Arachnophobia — Can Galvantula ex Be Good?
Hello PokeBeach readers! Isaiah here, and I am happy to be writing another article for you all! Last time, I discussed my Palafin ex deck and how I felt it could be a surprisingly strong play for the Baltimore Regional Championships. While I chose not to play the deck myself, I do think the deck was in a good spot, and even still might be. An attack that does 250 damage for one Energy is still remarkable, and it feels like the deck is just one good healing card away from being a high-tier threat.
As we have now moved past the Baltimore Regional Championships, though, we finally get to talk about Stellar Crown. All things considered, the last few sets have been relatively low-impact: Temporal Forces marked a rotation that resulted in many of the best decks staying good, then Twilight Masquerade saw minor changes with the introduction of Teal Mask Ogerpon ex, and finally Shrouded Fable‘s introduction of Fezandipiti ex and Kyurem, while impactful, left a lot to be desired. That’s three underwhelming sets in a row, and even up to five considering that Paldean Fates and Paradox Rift were also fairly underwhelming. Stellar Crown, on the other hand, is going to provide one of the most dramatic changes that the game has seen since the release of Paldea Evolved, introducing new archetypes and dramatically boosting the power of old ones. Saying that I am excited for this expansion is dramatically understanding just how much I am looking forward to the dramatic shift in how the game is played, and with that in mind, I would like to start by doing a brief overview of what’s in the set.
The Highlights of Stellar Crown
The biggest highlights of this set, of course, are the cards that come as support for Tera Pokemon, to commemorate the introduction of the Stellar type to the video games. The cover card for the set is, of course, Terapagos ex, which is bound to be an extremely powerful card going forward. With the ability to seamlessly do 220 for just a Double Turbo Energy, it joins the long list of Basic Pokemon ex with aggressive early attacks. It does have the unique disadvantage of being unable to use its attack on your first turn when you go second, but it makes up for this with support cards for both Tera Pokemon and Colorless Pokemon.
That 220 damage is critical. Thankfully for Terapagos ex’s seemingly poor damage cap, Area Zero Underdepths, released in the same set, increases your maximum Bench size to eight, much like Sky Field from way back in Roaring Skies, a card that is well known for being one of the best Stadium cards ever printed. Alongside that, we have the newly released Bouffalant, which makes it so your Colorless Basic Pokemon take 60 less damage from attacks as long as you have another Bouffalant in play. This is especially good for Terapagos ex, which has 230 base HP and can be boosted by Bravery Charm. Additionally, something that some people seem to be overlooking is that Bouffalant protects your Benched Pokemon, too, so if you have a frail 90-HP-or-less Basic Pokemon on your Bench and you’re scared of a Radiant Greninja, Bouffalant is just as good as Manaphy in this specific use case, while also being a better card overall. Bouffalant also has 100 HP, which may not seem significant at first, but with Fan Rotom to search for three Colorless Pokemon with 100 HP or less on your first turn, finding Bouffalant is easy. There’s also Briar, a unique new Supporter that allows you to take an extra Prize card with a Tera Pokemon if the opponent is at two Prize cards remaining, which is sure to make a potent combination with Charizard ex, if not Terapagos ex as well.
While all of this so far is great, there is no card in this expansion that feels more significant than Noctowl. For the first time ever, there is a Noctowl card that is not just meta-relevant, but meta-defining. Its Ability, which allows you to search for two Trainer cards when you evolve into it, may seem relatively innocuous, but Inteleon was a format-defining consistency engine for almost two years, so it seems extremely likely that Noctowl, who has the same Ability on a Stage 1 instead of a Stage 2, will be a format-defining card as well. When it comes to the design of the card, it’s obvious that it’s meant to combo with Terapagos ex — you can have a Bench full of Noctowl, Bouffalant to protect your Hoothoot , and Fan Rotom to search for the Pokemon you need. However, I think that it is extremely likely that Noctowl will find itself a place in many other strategies by the time it rotates out of the Standard format, as the card is simply absurd.
This concludes the public portion of this article.
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