pokebeach.comHey guys, I know you haven’t been able to have a new Card of the Day for the past few days, so sorry about that. I can sit here for a minute, write about how I was too busy, had too much stuff to do, etc. OR, we could get straight to the review!
For today’s Card of the Day, I decided that today is as good as any to take a look at Azelf LV.X. For starters, 90 HP for a Basic Level Up is pretty low. Psychic type is pretty good, hitting Uxie LV.X and Machamp for Weakness.
Unfortunately, it also has a Psychic Weakness. The Retreat Cost of C is okay. One other thing I would like to mention, it is the Level Up of Azelf, which means you won’t have to make many changes to fit this card into any deck.
Azelf LV.X has the Poké-Body “Psychic Aura”, which eliminates the Weaknesses of your in-play Psychic Pokémon. This is actually a nice Poké-Body, acting like a more restricted version of Exploud. It can’t be used in all decks, but in the ones that can use it get a very nice advantage.
“Deep Balance”, which costs a low P, allows you to choose one of your opponent’s Pokémon. For each Energy attached to it, place one damage counter on it. Even if your opponent has a fully loaded Steelix Prime in play, the most you’ll be doing is 50 damage. In most match ups, you’ll be lucky to play two damage counters. However, it can still be a good way to place some needed damage counters.
But if you’re like me, you won’t be adding Azelf LV.X into your deck for the attack, but for the Poké-Body. This card hasn’t seen as much play as its Uxie counterpart, but it has recently seen a lot of attention for its potential use in LostGar, eliminating Gengar Prime’s Weakness and making it much harder for your opponent to run counters to.
pokemon-paradijs.comUnfortunately, it isn’t as effective as many were hoping it would be. First of all, having a low 90 HP means it can be easily KO’d by a multitude of Pokémon SP not to mention being shut off completely by Dialga G LV.X.
The other deck that uses this card is AMU, since it is necessary to have the Level Up forms of all the Pixies in play to hit for 200 damage with Mesprit LV.X. Unfortunately, AMU hasn’t really been competitive in a while, mainly due to it being a very fragile deck.
My Recommendation: Some LostGar lists might be able to use it better than others, but I’m not really sold on the concept yet.
My Rating: 3/5 (Not amazing, not terrible.)
Pretty much. It did make me cry once, when a guy used it against my Blastgatr, smacking me for the last 40-60 damage, and preventing “water rescue” from triggering. But realistically, this guy won’t last too long, but he does give lostgar a turn of them focusing on something other than gengar.
I actually really like Bubble Coat in LostGar. Most of the time, it does just as much as Azelf Lv.X, but it can be used against Dialga G Lv.X. Running 1-2 has worked really well for me. Plus, you can also use Junk Arm to bring them back.
Apart from the inconsistent Exploud, there isn’t really a way to rid Gengar Prime permanently of its weakness, you can only do so on key turns and hope its enough. I think Bubble Coat better accomplishes that goal than Azelf Lv.X.
Great card to highlight, especially with all the work being done to tech LostGar.
One correction I would make though–you say that for Deep Balance, you pick a Pokemon, and then for each energy attached to it, you place a counter. But I think you actually count the energy attached to all of your opponents Pokemon. In the case you gave, for example, you could put that 50 damage on a benched Spiritomb instead of the Steelix, even though Tomb had nothing attached.
Okay, it doesn’t make the attack great, but it could make a difference.
Typo, my bad :P I’m making too many typos/silly errors lately.
Anyways, it doesn’t change much, like you said, it still is only an attack with a few scarce uses.
Yeah, you should really read the attacks more carefully. It also would have been nice if you explained why the attack is so bad in relation to popular decks like SP which uses energy substitution cards like Energy Gain, and they immediately discard DCE once they hit the field, or Gyarados which uses no energy to attack at all. Because in theory, it really isn’t a bad attack at all. Cheap, effective, it snipes, gets around resistance, won’t trigger Fainting Spell, Rescue Energy, or Poison Revenge, etc.. It is just pretty bad in the current meta game and I think that deserves explanation.
* puts on Dakota mask *
“Deep Balance”, which costs a low P, allows you to choose one of your opponent’s Pokemon. For each Energy attached to all of your opponent’s Pokemon, place one damage counter on it. While you can bypass defending effects such as special metal energy, most decks will cap out damage at 60 or so damage, and against SP, you’ll be lucky to get more than 20. However, it can still be a good way to place some needed damage counters. Since they’re damage counters, you can bypass “Fainting Spell”, Rescue energy, “Poison Revenge”, the full effect of Cynthia’s Feelings, and many other situational attacks and trainers. On the rare chance that you take on a high energy deck such as rain dance builds, this attack will be amazing.
* rips off Dakota mask *
There. Better?
Just wondering, why has this been the CotD for a whole week?
No new ones have been sent in. Simple as that. :P
It’s been longer than a week… haha.
I’ve been really, really busy lately with non-Poke stuff, so I haven’t really had time to write anything. I should have another by Saturday at the latest.