Neo Destiny Review - Psychic

I am so, so tired of talking about Unown cards. Thankfully Neo Destiny completed the set, so we'll FINALLY be able to put this long list of gimmicky cards behind us.

The other Psychic-types of the set barely had any impact, but I'll forgive all of these underwhelming cards because Dark Gengar exists. Dark Gengar single-handedly justifies the existence of several cards that inflict sleep.

Light Slowbro looks underwhelming and plays even worse. Doing 40 damage for 2 energy would be nice, except that the opponent needs to have at least 3 energy attached to actually use it properly. That's a surprisingly clunky requirement in practical application.

Fish Out sounds powerful, until you remember that you could just play another copy of Nightly Garbage Run instead. There are far better Stage 1 cards.

Grade: 2/10

Dark Slowking is usable, just barely. Mind Shock makes it easy to deal damage consistently and Cunning can be a surprisingly effective tool for lockdown decks since it can be used from the bench.

It only has niche applications in very specific control builds, but that's more than I can say for a lot of other cards. You'd rather keep it on the bench, though, since it's dreadfully frail.

Grade: 5/10

Neo Destiny Gastly looks objectively worse than Fossil Gastly, but it is worth considering in a Dark Gengar deck since Dark Gengar is entirely reliant on inflicting the sleep condition.

Dark Gengar is actually the most competitively relevant Gengar during the Neo era, so this card gets a big boost from this synergy. You obviously shouldn't use it over Fossil Gastly in other decks, though.

Grade: 7/10

Dark Haunter only exists to help you get to Dark Gengar. It's honestly really frustrating to be stuck with 50 HP on a Stage 1, even with the free retreat cost. You could use Call Back and Surround to keep up a fresh supply of weak 'mons to knock out, but that's more gimmicky than just evolving ASAP.

You're kind of stuck with it in a Dark Gengar deck, but that doesn't mean it's an especially good card on its own merits.

Grade: 5/10

Dark Gengar is brutal. Deep Sleep is obviously powerful, making sleep last twice as long on average. Pull In is primarily used to snipe weakened foes or Babies. This is surpisingly consistent, since every deck will at least want to run Cleffa.

The only real downsides are the low HP and clunky retreat cost. I suppose it does struggle to knock out tanks, but it can stun them easily.

Grade: 9/10

Exeggcute has the potential to stall with both of its attacks, meaning you're safe either way. It clearly wants to be in a Grass/Psychic deck, but most players will prioritize one or the other.

The low HP sucks, but there aren't many Psychic types that can do 20+ damage on the first turn, so you should be fine. As an evolving Basic, it does what it needs to do.

Grade: 5/10

Dark Exeggutor's MAX Burst is very cool, but also painfully inconsistent. You obviously don't have any control over how much energy the opponent puts in play, so I wouldn't want to use this as the main attacker for a deck.

It can be splashed into a deck featuring a different Exeggutor, though. Exeggutor cards tend to be fun cards to build janky all-or-nothing decks around, so it actually does have a small niche.

Grade: 6/10

Shining Mewtwo has interesting attacks, but the mixed energy costs suck. Rainbow Energy and Base Electrode can certainly makes it a little more palatable, but I always hate when a card requires outside support to function at a basic level.

Reflect Shield is an improved version of attacks like Withdraw and Stiffen, but the coin flip is annoying. Psyburst will usually do 50-60 damage, but the discard cost is awful.

Grade: 5/10

Dark Espeon's only selling points are the free retreat cost and the potential damage output for Psysplash. It could be a devastating spread move in the right situation, but you should probably only use it as a backup for a different Eeveelution card.

The main reason for this is that you just can't control how your opponent uses their energy cards. It's weird how much they tried to push this gimmick on the Psychic type.

Grade: 5/10

Unown C can do some damage when the opponent retreats...but only when it's active and only on a coin flip. The foe won't usually be too intimidated by a 40 HP Basic with low damage output, so I don't love this card.

Only use it if you're going all-in on one of the Unown strategies and really need the oddly specific utility that Chase provides.

Grade: 3/10

Unown G is comically underpowered. Requiring 4 different specific names on your side of the field just to maybe accelerate your energy is a pretty big ask. Still, acceleration was incredibly rare at this time and was gatekept behind just a handful of cards.

Looking at it that way, I at least can't give this card a miserable score. But it's not a good card.

Grade: 3/10

Unown H would be a lot more important in a different card game. Refilling your hand in the Pokémon TCG is brain-dead easy in every era, so there's really no situation in which you'd be willing to make such a big commitment just to have a worse Cleffa.

They surely must have known this was just useless pack filler, right?

Grade: 1/10

Unown L might as well stand for "loser." If it didn't require a coin flip, there might be some extremely niche applications for shuffling the decks. At least it doesn't require you to spell out its word on the bench?

I just can't think of any reason to use this, outside of holding it up to your forehead to taunt someone.

Grade: 1/10

Unown P wants to perform a big retaliatory attack after taking damage, but it only has 40 HP. Do I need to tell you how bad that is? I suppose you could combine it with Focus Band, but there are better uses for such a powerful Tool Card.

Pass on it if you can. There are far better Psychic-type attackers.

Grade: 1/10

Unown Q's Quicken may just look like Withdraw, but the difference here is that it can be used from the bench and doesn't take up your attack for the turn. This allows an entire Unown deck to function as if they're spamming Withdraw every turn.

That would already be powerful, but using it alongside something like Rapid Spin or Teleport Blast is even more fun.

Grade: 8/10

Unown S has a slightly underwhelming Pokémon Power, but it can take and do more damage than most other Unown cards. It could function as your main attacker in an Unown deck if you want it to, bolstered by the various support effects that other Unown cards have.

Search is a niche effect that you won't get too much use out of, though. There were already better ways to check your Prize Cards at the time.

Grade: 4/10

Unown T is another intel-gatherer. You can tell they were running out of ideas at this point. Looking at your opponent's hand is a lot more useful than looking at a Prize, though. For that reason alone, this is a respectable card.

Aggressive and control strategies alike benefit from knowing the exact right time to play a card like Rocket's Sneak Attack or Lass.

Grade: 7/10

Unown V's Vanish looks awesome, but most of the Unown cards don't have super oppressive Powers for you to recycle. They're also a bit too frail for the Scoop Up effect to matter much.

Still, there are a few instances where you might want to reuse a once-per-turn Power, so it has applications. But being locked to the Unown archetype is obviously a bit of a problem.

Grade: 3/10

Unown W can recycle an endless supply of Trainer Cards with Want if you manage to set it up, and that is an extremely tempting premise. It's pretty hard to optimize a Want deck, but you could absolutely make some powerful control builds if you can figure it out.

Just keep in mind that Fossil Slowpoke can do something similar without all the set up. That makes it look quite a bit less impressive.

Grade: 6/10

Unown X missed a chance to call its Power "Xtreme" and, as a 90's kid, I'm actually super mad about it. But whatever.

It boosts damage in an Unown deck and is generic enough to always be useful, even if the damage boost is inconsistent. But as with many other Unown, its biggest problem is that it's locked down to the Unown archetype and nothing else.

Grade: 6/10

Unown Z may look like an auto-include in Unown decks, but they already have a pretty low retreat cost. Still, I would personally play it as a one-of in any Unown-themed deck that has space for it.

It's just unfortunate that Unown decks aren't exactly superstars in competitive play. It's amazing that an archetype with 26 Basics dedicated to it ended up so underwhelming.

Grade: 7/10

I cannot put into words how happy I am to finally be out of the absolute swamp of Unown cards. There were some interesting ideas in the earlier sets, but it really seems like they started running out of ideas and just printed whatever they could think of on the last wave all at once.

The biggest issue with the Unown deck is that it never had one unified strategy. Is it control? Aggro? Stall? Combo? It kind of wants to do everything, but fails to do anything. Even the Unown used in combination to spell specific words clearly weren't designed with synergy in mind, and it deeply hurts their viability.

Neo Destiny Review - Fighting

If there's one running theme for the Fighting-types in Neo Destiny, it's that they tend to have weirdly restrictive or conditional ways to do damage.

This does betray the simplicity that the Fighting-type has adhered to so strictly up to this point, but at least it made for some interesting concepts. But while these cards are fascinating conceptually, very few of them are good.

This Machop should never be used over Base Machop. The HP is lower and the attacks are worse. Machop isn't a card that benefits from having Colorless costs, since its goal is to evolve into a Machoke or Machamp, which always feature Fighting-type costs.

It's unclear why they even bothered with this. A simple reprint of Base Machop with an alternate artwork would have been more worthwhile.

Grade: 2/10

Light Machoke can do 40 damage on the second turn...if your opponent took no damage beforehand. This does limit its usefulness a bit, but you can always use setup moves on other cards with your first few turns and then swing in for one big hit before evolving, so it's fine.

Return Home is just Mr. Fuji on an attack, but that's at least interesting. It could be a fun way to recycle damaged tanks.

Grade: 5/10

Light Machamp is a respectable attacker that can heal your active, switch itself in, and then start doing solid damage. The secondary effect of Beatdown might come up, since there are quite a few meta-relevant Dark and Darkness-type cards in the Neo formats.

It's not on par with the starters, but you can build a deck around it. Make sure you include cards like Double Gust and Warp Point, since this line cares so much about positioning.

Grade: 7/10

Hitmonlee is heavily reliant on coin flips and the expected damage is quite low. One-Two Kick is doing an average of 20 damage for 2 energy, while Heel Drop is doing an average of 30 for 3.

If there were some way to always flip heads, this would be an incredible card. But when factoring in how luck-reliant it is, this just isn't worth using over superior options.

Grade: 2/10

Compared to Base Hitmonchan, it's obvious that they nerfed this card into the ground out of fear of the Big Basics formats that came before the Neo block. Fair enough, honestly. But they nerfed a little too hard.

The inefficiency of Supersonic Jab is disgusting and Dodge is outperformed by the original Caterpie's String Shot, of all things. Don't bother with this card.

Grade: 2/10

Shining Kabutops is mainly let down by the cost of its attacks, as is typical with Shining cards. You can basically only power this up with a Base Electrode deck, and even then you're stuck choosing one of its two attacks to focus on.

Neither one is worth all the hassle and there are frankly better things to pair with Electrode. Hell, Electrode decks in general aren't actually very good in Base-Neo.

Grade: 6/10

A much, much better Gligar already existed. The free retreat cost is always nice, but why should I settle for this card when Neo Genesis Gligar is so many leagues above him?

Lower HP. Unable to attack on the first turn. Heavy reliance on coin flips. Yeah, no. I'll use the original Gligar all day, every day.

Grade: 2/10

Phanphy's HP is pathetic, but Crushing Step could potentially one-shot a frail Colorless or Lightning-type. The HP is also a little more tolerable here, just because there aren't many Grass-types that can do 20+ damage on the first turn to knock out Phanphy.

It's honestly only passable as far as Basics go, but this is probably the Phanphy you should use if you want to run its Evolution.

Grade: 4/10

Dark Donphan is NOT the Evolution you should run for that Phanphy, though. The regular Donphan from Neo Genesis was a far stronger card.

Dark Donphan has low HP, a ridiculous retreat cost, a coin-reliant first attack, and an efficient but expensive second attack. It ticks most of the boxes I associate with pack filler. Avoid it.

Grade: 3/10

Larvitar isn't good, but Leer could at least buy you a turn if it gets stuck in your active spot. Try to start with something else, if possible. Rock Throw is inefficient, but you should evolve before ever using it anyway.

The low HP sucks, but at least its retreat cost is reasonable. I at least like it slightly better than the one from Neo Discovery.

Grade: 4/10

Dark Pupitar is a solid middle-stage, aside from the low HP. Rock Tackle does an impressive 40 damage early, and Explosive Evolution gives you something to shoot for if you're having trouble drawing Dark Tyranitar.

You should play Dark Tyranitar the normal way if possible, though. Otherwise you could waste multiple turns flipping coins for no effect.

Grade: 6/10

Dark Tyranitar, which is weirdly not a Darkness-type, is a fairly powerful Stage 2. The HP is far above-rate for a Dark card and will hit a staggering 110 HP with Team Rocket's Hideout.

Mountain Smasher is a solid attack, although it does work similarly to Jungle Exeggutor. Pairing Dark Tyranitar with Base Electrode could be really fun. Fling Away is a little inefficient, but you might get to snipe a Baby while damaging the active.

Grade: 7/10

It should come as no surprise that the discussion of "best Fighting-type" rarely turns to Neo Destiny. When compared to Neo Genesis Donphan, Base Hitmonchan, Neo Genesis Gligar, or even just Base Machop, these cards just don't meet the standard.

Still, it's the most complex group of Fighting-types on offer so far, so at least I had a little fun puzzling out ways I would use the cards in a deck.

Neo Destiny Review - Lightning

The Lightning-types introduced by Neo Destiny were surprisingly solid. This may be due to the influence of Rocket's Zapdos, since it was always going to be hard for anything to get a word in edgewise against such stiff competition.

Still, none of these cards quite achieve such lofty heights. They're usable and represent a healthy range of different attacking styles, but nothing here threatens RZ's crown.

Shining Raichu is a surprisingly playable card, though it does hate Super Energy Removal with a burning passion. The playstyle is similar to Base Zapdos, but with a lower retreat cost and no recoil damage to worry about.

Just like Base Zapdos, pairing it with Base Electrode is the obvious solution to its prohibitive attack cost. But even powering it up slowly while you stall with Babies can be decently effective. I do prefer Rocket's Zapdos, but this is the best Shining card.

Grade: 8/10

Light Jolteon mainly exists to buy time, but it's decently good at it. Pulse Guard allows it to function like a much bulkier Jungle Mr. Mime, while Thunder Needle has a 50/50 paralysis chance and respectable damage. Then it can retreat for free when it's done defending.

This is probably the best defensive Lightning-type in the format in a vacuum, but stall isn't something the type is actually cut out for.

Grade: 6/10

Light Lanturn may not read like an offensive behemoth, but Spark is ruthlessly efficient for the cost. When combined with the Dark Golbat/Crobat combo, you can rip apart a wave of Babies and pre-evolutions before the opponent gets a chance to catch their breath.

Searchlight may look tempting, but Fossil Slowpoke's Scavenge is ultimately a better version of this attack.

Grade: 8/10

This is a solid Mareep, if only because of the higher HP. It may seem underwhelming compared to the one from Neo Genesis, but the gap between 40 HP and 50 HP is surprisingly important.

More importantly, Dark Ampharos is just going to discard any Lightning Energy cards attached to it anyway, so you don't benefit from accelerating energy with Neo Genesis Mareep.

Grade: 5/10

Dark Flaaffy is a solid attacker. It wants to be a lockdown piece, but doesn't really excel at that. High Voltage relies on a coin flip to lock down Trainers and Stun Wave can only lock down Pokémon Powers in the opponent's active spot, which is laughably niche.

Still, Stun Wave does perfectly respectable damage for the cost. It is stuck with the typically bad low HP of Dark 'mons, though.

Grade: 5/10

Dark Ampharos can put a lot of damage counters in play with Conductivity, and is a much better attacker than it might look. Shock Bolt does discard all Lightning Energy cards attached to the user, but ONLY Lightning.

This means you can safely stack up Darkness Energy, Double Colorless Energy, etc. If you play it properly, you'll be able to attack every turn pretty comfortably. Just make sure you pair it with a cheap secondary attacker.

Grade: 7/10

I tend to think that the Neo block features better card designs than the entire first generation, in general. It's impossible for every card to be top tier, but there are a lot of cards that are fundamentally solid and fall just barely short of the meta.

You could make a Dark Ampharos or Shining Raichu deck and steal some wins off of a stronger deck, but it would be delusional to compare these cards to something like Sneasel or Feraligatr.

Neo Destiny Review - Water

While remnants of the old "does more damage with more energy" gimmick remain attached to the Water-type, it does start to build out into a more balanced type as time goes on.

This set introduced more status inflictors, defensive effects, and ways to increase damage that aren't dependent on Water Energy.

There's definitely nothing wrong with this Psyduck, but it's just so hard to compete with the original. The first ever Psyduck was able to completely lock the opponent out of trainers for a few turns.

There's just nothing the other Psyduck cards can do to compete with that. Still, it has respectable HP and Migraine is a surprisingly efficient way to confuse and damage the opponent. It's a solid Basic. Just not on par with the original Psyduck.

Grade: 4/10

Golduck weirdly got a lot of solid off-meta variants that are all usable to some extent. Light Golduck has high HP for a Golduck and Core Blast can do crazy damage as long as the opponent is using Special Energy.

You might actually want to avoid using Flipper Stroke, though. If the opponent has no Basic Energy in their hand, it might encourage them to use their Special Energy cards. As such, Flipper Stroke kind of works against the goal here.

Grade: 6/10

I'd rather use Base Seel over this one. Having lower HP and being unable to attack on the first turn really sucks. Take Down does do massive damage to anything weak to Water, but it's a stretch to call that a niche.

It's kind of a moot point since none of the Dewgong cards are incredibly viable, but this isn't even the best Seel on the market, in my opinion.

Grade: 2/10

Light Dewgong's Freezing Breath does have a 75% chance of forcing your opponent to skip their turn, assuming they don't have a Switch, Warp Point, or Double Gust. But they probably do.

Ice Pillar's defensive effect is too specific to matter and the damage output is low. It doesn't even have higher HP than the original Dewgong, so I'm not sure what the selling point of this card was supposed to be.

Grade: 2/10

Light Vaporeon loves healing, but its viability as a healer is questionable. You either need to rely on a coin flip or heal your opponent while you heal yourself. I suppose you could use it to recover from the spread damage of an Earthquake or Blizzard, but how important is that to you?

It just feels suboptimal to devote your attacks to healing unless there's a whole strategy you can build around it.

Grade: 4/10

Dark Omanyte sucks. Just like the original Omanyte, it feels like it has the power level of a Basic, even though it requires you to jump through all the same hoops as any other Stage 1.

Water Cannon can snipe the bench, though. So it's at least a much better attack than Water Gun. But there's just no valid reason to use this card in a deck.

Grade: 2/10

Dark Omastar really hates Evolution cards...but is weirdly bad at dealing with them. It has a worse version of Mew's Devolution Beam and a MUCH worse version of Aerodactyl's Prehistoric Power, but neither of those cards required you to build up a full Stage 2.

There's also no benefit from putting both effects on a single card, especially in this weaker form. It's just a bad card.

Grade: 1/10

Totodile is a perfectly playable Basic. Water Gun is just as inefficient for the cost as ever, but even doing anything on the first turn is a selling point. It also has the solid 50 HP that I look for in a WotC-era evolving Basic.

One fun side-note about the Feraligatr line is that they're always weak to Grass instead of Lightning, which can make them fun inclusions alongside other Water-types.

Grade: 5/10

Dark Croconaw is a solid attacker. Clamping Jaw traps the opponent and inflicts a Smokescreen-like effect, putting the opponent in a terrible situation. It does have low damage output for an Evolution, but it'll be evolving again, so that's forgivable.

The 60 HP is a little questionable, but at least this is after the release of Team Rocket's Hideout.

Grade: 5/10

Dark Feraligatr tries to be a hard counter to Babies, but it fails in the most crucial way. You would think shutting down their attacks and powers would make them useless, but the most powerful element of a Baby is the Baby Rule, which is not a power.

Because of this, you still have to deal with those annoying coin flips, even if you Scare every Baby in play. Crushing Blow is a very solid attack, though.

Grade: 5/10

Light Azumarill is better than it looks. Bubble Jump can be used to potentially fully heal itself while setting up a second Light Azumarill. By bouncing between them, you can get a pretty tanky Water deck going.

But once your opponent breaks the chain, you're in trouble. It only takes a few bad coin flips in a row for the whole deck to fall apart. I can't bring myself to give it a bad score, though.

Grade: 7/10

Swinub has solid HP but can't attack on the first turn. I will always, always hate to see that on a Basic. But I suppose it is a rare example of a Water-type that resists Lightning. That alone gives it some utility.

It's an underwhelming card, but you'll hopefully be starting with a Cleffa in your active spot anyway.

Grade: 3/10

Light Piloswine's Fluffy Wool may initially look just as good as similar Pokémon Powers, but keep in mind that your opponent will get two separate coin flips before their next turn to potentially wake up.

On top of that, the damage output of Knock Over isn't very good for a fully evolved Pokémon. Sure, it removes a Stadium, but you can do that by just playing your own Stadium. Even in Dark Gengar decks that thrive on sleep, this isn't a good fit.

Grade: 3/10

Remoraid does solid damage for the cost and has a free retreat cost. So you kind of get the best of both worlds here, although the low HP is scary to open with in a world where Rocket's Zapdos is running around.

Avoid letting it get stuck in against a Lighting-type and it'll put in some work. And if I could award bonus points for the artwork, this would be pretty high up there for me.

Grade: 6/10

Dark Octillery's Ink Blast is uniquely powerful when compared to a move like Water Gun. It starts at 20 damage instead of 10, and counts EACH energy attached instead of just Water Energy.

You can pair this with Double Colorless Energy or Darkness Energy to easily get to 40 damage on turn 2. Tentacle Wrap won't see as much use by comparison, but it can come up as a way to soften up the foe first.

Grade: 6/10

Mantine is a little awkward since it can't attack on the first turn, but it can be a decent tech option against Fire-type decks. Being able to do 80 damage on turn 2 to most Fire-types in the game can put the opponent in a difficult situation.

The downside is obviously debilitating, so make sure you have some ways to switch out Mantine without paying the obnoxious retreat cost.

Grade: 5/10

None of the Water-types from Neo Destiny really wow me, but I do appreciate that only one of these sixteen cards has the generic Water Gun from earlier sets. The faster we move on from that inefficient nonsense, the better.

Of course, none of these cards come close to Base Blastoise or Neo Genesis Feraligatr. But were you really expecting them to?