Most Overrated and Underrated Cards in Scarlet & Violet

Hi Flipside Gaming readers! Today you have ol BurtsPTCG barrelling down your screens, but it's for a good reason! You see with Scarlet & Violet releasing very very soon and bringing a much needed new format to our lovely Pokemon TCG, I am very excited! So excited in fact that I wanted to run you through my top 2 overrated and underrated cards in the Scarlet & Violet expansion! Cause nothing get the hype train moving then more than a good ol fashioned debate! 

So lets get started with one card I feel is getting criminally overlooked and that is Armarouge. A stage one Pokemon with 130 HP and a three for 90 attack!… That doesn't seem too good, I can hear you though the screen saying "why on earth am I reading this"?! Well reader, Armarouge has an ability called Fire Off (I'm sure that will have a different name in English) that allows you to move a Fire Energy from your benched Pokemon to your active as many time as you like in a turn! Now, while that sounds ok at face value, enabling you to maneuver between attackers without wasting Energy that use alone wouldn't be good enough for this article.

What is good enough though is when you consider this in combination with Magma Basin. What this two card combination allows you to do is attach a Fire Energy from the discard to a benched fire type Pokemon, then move it up to the active! This gives fire and colorless attackers a ton of extra speed and energy attachments! 

It's very rare to be able to accelerate energy straight to the active, normally extra energy attachments are balanced by only being able to be attached to the bench like Psychic Recharge or Dynamotor for example. But now you can say forget that and sling energy straight to the active! Saving you a ton of deck space because you won't have to play musical chairs every turn!

This also opens the door for a potential rainbow style weakness box deck where you use different colored energy to fulfill different colored attack costs for a host of different attackers and use Magma Basin + Armarouge to sling the extra colorless energy around so you can attempt to hit for many different weaknesses at the same time!

So yeah, I'm very excited for Armarouge not going to lie! One card I'm not as hyped for though is this Hawlucha.

On face value the card seems nuts right? Being able to spread two damage counters to two different benched Pokemon when you bench it! Crazy right? Well I’m not so sure. I think people are looking at this card very fondly because of the format we are just about to leave.

In this Sword and Shield format we have Galarian Zigzagoon which when you bench it allows you to put one damage counter on any of your opponents Pokemon. This in most scenarios is just as good as Hawlucha and infinitely better in one key area, since Zigzagoon can hit the active! This makes it much better in my opinion outside of the scenarios where you are setting up two Pokemon for Sableye KO’s later on.

This lack of active pressure is not the only reason why I think Hawlucha is overrated though. Since we are used to using Zigzagoon in combination with Scoop Up Nets we are used to removing Zigzagoon from play as early as possible, therefore removing one of the biggest downsides of playing it. This also allows you to use it multiple times.

These are two things Hawlucha hasn't got going for it at all and I think that since we are coming off a Zigzagoon high we will be in for a rude awakening if we try to use Hawlucha as a one to one replacement of Zigzagoon.

Mesagoza for me is criminally underrated. As I’ve started playing the next format more I've noticed Pokemon search is dire. Outside of VIP Battle Pass and Ultra Ball we are out of reliable search. This is where Mesagoza for me fits in nicely. It's a Stadium that lets you search for a Pokemon on a coin flip. This allows you to have that desperate Pokemon search in evolution decks which I think will be crucial in decks like Lugia or maybe even Gardevoir. 

I mean, if Capturing Aroma can be a four-of in Lugia VSTAR I see no reason why Mesagoza can't see play too!

The last card I want to talk about today is Banette EX. This again I’m almost certain is a trap. For a single Energy you can lock your opponent from being able to play item cards. This on face value seems strong, but 30 damage is not applying a ton of pressure with HP ballooning crazy. All it takes is your opponent to get a couple energy down and have one single attacker ready and you are going to be pressured right out of the game.

So let me know what you think about the cards mentioned here! Do you agree or disagree? Let me know in the comments below!