News Japan's SM6b, 'Champion Road'!

Very interesting Electrode that can get you "charged up" fairly easily, but man that two prize hit is big.
 
Going by the fact that Pokemon is following the video games more closely in terms of attacks and abilities for the most part, Smooth Over should be renamed to Bulldoze, a move that Magcargo gained in Gen V.

This Magcargo also kept the Combustion attack its original counterpart had as evidenced by its Japanese name (Combustion is かえん for reference).
 
Yes! Finally! Banette gets some love - I still wish the made an M Banette EX - and Electrode gets to live his dream - being an actually OK suicide bomber!
 
However, I still feel like this set is just Pokemon's failed attempt to get people back into Pokemon GO - notice how the set was announced around the time that Gen III was introduced into Pokemon GO, and the set features only the first 3 Generations.
 
Holden Sheeks said:
I love Electrode-GX. Despite it costing you 2 prizes, the energy acceleration it provides can make a whole bunch of things viable. Unfortunately N will rotate about the time when this card comes out but we still have hand disruption in the form of Judge (getting reprinted in the same set) and SHL Marshadow. The GX attack is nice if you plan on using it as a plan B.

Not too sure about Banette-GX. The ability is nice for adding numbers and after that it can do 2HKO damage and recover cards but doesn't look like too much of a threat to me (I mean, of course against Buzzwole and other psychic-weak fighting types but other than that). I don't think the 100 damage restriction was necessary when making this card, you only add 10 damage per supporter, as well as the fact that Sycamore will also rotate making the process of ditching supporters much harder. Also, being weak to dark where Zoroark can do a lot of things? Not impressed.

Glad to see the Sableye back, just a nice simple ability for managing what cards you want to draw.

And I'd totally use those rainbow energies over the ones in Sun and Moon.
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it seem to suffer alolan exeggutors attack restriction, even chandelure has more uses. its more effective expanded, where battle compressors are available, but its limited to 130, 150, 160 with either bands. not powerful enough compared to other psychic types. Only useful againt pokemon that are weakness to psychic. Ineffective against dark, metal pokemon. even chadelure can overcome banettes attack, but its a stage 2 and almost never see plays anymore.
I can see sableye being helpful, but i thinkts its better used in expanded.
 
CrownAxe said:
The difference though is that Zoro decks are duo'd with a second attacker (like Golisopod or Lycanroc) that has a DIFFERENT WEAKNESS and this works because Zoroark GX is very splashable and only needs DCE to attack (and Trade is that good).

Banette's attack gimmick requires the entire deck be built around it which will make it not viable to bring an effective different weakness attacker into the deck.

Also Metal has not become meta worthy, and the only one close to it (dusk mane) can OHKOs garde's regardless on weakness
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I said it's slowly becoming meta worthy not meta worthy at the moment but my point is weakness is part of the game there's no need to downgrade a card just because of weakness even if it's a bad one and not to mention Banette GX has resistance to Buzzwole so it's not a bad card Buzzwole GX is also meta and it will get out of control with the new ultra beasts support so Zoroark GX players will hide under a rock (no pun intended lol) in the next meta. And not to mention one more thing you can also pair up Banette GX with Zoroark GX therefore Banette GX is a good card.
 
EpicShonenGuy said:
I said it's slowly becoming meta worthy not meta worthy at the moment but my point is weakness is part of the game there's no need to downgrade a card just because of weakness even if it's a bad one and not to mention Banette GX has resistance to Buzzwole so it's not a bad card Buzzwole GX is also meta and it will get out of control with the new ultra beasts support so Zoroark GX players will hide under a rock (no pun intended lol) in the next meta. And not to mention one more thing you can also pair up Banette GX with Zoroark GX therefore Banette GX is a good card.
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Ok, so reasons why Banette-GX is bad other than its weakness to dark:

a) In Standard you want to be using your supporters and not discard them because there is no easy way to get them back later. Puzzles will also rotate this September. You have Pal Pad, but that forces you to shuffle 2 back, which immediately lowers Banette's damage output by 20.

b) Discarding stuff in Standard quickly is not that easy unless you're playing at least a 3-3 Zoroark line; therefore Banette's damage output will take forever to max out and it will get killed before it can contribute anything to the game. It's not even like Trashalanche where you can just use Garbodor as a late game attacker for huge amounts of damage, or at least enough amount of damage to OHKO a Lele or something else to get you the win.

c) Which leads right into the next problem, namely that it has a very low damage cap, especially compared to some other GXes. It doesn't matter that it only needs 1 basic energy because it can't do anything with it because, again, it has a very bad attack. The GX attack (Hollow Hunt v2.0) is good though, but Banette managed to make it worse than the Decidueye version - using it ends your turn, and while Decidueye can usually tank a hit with 240 HP, Banette with 190 (and again, with Zoroark weakness) will probably won't be able to do that. Even crap like SLG Hoopa OHKOs it with a Band and it even walls it.

d) The ability is very situational and you can't even spam it to help you get KOs easier - like Feather Arrow, for example - because Banette needs to be your active in order to use it.

e) The resistance to Buzzwole doesn't matter because good Buzzwole decks just plow through everything due to having a ridiculous amount of damage boosting cards at their disposal.

f) You can't play it in Expanded with Compressor because Zoroak is disguistingly strong in that format and it will OHKO Banette even without weakness. Having dark weakness means that the Zoro player needs to put in even less effort to get rid of it. And playing a 2-prize attacker in Expanded with a damage cap of 130 (160) who only has 190 HP is just generally a bad idea because Expanded Turbo decks eat such things for breakfast, and mill/stall decks like Wailord, Toad/Seviper and Sylveon just laugh at you.

The only way I could see Banette being used is as a tech against Buzzwole in future Zoroark decks, if, after EVO Mewtwo and Mew EX rotate, we don't get anything better than Banette for this purpose. (And Trashalanche is already here which is imo better for this but whatever.) It's not even very good as an anti-Buzzwole tech, because both Mewtwo and Mew EX only take up 1 slot in Zoro decks and they both share the DCE attack cost.
You'd either have to run a 1-1 line which is unreliable and you might not be able to get it out at the exact time when you need it, (not to mention that killing off an unevolved Shuppet will be really easy because it will probably have like 40-50 HP) or a 2-2 line which takes away 4 slots and they will probably become dead cards in most other match-ups, not to mention that you also need to find space for either at least 2 Psychic or 2 Rainbow.
And even if you OHKO a Buzzwole with it, it can OHKO Banette back with Beast Ring + Choice Band + Diancie or with its GX attack if the opponent hasn't taken any prizes yet. There's also Lycanrock (who will probably become the main partner again for Buzzwole after Garbotoxin rotates) which you can't hit for weakness with Banette.
 
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Since when has discarding a Pokémon ever count as a knock out? The original text of the ex was discard this pokemon...yada, yada; this counts as knocking out Electrode ex. Let's see here....the Farewell Letter Unown has you discard it to draw a card, but doesn't say it counts as a knock out. The FRLG ex days were good, but they should of at least got rid of the "this counts as knocking it out" on Electrode GX. That way it would be used more. Unless you use Life Dew in Expanded. "When the Pokémon this card is attached to would be knocked out, your opponent takes one less prize card". But that's just me.
 
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