Today we shall look at out first non-ex review, Pidgeot δ. Basically Pidgeot δ has 100HP, weakness to lightning, and resistance to fighting, which are normal for Pidgeot δ. Yet, there are three things that caught my eyes on this card. First of all, Pidgeot δ is metal and lightning dual type pokemon. It is great to have a lightning type pokemon since nowadays most powerful cards such as Blastoise ex, Zapdos ex and Pidgeot are weak against lightning. Secondly, of course is its Delta Reserve poke-Body. Delta Reserve states that if there is any holon energy attached to Pidgeot δ, all Poke-powers (including ex) in play cannot be used. Thus, powerful searchers such as Pidgeot, Magcargo and powerful pokemons such as Blastoise ex, Typlosion ex, Electrode ex and Gengar will be locked by Delta Reserve. In other words, LBS and Scizorgross decks will be totally locked while most of other decks will be slowed down without aids from Pidgeot and Magcargo. Furthermore, getting out a holon energy should not be a problem if you put around 6 in your deck. Lastly, having a retreat cost makes people think twice before they plan to use it. They think one retreat cost might be a burden to Pidgeot δ. In my opinion; however, it can be useful. I will discuss about this in its attack later. Next, we shall look at Pidgeot δ’s attack, Rotating Claws. Recall that Rocket’s Scizor also has Rotating Claws attack and both of them do 50damages. So, Rotating Claws for 50 damages is pretty standard here. Hence, the effect from this attack helps Delta Server a lot. For example, if Pidgeot δ has no Holon energy, Rotating Claws can switch one energy on Pidgeot δ with a holon energy in discard pile. The tricky part is here, let say you have a pokemon with poke-power plus two Pidgeot δ which one is active and another is benched. Then a holon energy is attached on the active Pidgeot δ. So what you do is you switch active Pidgeot δ with benched Pidgeot δ (without any holon energy) by discard holon energy which Pidgeot’s body will shut off in the same time. Now, you can use the poke-power. After that, you attack with new the Pidgeot δ and switch one energy on it with the holon energy discarded. As this process continues, only you can use poke-power, but your opponent cannot. Besides, you also can switch with metal energy in discard pile to reduce damages.
In the following, I will discuss about its combo. If you are planning to go with the strategy that I stated above, just choose pokemon with powerful poke-power. Well, of course, with low attack cost as well since you need to discard an energy card to retreat Pidgeot δ. Besides that, there are some people who try to include Pidgeot δ in metanite deck. Others might think it is nearly impossible because three stages two in a deck is hard to establish. There is a gym card; however, called Holon Lake which allows δ Pokemon to search their deck for a δ Pokemon. I am sure that the setup can be faster with the help from Holon Lake. Other than that, it also goes great with Jynx UF and Wobbuffet LM. The strategy is very straight forward, use Jynx to attack while Wobbuffet and Pidgeot δ are there to increase defending pokemon’s retreat cost and locks poke-power. As you can see, Pidgeot δ it itself can stand in the battle field alone. Therefore, the combos following were made to counter some popular decks in current metagame. Firstly, Kabutops from Legend Maker can be a great partner with Pidgeot δ. For instance, Steelix ex has resistance to lightning in LBS deck. Nevertheless, it has weakness to fighting as well. Kabutops’s Extra Claws able to deal 160 damages to Steelix ex. In the meantime, Delta Reserve will ensure that LBS player cannot energy rain on Steelix ex to perform powerful attack. Additionally, Kabutops LM and Pidgeot δ are great against Zap-turn-dos since most lightning pokemons are weak against Kabutops and Zapdos ex is weak against Pidgeot δ. Moreover, if you get a bad start in the early game, Mysterious Fossils are there to stall some time. Other than that, people might think that Battle Frontier locks Pidgeot δ. Yet, the main purpose to play with Pidgeot δ is to lock powerful search engines like Pidgeot RG. Hence, if opponent plays Battle frontier, they also cannot perform quick search. What's more is that nowadays there are many players who play with Pidgeot RG and Dragtrode, do you think that they will play Battle Frontier to lock themselves? Lastly, the most powerful deck between δ pokemon currently is Metanite. As a consequence, Primeape δ works with Pidgeot δ. If you think that Primeape δ’s 70 HP is too low, energy root can increase its HP by 20. For its first attack, Destroy, states that you discard a gym in play and it does 30 damages plus 30 more damages for the gym discarded. Thus, it solves Battle frontier problem. In other hand, Primeape δ does 120 damages to Metagross δ. Not enough? Primeape δ’s flame of rage does 10 plus 20 damages for each damage counter on it. In other words, it does maximum of 130 damages and 170 damages with energy root.
In short, a Pidgeot δ deck can be powerful as long as you able to setup fast and well in early turn. So it is wise to play Pidgeot δ with a powerful stage one pokemon or even Dustox ex. With Pidgeot δ itself, many decks are being slowed down and it can stands against powerful decks such as BLS, Scizorgross, Dragtrode, Queendoom and Zap-turn-dos. While the other pokemon which do not affected by Pidgeot δ are Metanite and other upcoming δ deck such as Flygon δ. Hence, it is up to you to find out another pokemon which is good enough to go with Pidgeot δ to stop all these decks. Anyway, I will not be shocked if Pidgeot δ turns out to be top deck in national or world. In the end, I will give Pidgeot δ an 8.5/10. I bet there will be more deck around Pidgeot δ in metagame soon. Until next time, cheers!!!
