If you're running a Zoroark-centred deck I'd imagine you'd have multiple that you could stone and multiple that you could band.
'Blue Impact' / 'Red Flash' Japan's XY8 Sets, Next Set Block Titled 'XY: BREAK!'
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Precisely my point, as I have stated two posts ago. It is good in its own deck, but in a non-centric deck? I doubt its viability.
Well, how much damage is it actually doing? 10 + 30 for everything on your opponent's bench? Unless your opponent is a ham sandwich like the guy in the ad; dropping Sky Field and dumping their hand onto the bench, they're probably going to be playing around Mind Jack. Even MRay, the eight-guys-on-the-bench deck, doesn't need to do MRay levels of damage to kill a stage one pokemon. Even Zoroark BREAK is going down to four benched pokemon and a Muscle Band. On the other side of the table, you're going to need an opponent with a full bench plus a Muscle Band to hit the magic number 180. Now, this isn't exactly easy for Night March or Vespiquen either, but at least those decks have control over their own damage output. All Zoroark can do is try to get value out of Target Whistle and hope the opponent has no choice but to fill up their bench, all the while weakening its own attack as it takes knockouts. You're dealing with other limitations, too - your attacker is a stage one, you rely heavily on DCE, and if all that isn't enough and the deck is still a major threat, the metagame will start shifting in such a way that Zoroark's matchups suffer.
Unless I'm missing something huge here, even if it weren't good policy in general to reserve judgment on this sort of thing, this is unlikely to be good enough to cause problems. I'm not even wholly convinced it'll be playable.
Let's turn that into 260-320 damage with AoR Flareon, Vaporeon and Jolteon. ANd that's when you use it as more than just a Keldeo, which you don't have to, as a tech, but it just means it has a more viable attack in a pinch, like say, Empoleon
The thing I think you're missing is the difference between a main attacker and a support pokemon with an attack that can save late-games.
Ohhh, right.
That's a lot of non-grass stage ones though. Seems like it might stumble in the face of awkward draws and Lysandre. We'll see.
I've been running on the assumption that it's the main attacker, too. I was thinking it was too clunky to replace Keldeo. I guess it depends on what the deck/metagame ends up looking like.
That's a lot of non-grass stage ones though. Seems like it might stumble in the face of awkward draws and Lysandre. We'll see.
I've been running on the assumption that it's the main attacker, too. I was thinking it was too clunky to replace Keldeo. I guess it depends on what the deck/metagame ends up looking like.
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I don't think any deck (other than itself, I suppose) can bring a heavy stage one line like the Eeveelutions and have enough space for the Zoroark whilst keeping its consistency. And I would agree with you on that, but what you're talking about is its function in its own deck which is exactly my point. I never said that the attack was bad -- don't get me wrong -- but what I did say that it was rather inconsequential in the format that we are in against anything but Ray. Support or not, I'm still unsure as to its viability.
But again, this is all speculation on all of our parts. Raichu and the subsequent Raichu BREAK might just poop all over Rayquaza's face as far as we know, thus negating this card's usefulness as a standalone. Or something might come out that makes Ray broken, and we might have to flock to this card in our decks, overteching the matchup to eek by. We just don't know.
Really hoping for a Copycat reprint in this set, both to provide a much needed improvement to our selection of XY-on draw supporters, and also to make Noivern BREAK good
Yeah which is why I implied that the eevees wouldnt be there for Zoroark, as a support pokemon, only for a dedicated deck, and noted that, alternatively, 160 damage for a cheap support pokemon is crazy good, which negates any downside to having a 2-2 line of them. The attack itself is also far more splash-friendly than Keldeo's. So yeah, you're giving up 2, maybe 3 spots in your deck for something more powerful and less of a liability. I call that a more than fair trade.
As far as Rayquaza is concerned, he already isn't that good except as a metal variant, and decks based on Giratina, Vileplume, Manectric/Ampharos and some others will pretty much shut it down, but even if you'd like to argue about that, Ray's playability is entirely beside the point. The only reason I mentioned him in the first place is because of the similarity of his attack and damage output as a way of saying, "we now have a pokemon that is a stage 1 isntead of a mega, and does as much damage for one prize and one energy less" which, again, is crazy.
Did you? Might want to clarify that in your past post because it sounded like that was exactly what you were saying! XD
Eh, you may be right, but you'd be sacrificing your only Rush In support, and thus your only Switch in the deck. One prize or not, I'd rather keep the Switch ability unless I desperately needed him. Sure, you could try to set up a second one but we've already had a conversation about that, and I've already spoken my peace about the space issue. This is all just opinion at this point.
Mm. I've actually played with a bit of the decks mentioned, and I can safely say that they don't hands-down beat Metal Ray (which is, let's face it, standard Ray at this point). It's certainly not a happy fun time for them, but Bronzong is still really good, Aegislash is annoying as heck to Giratina and it's not like you can Hex Maniac with Giratina without endangering yourself, either.
But regardless of that, Ray is really the only deck aside from a few odd balls here and there that will grant you the large damage output that you were talking about, which is why I brought it up.
But again, this is just arguing of opinions at this point, I feel.
Since we've had a little back-and-forth over it in this thread relying on Theorymon* and I wanted to point out a major factor in this game is still... Weakness. Its relevance here is that Keldeo-EX isn't even going to be Keldeo-EX by the time this latest sets hits Japan or the rest of the world. I don't mean because of rotation but because the Grass-Type is expected to finally have some fangs again apart from one über deck example like VirGen during its prime... and notice how that example was one where exploiting Weakness wasn't even required according to the core strategy (G Booster) though it did make things a lot easier (making do without G Booster).
Quick show of hands: how many of us would use a Keldeo-EX as a blocker? Had an opponent that would have wrecked our set-up except they couldn't take Keldeo-EX out via OHKO? Now, how popular do we expect the Fighting-Type to become? Even with answers to those it is still all speculation. The smart answer is that "It is too early to tell." (kind of like the U.S. Presidential election). I'm bringing how Weakness affects the "Float Stone on Rush In or similar Ability" combo as yet another angle we'd need to calculate that we really can't yet.
*Theorymon is not a bad thing when properly used... at least how I define this informal term. It isn't just making stuff up and it isn't cherry-picking hypothetical situations that suit your conclusion (that would be bad Theorymon). Instead it is just a term used when you aren't relying solely or mostly on actual testing data because frankly most of us just don't have such data available to us. Even dedicated players struggle to amass the needed experience to just know from the results that something does or doesn't work because you'd have to isolate the variables and test each hundreds if not thousands of times. There are a lot of variables in two people making 60 card decks out of a 1000 card pool to slug it out!
Quick show of hands: how many of us would use a Keldeo-EX as a blocker? Had an opponent that would have wrecked our set-up except they couldn't take Keldeo-EX out via OHKO? Now, how popular do we expect the Fighting-Type to become? Even with answers to those it is still all speculation. The smart answer is that "It is too early to tell." (kind of like the U.S. Presidential election). I'm bringing how Weakness affects the "Float Stone on Rush In or similar Ability" combo as yet another angle we'd need to calculate that we really can't yet.
*Theorymon is not a bad thing when properly used... at least how I define this informal term. It isn't just making stuff up and it isn't cherry-picking hypothetical situations that suit your conclusion (that would be bad Theorymon). Instead it is just a term used when you aren't relying solely or mostly on actual testing data because frankly most of us just don't have such data available to us. Even dedicated players struggle to amass the needed experience to just know from the results that something does or doesn't work because you'd have to isolate the variables and test each hundreds if not thousands of times. There are a lot of variables in two people making 60 card decks out of a 1000 card pool to slug it out!
True, true. I use it all the time to buy a turn with my Metal Ray Deck.
And yeah, you can get too caught up in theorymoning, but it can bite you in the ass if you don't.
At a league challenge I went to yesterday I faced a Dark M Ray deck, which by all rights I should have the advantage to (being generally faster to set up), unless both my Mega Rays are prized.
Low and behold, both are prized, and as soon as my opponent knocks out my Aegislash I loose the only card that could reliably get me a chance at a couple of prizes before losing.
Now, in 100 other games I'd have had at least one Ray. I was set up (minus the m ray) about 4 turns before before my opponent.
Hence support/backup attacker. IE, not your primary source of damage output.
Yup, s'why I included the note at the bottom (which ended up becoming its own paragraph a third the length of the post =P ) on why Theorymon is a tool that is neither inherently good nor bad. Good Theorymon is used to contemplate why or how something works and is necessary because none of us have the time to do carefully test everything, which is what you'd have to do to completely operate without it. Bad Theorymon is when something goes wrong; ignoring reality in favor of the theory is the most common. "Cherry-picking" examples is... um... the best specific example: when someone takes one single example and acts like it completely proves or disproves something.
So yeah, Theorymon is a good skill to have.
Thanks for providing another data point; it is easy for me to do something "all the time" and only later find out "Oh, turns out that wasn't a smart play and I've been getting lucky." ^^'
This idea doesn't make sense. You have stage 1, 2, and 3. You also have EXs and Mega Evolutions. AND you have Primals. Now they have BREAK. It's WAY too much in my opinion.
Finally! I have been waiting for a set to be featured around Mew for a long time, and well, since I apparently can't have that until Mew gets a Mega, a set featured around Mewtwo is the next best thing!
Don't forget Restored Pokémon!
So the things that actually count as "Stages" (Basic, Stage 1, Stage 2, Restored and Mega) plus the additional mechanic restricted to two of those Stages (Pokémon-EX being Basics or Megas) already give us a pretty complicated environment as a base (instead of complexity through a wide variety of card interactions). This isn't inherently bad but... I'm one of those people that doesn't think they've gotten the current situation balanced out. Adding something new might help in theory, but historically and frankly due to common sense, it won't. =P
Yeah, not trying to be a killjoy. I like gimmicks like this, just when they come at the right time. In fact I'd actually be inclined to do something more extreme to the game; replace regular Evolution mechanics with something akin to the Break Evolution mechanics by reformatting the cards a bit (move the bottom stats to right below the art) and then have regular Evolution also work by covering the top part of the card with the next Stage, leaving the bottom half of the lower Stage (which at this point would just have Attacks and/or Abilities) exposed and granting access to those things from higher Stages. While more complex than the current method of Evolution, this could be another way to add value from lower Stages.
As much as I love Float Stone, I actually kinda want to see it gone just to see how Decks would adapt around it.
Theres a more important reason for Theorymon
It's fun.
Well, you'll have several months to see. Breakthrough isn't out yet.
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Interesting attack for Chestnaught Break...considering the damage it has to take with the attack, I might play it with XY's Chestnaught to use the healing move periodically. The new Chestnaught looks pretty decent, too. I will say, however, that for a stage 3 (essentially) with a pretty high energy cost, Chestnaught Break puts a pretty big demand on deck space.
Do we know if Wally can be used to play a Break card? It could speed things up if so.
Do we know if Wally can be used to play a Break card? It could speed things up if so.