Pokebeach.com has given us images of several new cards for Japan's SM7; Charisma of the Wrecked Sky, and the two new Prisms revealed could be some of the most useful we've had in a while. But which will see play in the first place? Lets find out.
Return of the Eon Duo
So, Latias and Latios Prisms are a thing.
Both are Dragon types, which means they have that Fairy weakness and they themselves aren't hitting anything for weakness (Unless, like I've mentioned in the past, RayBoar becomes a thing in expanded). They're obviously both prisms, so you are limited to one copy of each in the deck. Both have a retreat cost of 1, which is relevant because Latias attacks for a single energy, and for the both of them, having a retreat of 1 means they can use Escape Board after rotation to gain free retreat (And that could be needed for Latias).
But, like every Pokemon, it's the attacks we're worried about. For Latias, it gives Rayquaza ANOTHER option to make it a great deck when Worlds rolls around:
(C): Dream Mist: Attach a basic energy card from your discard pile to each of your benched basic Dragon Pokemon
Is it safe at this point to bet on Rayquaza becoming BDIF and winning worlds this year?
Let's imagine the ideal setup for a Rayquaza deck: An Active Rayquaza, a Benched Rayquaza, a Vikavolt, a Draw engine like Oranguru, and a bench slot for Tapu Lele. Having a second vikavolt could be good, but you only need to ever use Vikavolt if you lose a Rayquaza or you need to hit a higher damage cap. So while the 5th space might be best used for Sceptile to counter Ultra Beasts, most non-ultra beast decks tend to be slower, so you could afford to use Latias Prism to help set up in those games. And if you do have 2 Rayquaza on the bench, while Vikavolt gets the same amount of energy into play, Latias can soften up larger evolutions to help Rayquaza take easier KOs. So, while it isn't better than Vikavolt for energy acceleration, it has it's place in a Rayquaza deck.
As for Latios, he acts as a great Non-GX attacker in a Dragon Evolution deck once Dragon Majesty hits in September:
(C)(C): Dragon Fleet: 50x
This attack does 50 damage times the number of Evolution Dragon Pokemon you have in play
Now, the one use I could think of for this is, as mentioned before, a Non-GX attacker in a Dragon Evolution deck, and 2 come to mind as possibilities in the future: Dragonite-Altaria, and Altaria.
Both decks have a focus on the new Dragon Majesty Altaria, which boosts the damage output of your Dragon Pokemon by 20, exactly like the Dragons Exalted Altaria from 2012.
But the main attackers of those differ in terms of damage output. One relies on the upcoming Dragonite-GX to swing for insane amounts of damage, while the other uses the upcoming Altaria-GX from Celestial Storm to deal low damage, but lock out GXs from attacking Altaria (And EXs, but they aren't relevant in Standard).
For Altaria decks, Latios could easily be a late game sweeper to take the last 2 prizes on something that Altaria can't deal with easily. And in Dragonite, with an escape board, it could act as the free retreater Dragonite needs to chain it's 200 damage attack, since Dawn Wings Necrozma won't work since Float Stone is rotating and Dawn Wings has a retreat of 2.
And even though Latios requires evolutions to charge up it's attack, the combination of Dragonite's GX attack, which allows you to put other Dragonite onto the bench without having to evolve, and the upcoming Lance Prism, which allows you to simply put 2 dragons of any stage onto the bench, (2 Altaria perhaps?) allows this to be a great attacker in these archetypes.
As for Latios, he acts as a great Non-GX attacker in a Dragon Evolution deck once Dragon Majesty hits in September:
(C)(C): Dragon Fleet: 50x
This attack does 50 damage times the number of Evolution Dragon Pokemon you have in play
Now, the one use I could think of for this is, as mentioned before, a Non-GX attacker in a Dragon Evolution deck, and 2 come to mind as possibilities in the future: Dragonite-Altaria, and Altaria.
Both decks have a focus on the new Dragon Majesty Altaria, which boosts the damage output of your Dragon Pokemon by 20, exactly like the Dragons Exalted Altaria from 2012.
But the main attackers of those differ in terms of damage output. One relies on the upcoming Dragonite-GX to swing for insane amounts of damage, while the other uses the upcoming Altaria-GX from Celestial Storm to deal low damage, but lock out GXs from attacking Altaria (And EXs, but they aren't relevant in Standard).
For Altaria decks, Latios could easily be a late game sweeper to take the last 2 prizes on something that Altaria can't deal with easily. And in Dragonite, with an escape board, it could act as the free retreater Dragonite needs to chain it's 200 damage attack, since Dawn Wings Necrozma won't work since Float Stone is rotating and Dawn Wings has a retreat of 2.
And even though Latios requires evolutions to charge up it's attack, the combination of Dragonite's GX attack, which allows you to put other Dragonite onto the bench without having to evolve, and the upcoming Lance Prism, which allows you to simply put 2 dragons of any stage onto the bench, (2 Altaria perhaps?) allows this to be a great attacker in these archetypes.
Dawn of the Dragons
With Latios and Latias Prism star filling in gaps in Dragon decks, we may be seeing a resurgence in Dragon types soon, with one archetype even having a shot to win worlds. I'll be posting another article soon on what Dragon types have going for them that could cause this resurgence.
No comments:
Post a Comment