Hey guys! It's LuxrayMogul here with another Card of the Day Review! Volcachu will be taking over after today as I am on vacation! So yeah. Today's card is Rayquaza EX, a pretty hyped up card that's coming out with the new Dragons Exalted set on August 15th. Let's take a look.
Rayquaza EX is a Dragon-Type Basic Pokémon (Dragon type - so thrilled!) with a solid 170 HP. Like in the games, its weakness is its own type. It has no resistance and a retreat cost of 1 (which, with Skyarrow Bridge [ND91], reduces to zero, which is useful!) Because it's an EX, the regular prize card rule applies: two prize cards is drawn if this majestic Pokémon is knocked out. Anyways, let's look at its attacks.
Celestial Roar lets you discard the top 3 cards of your deck and attach all energy you discard to Rayquaza EX. This is particularly useful for its second attack, Dragon Burst. I'll get into that later. All of this costs a Colourless energy. Which is decent, but it wastes a turn that could be spent doing damage.
Dragon Burst requires a Fire and a Lightning (no Dragon energy yet, so all dragon types have assorted attack costs) and requires you to choose either fire or lightning. You must then discard all the energy cards of that type attached to Rayquaza EX and it does 60 damage for every energy you discard. Which is a super awesome attack! But you'll need to average 2-3 energy discarding a turn, assuming you need to deal 70-180 damage, which is the average HP of Pokémon nowadays and also assuming you don't run PlusPower.
Energy acceleration is still a big part of the metagame, but luckily for Rayquaza EX the format's slowed down quite a bit after Pokémon Collector and Junk Arm are now gone, for example. A good method I've been seeing is running Rayquaza EX with Eelektrik (Noble Victories 40) whose Ability Dynamotor lets you attach Lightning energy from your discard to your Benched Pokémon. Combine this with Skyarrow and Rayquaza can retreat to recharge while another Rayquaza EX can do the attacking. This can allow a steady stream of damage assuming you have enough Eelektrik. Using Level Ball (ND89) and Ultra Ball (DE102) to get the Eelektrik out (and also to send Lightning to the discard with Ultra Ball) and then even having a few Super Rod (NV95) to ensure the fire energies are returning to the deck is a good strategy. So, discarding Lightning energy is more preferable than discarding Fire, which should remain on the card as energy requirement because of the lack of fire energy acceleration. (Well, Emboar is always an option but let's not talk about that).
Another good tech is to run Pokédex (BLW98) so you can at least attempt to move energies to the front of the deck for Celestial Roar. But again, I've already warned against using that attack unless it's near the beginning of the game. After that, it's too risky to not damage your opponent with your EX becoming a target.
The art work is stunning. I simply can't wait for this card to come out and me to get my hands on one! I am actually thrilled about this artwork out of all the EXes that are being released in Dragons Exalted, to be honest. (Whoa... Dragons Exalted as the same initials as Dark Explorers... I think I'll refer to Dragons Exalted as DEX then.)
I'm going to go ahead and give 5/5 for Rayquaza EX for being a fast attacker, large damage output, good HP, great retreat cost, being playable (of course!) and of course for simply being a Dragon. Thank you every one for tuning in and have a wonderful day!
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