I know that a lot of requests have been made for my review of this card. Sorry I didn’t get to it sooner, I’m simply going down the list of requests. So, without further ado, here is my take on Palkia & Dialga Legend.
Note: In case you don’t know, Palkia & Dialga Legend = PDL.
Palkia & Dialga Legend comes with a huge 160 HP. Since it’s a Legend Pokemon, similar to ex Pokemon, your opponent will collect two prizes when it’s KOed. It is a Water and Metal type, meaning it can hit Donphan along with yesterday’s reviewed Charizard for Weakness. However, this is near pointless as it doesn’t actually do damage, but we’ll get to that in a bit. One nice merit about its types, however, is it can (ab)use Special Metal Energies.
Perhaps DPL’s biggest Weakness is literally its Weakness. Being weak to Lightning and Fire is terrible. That means Magnezone Prime/SF, Luxray GL LV.X, Blaziken FB LV.X, Charizard, Typhlosion Prime, etc. will all hit you for twice the damage. Frankly, unless its attacks are mind-blowing, this fact alone will prevent it from seeing play.
So, are its attacks mind-blowing? Well… let’s find out! “Sudden Delete”, which costs WCC, already gets us off to a good start as it can (ab)use Double Colorless Energy. Sudden Delete allows you to choose one of your opponent’s benched Pokemon and put it, as well as all cards attached to it, to their hand. The biggest card stopping this from being an amazing attack? Broken Time-Space. Obviously, it would be most useful on a Stage 2 Pokemon with 2-4 Energy attached. However, with BTS, Rare Candy and as well as a format filled with one Energy attackers, it just isn’t an effective tactic.
PDL also comes with the attack “Time Control”, which, for the high cost of MMC forces you to discard all Metal Energy attached to it. After you do, take the top two cards of your opponent’s deck and make them Prize cards. Well, I don’t see this attack as being very useful for a few reasons. First of all, not only does it require three Energy, but each time you use the attack, it requires you to discard at least two of them. The odds of you being able to use this attack at least twice before it is KOed is very low.
Overall, its attacks are interesting and seem like they’re good, but if you read the fine print, you realize that they’re easy for your opponent to play around. Frankly, I find this disappointing because this card seemed like it could be the first truly amazing Legend card. I appreciate that ERL is a good card, but I’m talking about a hands down good one.
One other strategy that people have been talking about is to combo PDL along side Flygon LV.X for a milling deck, but I don’t think that would work very well as the main cards would have x2 Weaknesses to Lightning, Colorless and Fire. In addition, IMO, it would be too slow and underpowered damage wise to work, but perhaps someday something to that extent will be viable.
My Recommendation: I want it to be good, it seems like it’d be good, but it’s not.
Rating 2.75/5 (It’s a two prize card liability)
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