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.