Lycanroc and Spike Energy from “Battle Partners” Revealed!

By: Water Pokémon Master · Posted Posted onJan 1, 2025 at 3:05 AM · 27 Comments

A new Rockruff, Lycanroc, and Spike Energy have been revealed from Battle Partners in Chinese!

Currently all of our translators are celebrating New Year’s, so these are machine translations and subject to change.

Rockruff – Fighting – HP70
Basic Pokemon

[C] Dig Back: Look at the top card of your deck, then return it to the top of your deck. You may discard it.

[C][C] Step On: 20 damage.

Weakness: Grass (x2)
Resistance: none
Retreat: 2

Lyncanroc – Fighting – HP120
Stage 1 – Evolves from Rockruff

Ability: Entangling Spikes
When you play this card from your hand to evolve 1 of your Pokemon during your turn, you may attach up to 2 Spike Energy from your discard pile to this Pokemon.

[C][C][C] Grabbing Fangs: 40+ damage. This attack does 40 more damage for each damage counter on your opponent’s Active Pokemon.

Weakness: Grass (x2)
Resistance: none
Retreat: 2

Spike Energy – Special Energy

While attached to a Pokemon, this card provides 1 [C] Energy.

If the Pokémon this card is attached to is in the Active Spot and is damaged by an attack from your opponent’s Pokémon (even if it is Knocked Out), put 2 damage counters on the Attacking Pokémon.

View thread (27 replies)
That reminds me or Horror P Energy or Dangerous Energy. Considering this is a post-rotation set, and big stalls are rotating out. I dont see a proper use for it atm, I might be wrong. Lycanroc is not a good candidate for it, since it is in the range of Dusknoir, and it's a Stage 1.
 
120 is such an easy number for any deck to hit that you’re never gonna be able to attack after your Spike Energies activate. This is just a worst version of baby Bloodmoon Ursaluna-Iron Valiant ex which is still a pretty bad deck.

If the effect of Spike Energy was “When you attach this card from your hand to your Active Pokémon, put 2 damage counters on your opponent’s Active Pokémon,” now we’re talking, even though the effect wouldn’t work when it’s accelerated by the ability. Suddenly you’re hitting for 120 for 1 attachment and 200 if you used Iron Valiant and a switch card this turn. That’s still pretty pitiful for a Stage 1 deck though.
 
Also, I just realized these were in Chinese. I haven’t been keeping track of the announcements here about Chinese sets or what’s been in the recent Chinese sets, but does the fact that these were just revealed really mean they’ll be in Battle Partners and Journey Together? Aren’t the Chinese sets compilation sets that are out of order? Or are they gonna be in line with Japan and International sets by rotation?
 
gigano34 said:
120 is such an easy number for any deck to hit that you’re never gonna be able to attack after your Spike Energies activate. This is just a worst version of baby Bloodmoon Ursaluna-Iron Valiant ex which is still a pretty bad deck.

If the effect of Spike Energy was “When you attach this card from your hand to your Active Pokémon, put 2 damage counters on your opponent’s Active Pokémon,” now we’re talking, even though the effect wouldn’t work when it’s accelerated by the ability. Suddenly you’re hitting for 120 for 1 attachment and 200 if you used Iron Valiant and a switch card this turn. That’s still pretty pitiful for a Stage 1 deck though.
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I don't think you've read the cards properly. Spike energy activates even if you're KOed and you can just evolve a new rockruff the next turn to get the KO on the damaged mon
 
Lukayaba said:
I don't think you've read the cards properly. Spike energy activates even if you're KOed and you can just evolve a new rockruff the next turn to get the KO on the damaged mon
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You’re totally right but that requires a lot of pieces each turn (a Rockruff in play, a Lycanroc/Ultra Ball in hand, 2 extra cards in hand if you need to use the Ultra Ball, and a Spike Energy/Colress’s Tenacity in hand). In contrast, Archaludon ex uses a less limited resource to charge it up (Basic Energy over Special Energy), is much less likely to get KO’d in one hit, also has common ways to increase its damage output (Starmie, Relicanth), and does 60 less damage than Lycanroc after 3 Spike energy and 20 more damage than Lycanroc after 2 Spike Energy. Archaludon is not very good right now and only may get better in a much slower Budew format. Plus these kinds of strategies that rely on Energy in the discard pile early in the game are getting worse after rotation since Radninja is gone.
 
Dang so some of the chase cards won't be trainers pokemon. Basically if you pull anything reg pokemon it will feel like a bad pull. Imagine pulling full art mamoswine out of a battle partners box lol
 
gigano34 said:
Also, I just realized these were in Chinese. I haven’t been keeping track of the announcements here about Chinese sets or what’s been in the recent Chinese sets, but does the fact that these were just revealed really mean they’ll be in Battle Partners and Journey Together? Aren’t the Chinese sets compilation sets that are out of order? Or are they gonna be in line with Japan and International sets by rotation?
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Simplified Chinese (mainland China) is getting the big compilation sets and they're about to hit the start of SV.

Traditional Chinese (HK, Taiwan, etc) is more in line with Japanese and English, but it has gotten cards before that JP/US hasn't like the Victini ex SAR.
 
gigano34 said:
You’re totally right but that requires a lot of pieces each turn (a Rockruff in play, a Lycanroc/Ultra Ball in hand, 2 extra cards in hand if you need to use the Ultra Ball, and a Spike Energy/Colress’s Tenacity in hand). In contrast, Archaludon ex uses a less limited resource to charge it up (Basic Energy over Special Energy), is much less likely to get KO’d in one hit, also has common ways to increase its damage output (Starmie, Relicanth), and does 60 less damage than Lycanroc after 3 Spike energy and 20 more damage than Lycanroc after 2 Spike Energy. Archaludon is not very good right now and only may get better in a much slower Budew format. Plus these kinds of strategies that rely on Energy in the discard pile early in the game are getting worse after rotation since Radninja is gone.
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Let's also add that unlike Archa, this strategy gets heavily watered down any time the opponent gusts around whatever has the spike energy. Without some way of putting damage on stuff outside of Spike Energy, the damage chain is liable to get thrown out the window. That doesn't mean the strategy is impossible, but that would make the deck way less consistent given you'd have to build with that in mind.
 
gigano34 said:
120 is such an easy number for any deck to hit that you’re never gonna be able to attack after your Spike Energies activate. This is just a worst version of baby Bloodmoon Ursaluna-Iron Valiant ex which is still a pretty bad deck.

If the effect of Spike Energy was “When you attach this card from your hand to your Active Pokémon, put 2 damage counters on your opponent’s Active Pokémon,” now we’re talking, even though the effect wouldn’t work when it’s accelerated by the ability. Suddenly you’re hitting for 120 for 1 attachment and 200 if you used Iron Valiant and a switch card this turn. That’s still pretty pitiful for a Stage 1 deck though.
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Attach place 20 would be insanely broken
 
has a little potential as long as this lycanroc of all things isn't the only pokemon that magnets spike energy to itself. the fact that it has no color requirements opens the door for spike energy as a theme to span multiple users outside of brown, such as ferrothorn or cacturne, or even jolteon.
 
Matteloop said:
Dang so some of the chase cards won't be trainers pokemon. Basically if you pull anything reg pokemon it will feel like a bad pull. Imagine pulling full art mamoswine out of a battle partners box lol
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What's wrong with Mamoswine? There aren't enough Trainer's pokemon in the set for there to have a variety of Trainer-based full arts.
 
Finally a good special energy in this gen since Jet and Mist energy, both of which came out in 2023. We don't have a good special accelerator for regulation I onward though so it'll take a bit for it to see widespread use in stall decks.
 
Rockruff is... fine? It's Trekking Shoes minus the putting a card in your hand never mind it socks. Lycanroc has some merit, use Garchomp to build up even more energy, force recoil 40, could make a bit of a splash.
 
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