, you might be able to close out the Prize race.
I like that Hydrapple also has synergy with Toedscruel ex, which blocks relevant effects like Dragapult ex‘s spread damage and Roaring Moon ex‘s Frenzied Gouging. Furthermore, the single-Prize Toedscruel can potentially stop decks like Raging Bolt ex and Chien-Pao ex from simply running over you. This naturally begs the question: should we just cut the middleman and focus entirely on Toedscruel? Toedscruel is a decent enough attacker without bothering with a whole other Stage 2 line, and it can take advantage of the new Area Zero Underdepths. That said, Hydrapple provides the huge amount of HP and bigger damage. It is a little easier to ramp Hydrapple’s attack than Toedscruel’s, and it’s one of the few Pokemon that can one-shot Dragapult ex.
Cinderace ex
Cinderace ex is notable for a few reasons. Its HP is very high, like all Stage 2 Pokemon ex. Its first attack does 280 damage, which can actually be used for just a Double Turbo Energy and Sparkling Crystal (though it would then do 260). This is a great deal of damage, though Dragapult is doing the same amount but distributed better. It also has free retreat. In the end, I don’t think this card is competitively viable, but it may be worth keeping an eye on for the future.
Food Prep Combo
Crabominable and Veluza are two single-Prize attackers with absurdly efficient attacks. The catch is that you need four Kofu in your discard pile. When the Perfect Mixer ACE SPEC is released in the future, I could see this being a very real deck. With Arven and especially Irida, you’d have easy access to Perfect Mixer, which instantly discards all of the Kofu. The biggest problem this deck is likely to run into is prizing Kofu, which would be common with the deck playing four copies.
This concludes the public portion of this article.
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