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.