The wormholes have opened and the Ultra Beasts have invaded.
Just like how Ultra Sun and Ultra Moon followed the original Gen VII games, the Ultra Beasts arrive in our next PTCGP set to threaten the established Giratina ex meta. 103 new cards have been released in attempt to shake things up a bit, including some that immediately present themselves as viable threats. Lets jump in and name the Winners and Losers of Extradimensional Crisis.
Winner – Guzzlord ex
I’m going to start this article with a little bit of honesty. In my last Winners and Losers post, I really struggled to point out obvious losers from Celestial Guardians, and now in Extradimensional Crisis, I’m really struggling to find winners. Guzzlord ex was the only standout ex in my opinion, as it can be a major disruptor to the current BDIF, Giratina ex, thanks to its Grindcore attack, which can discard energy from your opponent’s active pokemon. Guzzlord‘s main attack, Tyrannical Hole just doesn’t seem good though, asking for 4 energy to deal 120 damage, a number that Solgaleo ex can put out for half the energy cost. Guzzlord ex might be the next support style ex card in the game, only in the deck to slow down the energy accumulation of your opponent, and not having a focus on attacking. This card enters the winner list purely because I can see it as a viable option against Giratina ex.
Loser – Buzzwole ex
Buzzwole ex is the only other Ultra Beast ex card in this set, and if the theme cards for the set aren’t strong, where do you find the winners? Buzzwole ex has a fairly low HP of just 140, especially in a world where Charizard ex decks still show up every so often. It also has a 2 energy attack that only deals 30 damage, with no secondary effect – Scyther from the first ever set, Genetic Apex could deal the same damage for a single energy, I can’t understand the logic here. Buzzwole‘s other attack, Big Beat deals 120 damage for 3 energy, not a bad cost for the damage output, but Buzzwole ex then can’t attack using Big Beat next turn. I’m sure some people will try and make this work since it’s one of the new ex cards and is on-theme for an Ultra Beast based set, but I can’t see Buzzwole disrupting the meta much.
Winner – Repel
It’s nice to be able to spotlight trainer cards, as these are often the most overlooked parts of a new set, with players favouring the new pokemon added to the game, but Repel is a great option that seems to have arrived just in time. Giratina ex is dominating the game right now, and since this is the newest set, there’s sure to be at least one card that rises to the top (I’m predicting Guzzlord ex), and Repel is the perfect counter to annoy your opponent, acting in the same way as Sabrina but in the form of an Item card rather than a Supporter, and in this instance, only working on basic pokemon, which isn’t an issue, as basic pokemon are still looking popular, with Giratina ex, Darkrai ex, and Guzzlord ex all set to be popular decks to run into over the next month.
Loser – Alolan Dugtrio ex
Will you see this card occasionally pop up in ranked matches? Sure, why not, there’s a number of players who play this game for fun and enjoy the randomness of the coin flip decks, with older decks like Dragonite, Celebi ex, Zapdos ex, and many others being popular despite their roots being deep in the trenches of RNG. At the top level of the game though, these luck based cards don’t really fly, and these cards fall more and more out of favour as the months go by, so while it’s nice of the devs to give us a new coin flip based card to work with, with a decent energy to damage ratio, the players have simply moved on from these cards, so I can’t see this card being much more than a novelty.
That about wraps things up for Extradimensional Crisis. I honestly have no idea what will be the card from this set, I’m not entirely sure any of these new cards are going to be enough to dethrone the ruler of antimatter, Giratina ex, and I’m expecting more of the same dominance from this card for yet another month, however, I think Guzzlord ex has room to work in this meta, and if any card was going to be the standout, I’m expecting it to be that, but Giratina ex is still, in my mind going to be topping tournaments until the next set releases.
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