Alakazam could use more HP.
Rare Candy is a month old by now, and it’s definitely shaken up the meta. Many stage 2 evolutions have become meta relevant thanks to this item, while Pokemon like Greninja, and Gengar met my expectations… Alakazam 2.0 turned out to be worse than I expected it to be. Why is this? Psychic Suppression is a very solid attack, dealing 80 damage to the active target and 20 to every pokemon in the bench with energy attached onto it. Both Alakazams are quite different, with the genetic apex version being a slower heavy hitter with the potential to one shot the big bads, shining revelry Alakazam spreads out its damage across multiple targets. Yet both Alakazams fall into the same design theme. Which is to punish energy development. Alakazams attacks are not the issue, their HP stat is.
130 HP for a stage 2 evolution is weak for a mid game attacker. Pokemon like Gengar and Beedrill get away with low HP stats because their attacks require one energy, meaning they can fully function from your very first attack thanks to Rare Candy. Alakazam feels rough as a lead going first due to how easy it is for your opponent to put it at KO range before it gets to fire off a second attack. So yeah, out of all the rare candy recipients I ranked high initially, Alakazam turned out to be a disappointment. He’s still fun though, so today I’m gonna share the deck I built around him.
Our attacks may cap out at 100, yet our reach will leave our enemies with quite the conundrum. Build up energy on your pokemon and prepare to be hunted. Our deck may lack a heavy hitter, yet we run a non-EX lineup that will punish spread out board states, and decks that aim to build up a big sweeper for the end game. A full set of Cyrus allows us to hunt the matchups we desire, synergizing extremely well with our Psychic Suppression. Since we’ll often lack raw power, one copy of red and guzma help boost our offence to ensure clutch KOs the opponent will not be expecting. Our HP stat caps out at 130, which is why a full set of giant cape is an absolute necessity.
Alakazam is far from perfect. Yet he still deserves respect. As any pokemon building up energy will be difficult to protect.
