Secluded Springs is shaping up to be an interesting addition to Pokemon Pocket. With the developers shining the spotlight on the Legendary Beasts and their continuous push for Water-type support with Suicune ex and Mantyke, Poliwrath ex comes in as an off-meta but formidable representative for Fighting-type Pokemon.
Poliwrath ex
Poliwrath ex’s starts with an extremely robust 180 health. This level of endurance puts Poliwrath ex shoulder-to-shoulder with the upper echelons of competitive frontrunners like Charizard ex and Solgaleo ex.
Health and staying power, however, are only one part of the equation. In a vacuum, Poliwrath ex’s ‘Hydro Knuckle’ has a respectable, if a little low, energy-to-damage output, but this Pokemon is an example of its whole definitely being greater than the sum of its parts.
With a Water-type energy attached, Poliwrath ex’s attack can boost itself to 140 damage. This allows Poliwrath ex to firmly threaten a lot of Basic-stage and Stage-1 ex Pokemon like some of the eeveelutions (e.g Espeon ex) or even the newly Legendary Beasts themselves.
When fully online, Poliwrath ex has all the hallmarks of a good and competitively viable unit.
Higher Damage Potential
Poliwrath ex is also in the unique position to actually raise its damage ceiling outside of generic applicable tools like Red or Giovanni. With some outside help from Lucario (Space-Time Smackdown) or Politoed (Wisdom of Sea and Sky), Poliwrath ex further raises its damage output to 160 or 180, respectively, making Poliwrath ex one of the most dangerous Pokemon to face, regardless of the match.
Main Issues
As much as Poliwrath ex has advantages, it also comes with its own set of issues. They mainly boil down to speed and consistency. Poliwrath ex is a Stage-2 Pokemon with no innate energy acceleration. This necessitates the use of Rare Candy and Mantyke to get Poliwrath ex online in a relatively fast timeframe without relying on the randomness of the energy zone.
Basic Deck Recipe
Despite all the moving parts, a basic recipe for a Poliwrath ex deck can be simplified to the following:
- x2 Poliwag,
- x2 Poliwrath ex,
- x2 Mantyke,
- x2 Rare Candy, and;
- x2 Professor’s Research.
All the listed cards above lend to the consistency of the Poliwrath ex evolution line, speeding up its activation time (Rare Candy and Mantyke) and the overall consistency of building up your board (Professor’s Research).
While this recipe is far from being a definitive deck list, this just shows there’s a lot of room for players to creatively make use of Poliwrath ex as a win condition. Players can easily pack a lot of tech choices into this deck outside of the usual staples.
Potential Matchups
Oricorio
For as long as it is an ex Pokemon, the Lightning-type Oricorio will always be there to darken its footsteps. There’s no beating around the bush here, Poliwrath is an ex Pokemon. Oricorio’s existence means that an answer has to be built into the deck to answer this Lightning-type Pokemon. Thankfully, Lucario or Politoed make for excellent tag-team partners if the situation calls for it.
Suicune ex
Due to Poliwrath ex needing a bit of help, it plays into a rather wide board. This, in turn, makes Poliwrath ex a bad matchup against the new Suicune ex in the early game. The controlling player for Poliwrath ex, especially if they’re doing first, will have to carefully consider how they build their board.
If you build too wide too fast, Suicune ex can easily topple over any of the supporting Pokemon like Lucario or Mantyke before Poliwrath ex can come online.
The advantage that Suicune ex over Poliwrath ex is slight, but it can easily be challenged with player piloting, and once Poliwrath ex can power up its ‘Hydro Knuckle’, it can easily reverse the situation.
Giratina ex
Surprisingly, Giratina ex is at a disadvantage against a fully-powered Poliwrath ex, as it (Giratina ex) has a lower health threshold and does potentially less damage. However, a match is never always so simple.
Giratina ex’s partner Pokemon can easily sway the results of a match. Darkrai ex and Greninja can easily start sniping at the bench to limit the damage that Poliwrath ex does, or can easily bring down Poliwrath ex into easier thresholds.
Despite Giratina ex decks imposing stature in the competitive scene, Poliwrath ex can perform well to give this tournament mainstay some form of challenge.