Is It Playable? Victini EX
coolestman22 Hey OneHitKO people, I decided to write another article. Since it was a month between the last two, I decided to actually sit down and write something.
First of all, I’ll give you guys a recap of how my Regionals went. I played Ho-oh with 3 Mewtwo, 2 Tornadus, 2
Terrakion, and 2 Sigilyph. I won my Round One match pretty easily against Hydreigon, played an amazing game against Blastoise round two and narrowly won, and beat VileBox round 3 (The deck was legit somehow, but the reason I beat it was because it didn’t have energy acceleration and I was able to KO their attackers because I had previously attacked them with Tornadus EX).
From there I then proceeded to lose the remaining four games (Two of them I would’ve won if I had hit a Rebirth flip) to Blastoise, Darkrai/Mewtwo/Bouffalant, Blastoise, and Darkrai/Landorus, and whiff prizes all together. I don’t feel like I misplayed at all in the first three games, my deck just failed me. In the game against Darkrai/Landorus I was tired and upset and decided that it was a good idea to discard two Catcher with Computer Search, then needed a Catcher to win late game and missed it.
So I’m sitting at 265 CP’s right now. My current goal is T8 States, T8 Regionals, and win a Battle Road (Which I believe puts me right at 400), but I doubt I’m going to be able to do that just because of a lack of self-confidence.
Most everything in the set is either good or not good, which is why I chose not to do a set review. However, there are a few debatable things, namely Victini EX. I thought I’d do something to explain my opinion on the matter and possibly give you guys another perspective to look at.
Well, first of all, when you first look at the card you wonder why it would be good in the first place. An EX with 110 HP that doesn’t do much damage shouldn’t be seen as amazing by any means, even when you do attach a Victory Piece. Even with the rise in Metal types, Intensifying Burn will only be good until the Klinklang PLS hits the field, and unless you attach a Victory Piece that will usually be around the time you’re able to attack with it (Or maybe the turn after).
However, Turbo Energize isn’t a half bad attack. Being able to power up another legitimate attacker for next turn is always a good thing, and Victini EX based decks could be able to go off around Turn Two.
So, do I think Victini is any good? Well, I definitely think it will be a half-decent archetype. However, I doubt it will ever be Tier One. Keldeo decks destroy any Fire attackers, which is what is easiest to use with Victini, and Keldeo is going to be good for a long time. Even with Plasma Frigate out now, you would have to run Plasma Energy for that, and having all your good attackers be weak to Water can’t cut it in this format. Keldeo will be a threat until either it’s rotated or a grass deck becomes amazing, and I doubt that any decent grass deck will pop up soon.
Also, Victini is two free prizes at pretty much any point in the game. In a format with Catcher, Victini is pretty much just a sitting duck for the entire game. Going down two prizes is never good, and it puts you in a lot of situations where you’re hoping your opponent won’t draw a Catcher. There’s a reason people prefer not to start with Shaymin EX, and having an EX with 110 HP that’s designed for early game uses will always have that issue until Catcher is rotated (And even then, if we go DRX-on Ninetales could pose a threat to it).
There are some problems with having energy acceleration based on attacks, as well. You have an early game boost, but then what? It’s hard to power up another attacker afterwards. Even if you do play the EtherDex engine, you still have a tough time powering something else up unless you’re attacking with Entei EX for a decent chunk of the rest of the game. With decks with energy acceleration that works much better in the early game sometimes you just fizzle out late game (ZPST was a great example of this), and unless you want to do a damageless attack with a 110 HP EX late game you’re going to be stuck manually powering your attackers up.
I don’t actually know if Victini was good in Japan, but even if it was, they have a different tournament structure than us. They need to play early game decks to have a shot at doing well. We, however, can afford to play slow decks because we don’t have to win 3 games against different opponents in a small time period while also waiting in a line for a certain period of time. We can afford to play decks like The Truth and Klinklang because we don’t need to play fast decks in our metagame.
Another big issue I see with Victini is that you need to play Fire Energy. There are four ways to deal with this: You can run a mix of Fire Energy and the Energy you want to run, which makes the deck clunky. Or you can run Fire attackers, which are x2 weak to Keldeo and usually aren’t very good. Or you can run Prism, which are discarded with Enhanced
Hammer and Cobalion EX, and aren’t searchable with Victini’s attack. Or you could use Colorless attackers, such as Mewtwo EX and Tornadus EX. However, with stuff like that you’d be better off without Victini and instead with EtherDex, Ho-oh, or no acceleration at all.
So that’s my short rant about Victini. Let me know what you guys think about Victini down in the comments, and I’ll try to have a deck analysis article out soon (If you guys have any requests, go ahead and post them in the comments). I should have something out next week or in a couple weeks at the most. Thanks for reading, and so long!
