Welcome to today’s review of Unown from the HGSS Undaunted expansion set.
pokebeach.comUnown is a basic, un-evolving Psychic Pokémon. It’s mere 50 HP and x2 Psychic weakness are actually pretty bad because an active Uxie plus a Crobat G, PlusPower or Expert Belt will KO it. It has a boring attack in the form of “Hidden Power”, which for P does a vanilla 10 damage. It has no resistance, like a lot of Pokémon and has an average Retreat Cost of C.
It does have a Poké-Power, “DARK” which lets you search your deck for a Dark energy when its put in play. If it was Fire, Water, Grass, Fighting, Lightning or Psychic, people wouldn’t give it a second glance. However, the reason why it received a bit of attention was because it can search out Special Darkness energy from your deck.
Unown Dark, as it’s called, has most people divided with some people saying it’s a great way to get those energies, and others saying it’s a waste of deck space. I’m still not completely decided on this card yet, but I’m leaning toward the “Waste of Space” group for several reasons.
The first, is that it’s a dud starter, meaning that all you’ll be doing it getting an energy on it so you can retreat it. The second, it can be Power Sprayed, meaning it’s going to sit on your bench the entire game, eating up a space, and that’s if you’re lucky… Probably the worst thing is its 50 HP. Luxray GL, Garchomp C; they’re both going to snipe him for an easy prize.
The final reason is Energy Exchanger. They both can fish out Special Dark energies. They both have their pros and cons. Energy Exchanger can’t be Power Sprayed and can get out any energy in your deck, not just dark. However, it is affected by trainer lock and requires you to shuffle an energy back into your deck. Unown DARK isn’t affected by trainer lock and doesn’t have a cost, but it takes a bench spot, potential bad starter and can be Sprayed.
Note: I didn’t include Interviewer’s Questions in this article because I just don’t think it’s on the same level as EE or Unown.
My suggestion: Figure out what match is harder for your deck and then decide from there. If you have trouble with SP, use Energy Exchanger. If you have trouble with VileGar, try out Unown DARK.
3/5 (Good card, test it along side Energy Exchanger and see which works better for your deck)
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first lol.
I played this in a sabelock deck and it worked pretty well. I also played an energy exchanger, so if I had lost my cyrus chain or just didnt have any basic energy left, I unown dark for a special dark and then exchange it for a DCE.
It also increased my ability to donk T1/T2. impersonate collecctor for unown/crobat/ whatever else.
you mentioned that it is easily snipable by luxray or garchomp. Dont forget Gengar SF with shadow room OHKOing cuz of the pokepower
Oh, yeah sorry, lol. I forgot about Shadow Room.
And Crobat G + Target Attack from Sablelock :)
Even with VileGar it’s a free KO for your opponent since Gengar can put 6 damage counters on it for one energy.
Still the biggest use for Unown DARK is to get a T1 or T2 donk from using collector to pull it and a Sableye from your deck. In those cases it doesn’t matter that it’s going to be a waste of bench space because the game will be over after you use its power.
Yeah, I see what you mean, but if you want it for that use, wouldn’t EE be better?
Yeah. The only way it has EE beat in a donk situation is the fact that you can play it the first turn since it’s not a trainer/supporter. But unless you’re using Smeargle to portrait your opponent’s collector you’d have to wait until turn two at the earliest to get it to work correctly.
it would still be pretty nasty LOL
Portrait -> collector -> unown Q, Unown Dark, Sableye -> quick on smeargle, send sableye active -> search sp dark -> maybe a crobat in hand -> owned :D
They can work together well. I run Dark and Double Colorless, and if I need DC, I can search a dark and exchange it for a DC. That being said, I’m not running Unown anymore as of now. :p I found it was just giving away prizes and taking up bench space.
You should only use Unown Dark for the second turn donk with Sableye.