Hey there folks! I’m back with a new Card of the Day article. This time, we’ll be focusing on Jirachi from Unleashed (which was also reprinted in Call of Legends).
Jirachi is a Basic Pokemon with 60 HP – about average for most basics, but a bit low considering it doesn’t evolve. Psychic typing isn’t that important, since you won’t be damaging anyone; Psychic weakness doesn’t matter much, since the main Psychic attacker in the format (Gothitelle) will likely one-shot it anyways.
Jirachi obviously isn’t a main attacker – it deals no damage whatsoever. It isn’t even a starter, having no real setup capabilities. So why is Jirachi used?
First of all, Jirachi has a useful Poke-Power which activates when you put it onto your bench. Stardust Song lets you flip three coins, and for each heads, you get to attach a Psychic Energy from your discard pile to Jirachi. This is great for recovering Energy late game, but even if you don’t run a Psychic attacker, it’s not that hard to add a couple Psychic Energy to your deck just to use with him.
Jirachi’s attack is called Time Hollow. This attack lets you choose a number of your opponent’s evolved Pokemon up to the amount of Energy on Jirachi (note that it says energy, not energy cards, so it works nicely with DCE) and de-volve them a stage. While this devolution may not seem like much, since your opponent gets to keep the evolution cards in their hand, it can actually be very effective.
Say your opponent has a Donphan on their bench with 70 damage on it. Jirachi can use Time Hollow to devolve the Donphan back to Phanpy. Since Phanpy has 70 HP, that 70 damage already on it will knock it out.
Another way to use Jirachi is in a deck with Vileplume. If your opponent has a Magnezone active that was evolved with Rare Candy (before Vileplume came out), you can use Time Hollow and put the Magnezone back into your opponent’s hand. Even if there’s not enough damage on it to score a KO, they can’t Rare Candy it again, so they’ll be stuck with the Magnemite.
Jirachi can also serve as a late-game tech in decks that run Psychic attackers like Gothitelle or even Gengar Prime. Towards the end of the game, once you have lost a Goth or two, you’ll have tons of Psychic energy in the discard pile. You can drop Jirachi to recover some of that energy, then play a Shaymin to move it onto a Gothitelle, providing a little extra fuel after most of your resources have been exhausted.
Now back to Jirachi’s devolving capabilities. It’s a very unique tactic, and has a few obvious combos:
Kingdra Prime – A pretty obvious combo: you can utilize Spray Splash to wear down your opponent’s bench-sitters, then use Jirachi to devolve them for the KO.
Yanmega Prime – Yanmega is the best sniper in the game, being able to hit any bench-sitter for 40 damage for no energy. It’s also just a versatile card in general. Yanmega can damage benched Pokemon, then Jirachi can finish them off.
Tyranitar Prime - In this deck, you won’t want to drop Jirachi until the turn you want to use it, since a few Darkness Howls will finish it off easily. But just imagine – if you can get heads on all three flips with Jirachi, then attach a DCE, you have the potential to devolve and KO your opponent’s entire bench! Sure, there’s a slim chance of doing so, but Jirachi is still a solid tech.
Jirachi is splashable in decks with any of these Pokemon, especially MegaZone, since it has two of them (as well as, obviously, KYJ). The only real reasons not to run it are that it’s a bad starter and you’ll need to devote a few slots to Psychic energy, but it has two assets that not many other Pokemon possess – de-volution and energy recovery. Jirachi is, in my opinion, just an all-around decent card that’s not great, but very good and very deadly in the right situation.
One last word – what do you guys thinks about ratings? Speaking on behalf of the other COTD authors, I think we all would like to know whether or not you guys would prefer to have ratings on the card reviews – and if so, whether we should use a fixed system, such as the one on TCGScans.com. Please comment below!
