TPCi (The Pokemon Company International) is revealing another Pokemon evolutionary line for the upcoming Mega Brave and Mega Symphonia expansion. This time, we’ll be looking into another single-prize Pokemon, the Alakazam line, which will be available for Mega Symphonia specifically.
Alakazam Line
Abra
Teleportation Attack: Switch this Pokémon with 1 of your Benched Pokémon.
Kadabra
Ability: Psychic Draw
When you play this Pokémon from your hand to evolve 1 of your Pokémon during your turn, you may draw 2 cards.
Super Psy Bolt: 30 damage.
Alakazam
Ability: Psychic Draw
When you play this Pokémon from your hand to evolve 1 of your Pokémon during your turn, you may draw 3 cards.
Hand Power: Put 2 damage counters on your opponent's Active Pokémon for each card in your hand.
TPCi is very much keeping any information about the new Mega Evolutions close to their chest. That, however, just gives us more time to appreciate their attempt in trying to make Single-Prize pokemon relevant.
Starting off, Abra is very faithful to its source material. It’s moderately beefy for a Basic-Stage Pokemon, and can withdraw from the active zone while taking a potshot at the opponent.
This allows the controlling player to easily recover from their opening setup if the match-up would favor a different damage dealer.
Kadabra is where this evolutionary line gets interesting. It looks like Kadabra is taking a page out of Sylveon ex from Pokemon Pocket. It’s a simple +1 to card advantage when played.
Assuming the controlling player is using more than one copy of this line, that’s a pretty handy consistency tool.
It also helps give flexibility to the controlling player who’d have to decide if they should spend their Supporter slot for the turn unclogging their hand, or doing something else altogether.
Kadabra still enjoys the single Psychic-type energy cost Abra had, but only for a modest 30 damage.
Alkazam continues the trend of building off the previous stage. This time, you'll draw three cards, which is a fantastic swing. Assuming you’re running a full set of this evolutionary line, you can theoretically draw out almost half your deck in a span of 3-4 turns.
That kind of draw power is ludicrous, especially since this version of Alakazam comes with an attack that scales with the controlling player’s current hand size. The attack still only calls for a single Psychic-type energy, too, which is great.
With no limit to the number of cards a player could have in their hand, this Alakazam can theoretically one-shot any Pokemon the moment 16 cards are in the player’s hand.
An interesting design with some issues
This Single-prize Alakazam shares similarities with Ghodengo ex from Paradox Rift. It exchanges card advantage in the hand for power.
And Gholdengo ex is enjoying a spot as a recognized meta contender, rogue or otherwise, at the competitive level.
While this line seems strong, there are a number of issues this Alakazam line faces. The most blatant of which is the fact that Alakazam is pretty frail. If you look at all the main damage dealers being used at Pokemon Trading Card Game (TCG) tournaments, they’re usually sporting a health size at least double that of Alakazam.
There’s also the fact that Iono exists in the current rotation of the game. That one Supporter card is not only a staple find in many decks today, but it’ll play havoc on Alakazam’s win condition: a large hand.
Players interested in using this evolutionary line will have to find space in their deck for some form of hand recovery should an Iono be used to nuke the player’s hand to kingdom come.
Alakazam’s Biggest Selling Point
If there’s one thing going for Alakazam, it is the sheer speed it can output its damage. By using a Rare Candy, you can start assassinating any Pokemon in the active slot as long as it’s not a beefy Basic-Stage ex Pokemon.
It’s not a perfect strategy by any means, but it does give a player something to shoot for as part of their win condition. Most utility Pokemon like Shaymin, Froslass, Noctowl, or Fan Rotom play around the 100 health range.
Even the Basic and Stage-1 Pokemon for Dragapult ex and Gardevoir ex are easily knocked out by Alakazam with only five cards in the controlling player’s hand.
There is a seed of potential in this evolutionary line. TPCi is actually doing a good job of making players look at Single-prize Pokemon again with cards like the recently revealed Cinderace and Shedinja.
We just need more cards that can help these Pokemon match the speed and ferocity laid down by all the ex Pokemon as of late.