Japan's XY9 Set: 'Rage of the Broken Sky,' New 'Battle Strengthening Sets'

Robin Aisaga said:
I've been trying to make Boundaries Cross Raticate work. Adding the Crobat/Golbat Line doesn't seem like a good strategy, It's important to OHKO the opponent's Pokémon. You need to keep pressure, or else your Raticate won't last very long in the active spot. Though a Bat Line could be nice as a back up against Grass Pokémon. Instead I would play two Natu from Roaring skies to keep the price trade even. And to save room for other cards in my deck.

To be honest I don't think this Raticate Break will be better than Its predecessor. You could combine Boundaries Crossed Raticate with Mew EX and Dimension Valley to reduce Energy costs and have slightly more HP. It's new ability doesn't seem crucial to me either. Being poisoned doesn't matter all that much when you keep knocking out your opponent's active Pokémon.

Now, I do hope there will be support for Stage or Break Pokémon. Having to set-up a new stage 2 Pokémon every time your low HP Raticate Break is knocked-out is jut not good enough.
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Why not use Sparkle Motion Celebi? Seems like a reasonable excuse to use him against grass types.
 
My dream came true
What a beauty!
[C] type and 180 HP is nice
Weakness to [W]? They are putting 2 types 1 one, i like that. :p
I also like the name Elemental Feather i hope that in they keep that name for attack
 
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Oh my. This artwork is wonderful!!! One of the best EX's regular arts from the XY era!
And, yeah this is crazy: yesterday I was watching some Ho-Oh promos on eBay and I was thinking that I would have liked to see it in Roaring Skies, in its Colorless type... and boom, now here it is! :D

Too bad it's unplayable...
 
I don't care if we already gotten a Ho-Oh EX, the artwork is great and I love that it's colorless! I just wonder if the full art will be able to beat the one from Dragon Exsalted, one of my favorite full arts. I'm also happy to see we get non-Mega evolving EXes again, I really didn't like Breakthrought because of that.
 
MelancholyFairy said:
Why not use Sparkle Motion Celebi? Seems like a reasonable excuse to use him against grass types
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Sounds like a solid option. No double price cards are taken, on the other hand. You could knock out Benched Pokémon, your opponent is likely to retreat after Super Fang.
 
Many of us did a 'make-a-card' in our minds about a Raticate BREAK based on the Raticate we saw. This is probably exactly what you thought should be fair. 110 HP and Super Fang for a DCE. 120 HP would be too high, Super Fang for a C too low.

Given the idea of taking Super Fang Raticate and merging it with the BREAK Mechanic, they did an excellent job. Whether it can stand up in this format and be competitive is to be determined, but the concept of the card is spot on.
 
Green isn't even in the rainbow. Why make the most fabulous pokemon bad?

Having said that, all my predictions are usually wrong, this is bound to be op somehow.
 
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Purrloin said:
The attack cost is a tad high, and in order to attack and utilize its ability, it needs four different energy cards attached to it. Ouch. Unless you use Rainbow, which means it should fit into an Aromatisse deck pretty well.

Parasect could get the energy out for you (via an attack, sadly), but you'd have to use energy switches or an equivalent ability. Smeargle can help get the right energy out if you run only a couple [R]. Expanded could use Beautifly (Dragons Exalted).

I'm probably missing some obvious way to accelerate Ho-Oh's attack, but it seems too costly to me at first glance.

Nice art though. :3
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Togekiss with lots of different basic energies, Arceus or Vivillon as primary attackers? Will run at least one in my build.
 
MasterGallade said:
I don't even like Ho-oh that much but wow this is a beautiful card <3 I love how they gave him an "Elemental" attack like Lugia has, tho the attack cost really doesn't make sense lol. Celebi, Suicune, and.. PIKACHU? Would've made a little more sense if it was Grass/Water/Psychic for Lugia pfff
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My first thought: wow i love that his attack is the same types as the 3 legendary beasts which are so closely related to ho-oh! even though it might be uncompetitive

Second thought: wait.... raikou,... suicune... and.... leafeon???
 
It's kind of funny they are rereleasing the 1 full art I could never pull in a previous set. Kyurem, the only full art I never pulled from ND and when I tried to buy it it got lost in the mail.

And Ho-Oh now, I might just buy the full art now.
 
A) I am just imagining the depression in the person who plays this card, finally gets the 4 energies, and then has an opponent play a Garbodor with a tool attached...so hurtful!

B) A Water weakness is interesting, and quite unusual

C) In reading all of the setup ideas, I didn't notice (apologies if I missed it) any mentions of the new item (blanking on its name) that lets you search the top few cards of your deck and attack a basic energy you find there to a basic Pokemon. At least...that's how I remember it going. There is also that tool that boosts HP and attack damage to basics. Obviously, I need to pay more attention to names.

D) I think this card will find a loving place in casual, fun decks (the only kind I use!)
 
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TokenDuelist said:
How to keep your game stuck in the same format:
Make every single EX after Giratina bad so it can't compete.

Looks pretty, but unfortunately another questionable card that no one benefits from. Which...is very popular with them lately.

They really gotta let the item lock and Mewtwo format go.
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To be fair, what happens if they constantly make cards better than such things?

Meet the new boss, same as the old boss. Mewtwo-EX is at least partially succeeded by Yveltal-EX and Lugia-EX (AOR). Seismitoad-EX doesn't get replaced but tag teams with Giratina-EX (AOR). Flaron [Plasma] and Vespiquen (XY: Ancient Origins 10/98) form a similar union, with Night March doing the same thing but just slightly different.

Let us take a look at this new Ho-Oh-EX. Just to begin no it doesn't look competitive to me. Look at the individual pieces though:
  • Highest printed HP commonly seen for Basic Pokémon-EX (yes, there are three higher ones but those are exceptions rather than the rule).
  • Ability that heals 50 damage just for having a particular kind of Basic Energy attached.
  • Awkward trigger for Ability only needed after surviving an attack.
  • Attack for three Energy that deals 130 damage, enough to OHKO the maximum printed HP on all "regular" Basic Pokémon, many Stage 1 Pokémon, some Stage 2 Pokémon, a few Basic Pokémon-EX and a few BREAK Evolutions... plus hit the Bench hard enough to OHKO the smallest of Pokémon and set-up potential 2HKOs the next turn. Only Mega Evolutions as a category are entirely in the clear. This of course does become much less impressive when we factor in requiring three different Energy Types, various protective effects (like Safeguard) and of course, the actual metagame where most of what it can OHKO either isn't played or is already known as being vulnerable to such a thing.
The Ability and attack are underwhelming because we have a lot of attackers best though of as stupidly strong and astonishingly easy to implement. Still doesn't mean make Ho-Oh-EX "good"; the attack cost is clunky and the Ability is unfortunate in an environment with not only OHKOs, but many attackers that do more damage based on the amount of Energy attached to either both Active Pokémon or the Defending Pokémon. It is just the fact that this is either going to require some brilliant, complicated deck to even function while hitting reasonably hard and having built in healing shows how the pace of the format is affecting things. I mean, even if you love how the game currently plays, that doesn't change that is why something that may have worked as part of the first or second wave of Pokémon-EX almost certainly won't now (barring support for it we haven't discovered or that is still unreleased).
 
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I kinda understand what they're doing here. They're releasing more and more "bad" cards so that when they get around to doing a rotation of BREAKthrough-on, EXs won't be the crazy powerhouses they've been for so long. It's a long term balancing strategy.

The only issue is that the rotation won't be happening until September 2016 at the earliest, and in the meantime there's very little to be excited about if this is the quality we're gonna keep seeing until then.
 
I'll remain optimistic and say we might see a special energy dedicated to Ho-oh EX in this set although it isn't the mascot. Something similar to double dragon energy dedicated to dragon pokemon, perhaps Golden energy(can't use rainbow energy since thats already been made) . Ofcourse for the ability you will still need a basic fire energy.

Attack name is elemental feather? It would have been nice to see that renamed as elemental blast so to share the attack name with Lugia.
 
Lanstar said:
I was thinking of using this Ho-oh as a wall mostly. 50 Damage healed off each turn is actually pretty decent, given how unappealing other healing effects have been in this game.

Also, remember that we'll have Max Elixir for energy acceleration, Altaria to block Weakness, Winona to get it out, Manaphy for free retreat, Smeargle to change energy and Fighting Spirit Belt to increase HP. I could definitely see an intriguing deck to build with it, and not every card has been revealed in this set yet!
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I fell the same, but it is also a great starting deck for the beginners who want to join competitive play
 
An interesting card, I will admit, but the three separate energy requirements (four, if you're going for the regen ability) will make it a bit tricky to use unless you specalise in mixed element mons.
 
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