Japan's XY11: 'Explosive Fighter / Cruel Traitor', CP5: 'Mythical / Legendary Dream Holo Collection'
- Thread starter Water Pokémon Master
- Start date
But there isn't ever a case where a Lysandre drop means you 100% of the time lose the game. Lysandre is a counter balance and is used to punish bad plays. People are too lax to playing very bad deck builds because of what the game has let people get away with for the last 5 years. Printing a card like that to stop a deck completely means they can continue to print cards to stop anything they want.
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YES! IT'S DEAD! NIGHT MARCH IS DEAD! Ding, dong, the witch is dead~
...Actually, this means Standard becomes hard to play in again, at least for me. I kinda liked being able to just play Night March and do well.
...Actually, this means Standard becomes hard to play in again, at least for me. I kinda liked being able to just play Night March and do well.
One deck I can see benefiting of Karen is Mrayquaza.
I think this card is great. I feel it should be a little nerfed or there needs to be the return of junk arm so that way it gives nm a fighting chance. And also I feel they need to make counter to item lock as I think that that's the most annoying deck out there. You just need to evolve and bam your opponent can't make a move for the most part. NM at least had a long setup the problem was it can set up in turn one. Item lock is where the next counter should go to though
Trevenent is the Hard counter to Night March so that sounds a little backwards if anything Trevenant will get less play because without night march and V-queen were going to go back to decks that have to hit high numbers again to win.
Im pretty happy about this card but its a little to late as its doubtful it will be available by worlds but still Flareon/Vespiquen is somewhat popular in expanded so it helps that. however i feel like with this card Mega Ray(Colorless) will become the undisputed king of both formats
So with regards to M Salamence-EX and Karen, shock of shocks: I have opinions! Hopefully they will be a little more, and include some analysis and reasoning to justify any speculation. The short version is that neither card is as good as is generally being said in the comments.
1) M Salamence-EX reminds me a lot of the many Mega Evolutions that maybe, kind of, sort of were played and then died out. It can bring the damage but needs too much setup in order to do so, and/or there will most likely be another similar card that ultimately works better to fill the role anyway.
2) Karen of course is too good; it probably won't be a significant problem (unlike its predecessor Lysandre's Trump Card), but that doesn't mean it is well balanced. I notice how the decks that seems boring but fair* to face has a lot of people hating on it, but I've never heard a good reason why. It isn't dominating Expanded. It was dominating Standard as of the State Championships, but it is hard to tell how much of that is is being, effectively, a budget deck and thus run that much more frequently. I would have much rather had a Supporter based counter for Item lock than for a glass cannon beatdown deck that usually just requires running some decent, non-Pokémon-EX and/or making sure to take out the opponent's Shaymin-EX to avoid getting behind in the Prize count.
*Compared to most of the competitive metagame, a race to take OHKOs against stuff that can easily be OHKO'd is much more fair than a race to take OHKOs against something difficult to OHKO, or against decks that lock down a major part of your deck ASAP (possibly while still doing the OHKO thing).
@Rocket The Shellos Lysandre requires you use your Supporter to force an opponent's Benched Pokémon of your choice into the Active position. Your Supporter. If that seems abusively strong, then I think you're looking at the wrong parts of your example. @crystal_pidgeot and I have discussed this kind of thing a lot. We often don't agree, but sometimes we do.
We've got attackers that start swinging as soon as they are able; it would be the overall first turn of the game if they hadn't revised the first turn rules to prevent attacks! We've got Shaymin-EX (and a few others) so you can still have a big "draw" turn but pull off the Lysandre. We have VS Seeker so a deck can run one or two Lysandre but use them over and over again. Lastly we have Evolving Basic Pokémon, Stage 1 Pokémon, and Restored Pokémon that are either too small and/or exist only to Evolve (so when they get KOed before it is a total loss). Lysandre isn't the problem; remove Lysandre and we just go back to Pokémon Catcher and hoping for "heads", with Item lock decks becoming even stronger. We've had the format where Bench sitters were almost invulnerable; it wasn't fun.
Karen will punish Night March, maybe hurt a few decks that benefited from their already strong match up versus Night March, and will otherwise not bother or improve already existing strong decks. Possibly may make a cheap late game N to one or two cards even more effective if Karen was used the turn before. Yay. ¬_¬
1) M Salamence-EX reminds me a lot of the many Mega Evolutions that maybe, kind of, sort of were played and then died out. It can bring the damage but needs too much setup in order to do so, and/or there will most likely be another similar card that ultimately works better to fill the role anyway.
2) Karen of course is too good; it probably won't be a significant problem (unlike its predecessor Lysandre's Trump Card), but that doesn't mean it is well balanced. I notice how the decks that seems boring but fair* to face has a lot of people hating on it, but I've never heard a good reason why. It isn't dominating Expanded. It was dominating Standard as of the State Championships, but it is hard to tell how much of that is is being, effectively, a budget deck and thus run that much more frequently. I would have much rather had a Supporter based counter for Item lock than for a glass cannon beatdown deck that usually just requires running some decent, non-Pokémon-EX and/or making sure to take out the opponent's Shaymin-EX to avoid getting behind in the Prize count.
*Compared to most of the competitive metagame, a race to take OHKOs against stuff that can easily be OHKO'd is much more fair than a race to take OHKOs against something difficult to OHKO, or against decks that lock down a major part of your deck ASAP (possibly while still doing the OHKO thing).
@Rocket The Shellos Lysandre requires you use your Supporter to force an opponent's Benched Pokémon of your choice into the Active position. Your Supporter. If that seems abusively strong, then I think you're looking at the wrong parts of your example. @crystal_pidgeot and I have discussed this kind of thing a lot. We often don't agree, but sometimes we do.
We've got attackers that start swinging as soon as they are able; it would be the overall first turn of the game if they hadn't revised the first turn rules to prevent attacks! We've got Shaymin-EX (and a few others) so you can still have a big "draw" turn but pull off the Lysandre. We have VS Seeker so a deck can run one or two Lysandre but use them over and over again. Lastly we have Evolving Basic Pokémon, Stage 1 Pokémon, and Restored Pokémon that are either too small and/or exist only to Evolve (so when they get KOed before it is a total loss). Lysandre isn't the problem; remove Lysandre and we just go back to Pokémon Catcher and hoping for "heads", with Item lock decks becoming even stronger. We've had the format where Bench sitters were almost invulnerable; it wasn't fun.
Karen will punish Night March, maybe hurt a few decks that benefited from their already strong match up versus Night March, and will otherwise not bother or improve already existing strong decks. Possibly may make a cheap late game N to one or two cards even more effective if Karen was used the turn before. Yay. ¬_¬
Mega Rayquaza colorless coming back
It's a "fix the format" kind of set.
Xerneas break would make a very nice addition to fairy decks, but I think rotation will mess that up pretty bad. This card makes geomancy xerneas relevant at all stages of the game which was one of the only problemswith the card in the first place. I like this break, seems like one of those cards that you'd knock out and think to yourself "seriously, I only get one prize card for that?"
What about Delphox Break?
Holy Karen! My favorite Elite 4 member not only has awesome artwork, but completely trashes one of the most popular decks in a while.
Can't wait for that full art.
Can't wait for that full art.
Woah! Just use this and a fossil engine 
If only anything had omega barrage
Karen ruined by NM hopes and dreams.
Trevenant decks be like. Welp. F*** You night march. I got a Karen. You have puzzle of time to get two compressors back? I have another Karen.