Neo Revelation Review - Water

While the Water-type retains its simple aggressive playstyle, some of the new cards from this set really push the envelope. Kingdra is my personal favorite, since its low attack cost pushes it out of consideration for Rain Dance and invents a whole new archetype around itself instead.

It's worth noting that we also see another new mechanic here: The first "Shining" cards. Shining cards limit you to one copy of each Shining Pokémon per deck. So even if you really like one, you'll still only have that one copy to play around with. Luckily, most of the Shining cards weren't that good to begin with, so being unable to run more of them almost feels like an upside.

Neo Revelation Kingdra is a far more powerful card than it looks. Most of the card is par for the course, but Genetic Memory allows you to copy the most powerful attacks on any Horsea or Seadra card for a single Colorless energy.

This is mainly used to copy Mud Splash, which does 30 damage plus 10 damage to a benched 'mon. This may seem minor, but the cheap cost allows you to develop your bench without skimping on damage. It's a very powerful deck.

Grade: 10/10

This Goldeen is pretty bad, even by Goldeen standards. At least the original didn't rely on coin flips. You could use it if you want to, since there weren't any good Goldeen cards at the time, but it's not like Seaking is a meta-defining powerhouse either.

Free retreat at least allows it to act for a frail pivot, but why do that when there are Babies in the format? There just aren't any genuine selling points for this card, outside of the funky art.

Grade: 2/10

Seaking continues the trend of "let's take the original and make slight adjustments with coin flips." It's blatantly obvious that they didn't care about this Pokémon, since every Seaking card that existed at the time had roughly the same stats and damage output.

I understand the old adage of "If it ain't broke, don't fix it" but this is just getting ridiculous. Even a generic horned fish deserves better treatment than this.

Grade: 3/10

Staryu is fine. You could even argue that it's actually good, since paralysis is always welcome on an evolving Basic. But it does retain the miserable 40 HP that the first ever Staryu card had.

That one had the 20 damage Slap to make up for it, being well above-rate. Bubblebeam is certainly nice, but there are loads of better cards with paralysis-inflicting attacks.

Grade: 3/10

Jynx is a pretty underwhelming card. Her base stats are fine, but she requires two different types of energy and there's an awkward gap between Freezing Kiss Goodnight, clearly intended to be a turn 1 move, and Strange Dance, clearly intended to be a turn 2 move.

At her absolute best, she'd be doing an average of 30 damage per turn with a chance of inflicting confusion on turn 3+. That's pretty forgettable.

Grade: 4/10

Shining Magikarp is hilariously bad. It can either function as a worse Erika, having each player draw 2 cards instead of 3, or it can search your deck for a Gyarados, Dark Gyarados, or Shining Gyarados.

Keep in mind that it can't actually evolve since its name isn't actually Magikarp. So the search is mainly here for flavor reasons. I wonder how many innocent children got tripped up by the misleading effect?

Grade: 1/10

Shining Gyarados isn't as terrible as the insane energy costs would have you believe. The HP and damage output are absolutely demented for a Basic, but you are going to have to design your deck around this card being in it.

That might be fine if you're already running Porygon2 from the same set as an energy fixer alongside a playset of Rainbow Energy, but this card absolutely is held back by the costs. You'll want to choose one of its attacks to focus on.

Grade: 6/10

Quagsire retains the main issue it had in Neo Genesis, where its attacks use two different types of energy. It honestly would've been better to dedicate one of the cards to Water and the other to Fighting, but I guess they put flavor before function this time around.

This is actually a very solid card in Rain Dance, though, since it resists Lightning and can remove energy with repeated Whirlpools.

Grade: 7/10

Qwilfish is a respectable card, but is increasingly pushed aside as players explore the format more. It actually has good stats and attacks for a non-evolving Basic, but they're nothing special. Just good.

In a format full of GREAT cards, it never feels worthwhile to include a card that's only "good." Everything it does can be done better by another card, even with the unusual ability to inflict poison in a Water deck.

Grade: 5/10

Remoraid is okay. The coin flip would normally turn me off, but this is also a card that can snipe the bench for 20 as early as the first turn. That's pretty cool. And any time you don't need to attack with it, it does have free retreat to let you stabilize real quick.

An HP of 40 is always going to cost you some points, but at least this is a card that could come in handy at any stage of the game.

Grade: 4/10

Octillery is a fun card, but also very reliant on coin flips to get its full value. Octazooka may not look like anything special at first, but take note that it doesn't say "until end of turn" or anything like that.

In other words, if it wins that first coin flip then the opponent is permanently under a Smokescreen-style effect. Which would matter...except that other cards can just keep using Smokescreen every turn anyway. I guess you could use Switch after landing it, though.

Grade: 4/10

Suicune is a solid option in Rain Dance. While it's a slightly worse attacker than Articuno and has a Lightning weakness, it's also completely immune to various annoying side effects due to Crystal Body.

Generally speaking, I'd recommend only running one copy since you don't want to overload your Rain Dance deck with Lightning-weak 'mons, but it is a respectable card that slots right into one of the strongest WotC-era decks, even if it's optional.

Grade: 8/10

Each legendary beast got one of these free retreat cards to pay homage to their tendency to run away from the player in the main series. The only deck you might consider this in is Rain Dance, due to the high energy cost of Crystal Wave.

There are other pivots out there, but it is quite rare for a pivot to have 60 HP and an attack that does 30+ damage. It's completely playable, if you feel like you want to make room for it.

Grade: 7/10

Neo Revelation certainly isn't "the Water set," but it had a couple of respectable cards. The additions to Rain Dance are especially fun, since the tried and true Articuno/Lapras combo hadn't really been challenged up to this point.

While discussion about the Water-type is still heavily dominated by the starters, at least we're finally starting to see some other Water 'mons that can make waves on their own merits.