Hey everybody, DOX here with a new little mini-series I've been wanting to write for awhile. Basically my favorite aspect of the Pokemon TCG is teching. I love the idea of changing the course of a game by playing a strange and often-forgotten card. Discovering a weakness of your deck and adding cards to your deck to cover that weakness, that is the very essence of teching.
Teching has taken a hit since the golden days, back in the Ex-Series. Way back when we had Scramble Energy and Double Rainbow Energy, as well as some substantial search power, it was easy to toss an extra line of something into your deck and break it out during the game. The inclusion of Dusknoir into Gardevoir/Gallade was a great success, eventually becoming the norm, and I won my first tournament with my inclusion of Gardevoir Delta EX in my Infernecatty deck, as I was able to block PokePowers in the mirror matchup.
Yet the new metagame has been very unkind to the idea of teching. Only a few decks rise to power with each new set, and those handful of viable decks are often packed to the brim with cards. Ever since the advent of "big basics" dating back to the Lv.X's, we have been slowly moving away from evolved Pokemon, and with that we are also losing our ability to play a large percentage of cards. Now we have decks that revolve around getting out these big basics and clashing them against each other until one person comes out on top. It used to be that the players who thought ahead and built a smart deck with a couple of tricks to get the opponent were the ones who would win. Now it is the player who managed to streamline the most basic strategy and create the most consistent trainer line that wins.
I certainly blame the power creep. In exchange for cards that have absurd amounts of HP and deal ridiculous damage, we had to give up our flexible and overpowered energy cards (DRE, Scramble, Electrode, and Castfrom) as well as our game-changing search and draw cards (Pidgeot, Nidoqueen, Steven's Advice, the Holon Engine, and eventually Claydol) This makes sense too. If we had some of the cards that we used to, we would have decks that were too well equipped and would be throwing these giant basics at each other even faster than we are now. When BW came out, it seemed that Pokemon was combating the power creep in the wrong way. Players enjoy complex strategies that involve some thought and the synergy between two or more Pokepowers, but instead of creating weaker cards with the same interesting Pokepowers as always, Pokemon seemed to remove most of these Pokepowers, but compensated by bulking up the cards yet again.
Despite the damage that has been caused, there are glimmers of hope for teching. In recent news, the roguish deck Klingklang, provides a lot of space or teching your own cards into the deck, and my inclusion of Magnezone Prime into the deck has been both fun and valuable. With more flexible energy cards like Prism and Rainbow, we have more options within a deck. The new Ball-Engine also gives some much needed search power back to the game, although this engine does seem to be ignored. I like to think that we are on the upswing. I don't foresee an opening of the metagame where there are more than five viable decks anytime soon (we need another Stormfront) but I do see more flexible energy with the Blend Energy coming, as well as Stage 2 Pokemon that have some viability. Sure it does seem that we are going to continue to smack our big basic Pokemon against each other for some time now, but it does look like there is some hope on the horizon.
If you've managed to read through this far, thank you, I know I sort of got off topic there, but now we've made it to our main topic I'll introduce the star of this article, the oft-forgotten Raticate.
Now you are probably asking, "What is he thinking? Its just a Raticate." Yes it is just a Raticate, and normally this card wouldn't be worth your time, but in this format it may just have a use after all. If you take a look at the format you'll see that there is a lot of Special Energy, a lot. There are also a lot of EX Pokemon, if that wasn't obvious enough. Now you may be starting to see the usefulness of this card, but I am going to go a bit more in depth here.
While Rattata is resoundingly useless, and Raticate itself just seems to be begging for a Pokemon Catcher and KO from a Darkrai or the like, there is more to the card. Raticate is a better Revenge Killer than Terrakion in many senses. Terrakion requires two energy, has a retreat cost of four, and has a condition for its damage. Raticate requires a single energy, of any type, in order to deal any range of damage, and has no retreat cost to speak of. It is still tough to see Raticate being better because of its attack being unreliable. However, when you start to think back on a lot of battles that you have been having lately, it eventually comes down to a battle to the death between a handful of big EX Pokemon. Now normally when you get to this point in the battle it goes something like this:
P1: Uses Darkrai EX to hit opposing Tornadus EX and one random bencher.
P2: Uses Tornadus EX to hit opposing Darkrai EX.
P1: Uses Darkrai EX to knock out opposing Tornadus EX and hit random bencher.
P2: Advances another EX to hit and KO Darkrai, since there is nothing else in their arsenal that can KO Darkrai, as there is still 80 damage to go.
You see, with such high amounts of HP on these EX Pokemon, it is tough to do anything but keep sending out EX's in order to keep yourself from falling too far behind in the prize trade. This eventually boils the game down to who has the resources to get out the most EX's quickly and keep them coming. Now normally Terrakion or Tornadus, or Zekrom, or the like get thrown in to act as a revenge killer, but they all require a lot of resources, and their retreat costs makes them unreliable and sometimes even disadvantageous to even play. But if you sub Raticate into the game, you can now use it to KO any EX that has been put over half of its HP, which makes it perfect for coming in and finishing off an EX without wasting many resources. Yes Raticate is much more risky than any of the other options, as you have no guaranteed damage output, but it is so much more sleek than a Terrakion that you may just have to consider playing it.
Raticate doesn't just provide a possible revenge killer, it also forces your opponent to take yet another variable into consideration while playing. If you are playing Darkrai/Tornadus mirror match, but you have a Raticate tech, your opponent is going to either have to retreat to keep his active attacker at low damage constantly, or they are going to have to Catcher and kill your Raticate. Either option that your opponent takes, you are going to come out on top. By keeping your opponent retreating, you are tying up a lot of their energy resources on the bench, which can be destructive early in the game. If your opponent Catchers your Raticate, then you just got a free attack on your opponent, which is game altering in a mirror match between these two decks. Just an example of how a Raticate could be used in a situation such as this:
P1: Uses Darkrai EX to attack opposing Darkrai EX and benched Tornadus EX
P2: Uses Darkrai EX to attack opposing Darkrai EX and benched Tornadus EX
P1: Retreats and uses Raticate to knock out opposing Darkrai EX.
P2: Sends out Tornadus EX and knocks out Raticate.
Right now you just got two prizes for the price of one, and now you have an opening to hit Tornadus EX and put it in the danger zone. For the price of a single energy, you just swung a free hit on a Tornadus, and if they were having energy issues, then you may have even just avoided being knocked out by said Tornadus. Raticate is the finisher, and in a format of 2HKO's, having a finisher that has both free retreat and a single energy cost is fantastic.
Of course there is also Raticate's second attack, which can be helpful as well. Against a deck like Klingklang or even Darkrai/Tornadus having Raticate out early game can prevent your opponent from setting up indefinitely, as well as swinging a bit of damage and some time to set up for you. Starting with Rattata and bringing out Raticate can be a viable option early in the game, as you have openings to grab an early game KO, or even Gnaw Up a DCE or two with the help of Pokemon Catcher.
So with everything that I've just said in mind, I'll toss out a couple of deck skeletons that utilize Raticate:
So there you have it, reasons why you really should be playing Raticate right now, or at least considering it...a little. Thanks for reading everybody, and I'll be back eventually with another card that you really should be teching.
Teching has taken a hit since the golden days, back in the Ex-Series. Way back when we had Scramble Energy and Double Rainbow Energy, as well as some substantial search power, it was easy to toss an extra line of something into your deck and break it out during the game. The inclusion of Dusknoir into Gardevoir/Gallade was a great success, eventually becoming the norm, and I won my first tournament with my inclusion of Gardevoir Delta EX in my Infernecatty deck, as I was able to block PokePowers in the mirror matchup.
Yet the new metagame has been very unkind to the idea of teching. Only a few decks rise to power with each new set, and those handful of viable decks are often packed to the brim with cards. Ever since the advent of "big basics" dating back to the Lv.X's, we have been slowly moving away from evolved Pokemon, and with that we are also losing our ability to play a large percentage of cards. Now we have decks that revolve around getting out these big basics and clashing them against each other until one person comes out on top. It used to be that the players who thought ahead and built a smart deck with a couple of tricks to get the opponent were the ones who would win. Now it is the player who managed to streamline the most basic strategy and create the most consistent trainer line that wins.
I certainly blame the power creep. In exchange for cards that have absurd amounts of HP and deal ridiculous damage, we had to give up our flexible and overpowered energy cards (DRE, Scramble, Electrode, and Castfrom) as well as our game-changing search and draw cards (Pidgeot, Nidoqueen, Steven's Advice, the Holon Engine, and eventually Claydol) This makes sense too. If we had some of the cards that we used to, we would have decks that were too well equipped and would be throwing these giant basics at each other even faster than we are now. When BW came out, it seemed that Pokemon was combating the power creep in the wrong way. Players enjoy complex strategies that involve some thought and the synergy between two or more Pokepowers, but instead of creating weaker cards with the same interesting Pokepowers as always, Pokemon seemed to remove most of these Pokepowers, but compensated by bulking up the cards yet again.
Despite the damage that has been caused, there are glimmers of hope for teching. In recent news, the roguish deck Klingklang, provides a lot of space or teching your own cards into the deck, and my inclusion of Magnezone Prime into the deck has been both fun and valuable. With more flexible energy cards like Prism and Rainbow, we have more options within a deck. The new Ball-Engine also gives some much needed search power back to the game, although this engine does seem to be ignored. I like to think that we are on the upswing. I don't foresee an opening of the metagame where there are more than five viable decks anytime soon (we need another Stormfront) but I do see more flexible energy with the Blend Energy coming, as well as Stage 2 Pokemon that have some viability. Sure it does seem that we are going to continue to smack our big basic Pokemon against each other for some time now, but it does look like there is some hope on the horizon.
If you've managed to read through this far, thank you, I know I sort of got off topic there, but now we've made it to our main topic I'll introduce the star of this article, the oft-forgotten Raticate.
Now you are probably asking, "What is he thinking? Its just a Raticate." Yes it is just a Raticate, and normally this card wouldn't be worth your time, but in this format it may just have a use after all. If you take a look at the format you'll see that there is a lot of Special Energy, a lot. There are also a lot of EX Pokemon, if that wasn't obvious enough. Now you may be starting to see the usefulness of this card, but I am going to go a bit more in depth here.
While Rattata is resoundingly useless, and Raticate itself just seems to be begging for a Pokemon Catcher and KO from a Darkrai or the like, there is more to the card. Raticate is a better Revenge Killer than Terrakion in many senses. Terrakion requires two energy, has a retreat cost of four, and has a condition for its damage. Raticate requires a single energy, of any type, in order to deal any range of damage, and has no retreat cost to speak of. It is still tough to see Raticate being better because of its attack being unreliable. However, when you start to think back on a lot of battles that you have been having lately, it eventually comes down to a battle to the death between a handful of big EX Pokemon. Now normally when you get to this point in the battle it goes something like this:
P1: Uses Darkrai EX to hit opposing Tornadus EX and one random bencher.
P2: Uses Tornadus EX to hit opposing Darkrai EX.
P1: Uses Darkrai EX to knock out opposing Tornadus EX and hit random bencher.
P2: Advances another EX to hit and KO Darkrai, since there is nothing else in their arsenal that can KO Darkrai, as there is still 80 damage to go.
You see, with such high amounts of HP on these EX Pokemon, it is tough to do anything but keep sending out EX's in order to keep yourself from falling too far behind in the prize trade. This eventually boils the game down to who has the resources to get out the most EX's quickly and keep them coming. Now normally Terrakion or Tornadus, or Zekrom, or the like get thrown in to act as a revenge killer, but they all require a lot of resources, and their retreat costs makes them unreliable and sometimes even disadvantageous to even play. But if you sub Raticate into the game, you can now use it to KO any EX that has been put over half of its HP, which makes it perfect for coming in and finishing off an EX without wasting many resources. Yes Raticate is much more risky than any of the other options, as you have no guaranteed damage output, but it is so much more sleek than a Terrakion that you may just have to consider playing it.
Raticate doesn't just provide a possible revenge killer, it also forces your opponent to take yet another variable into consideration while playing. If you are playing Darkrai/Tornadus mirror match, but you have a Raticate tech, your opponent is going to either have to retreat to keep his active attacker at low damage constantly, or they are going to have to Catcher and kill your Raticate. Either option that your opponent takes, you are going to come out on top. By keeping your opponent retreating, you are tying up a lot of their energy resources on the bench, which can be destructive early in the game. If your opponent Catchers your Raticate, then you just got a free attack on your opponent, which is game altering in a mirror match between these two decks. Just an example of how a Raticate could be used in a situation such as this:
P1: Uses Darkrai EX to attack opposing Darkrai EX and benched Tornadus EX
P2: Uses Darkrai EX to attack opposing Darkrai EX and benched Tornadus EX
P1: Retreats and uses Raticate to knock out opposing Darkrai EX.
P2: Sends out Tornadus EX and knocks out Raticate.
Right now you just got two prizes for the price of one, and now you have an opening to hit Tornadus EX and put it in the danger zone. For the price of a single energy, you just swung a free hit on a Tornadus, and if they were having energy issues, then you may have even just avoided being knocked out by said Tornadus. Raticate is the finisher, and in a format of 2HKO's, having a finisher that has both free retreat and a single energy cost is fantastic.
Of course there is also Raticate's second attack, which can be helpful as well. Against a deck like Klingklang or even Darkrai/Tornadus having Raticate out early game can prevent your opponent from setting up indefinitely, as well as swinging a bit of damage and some time to set up for you. Starting with Rattata and bringing out Raticate can be a viable option early in the game, as you have openings to grab an early game KO, or even Gnaw Up a DCE or two with the help of Pokemon Catcher.
So with everything that I've just said in mind, I'll toss out a couple of deck skeletons that utilize Raticate:
Darkrai/Tornadus said:
Empoleon said:
So there you have it, reasons why you really should be playing Raticate right now, or at least considering it...a little. Thanks for reading everybody, and I'll be back eventually with another card that you really should be teching.
