#dark explorers

Here we go again. This was the second Darkrai card to get an incredible amount of hype before it was released. Darkrai LV.X, the first one, didn’t turn out to be very impressive. Darkrai EX, on the other hand, was incredible. Here you had a Pokemon that had a ton of support from the likes of Dark Patch, Dark Claw, and Sableye as well as an Ability to get rid of the team’s Retreat Costs. All of this, along with enough power to take out almost any Pokemon in two hits while getting a bit of chip on the Bench as well, made Darkrai EX a Pokemon to be feared.

180 HP was a very good number. It was ahead of all but the most incredible attacks of the time. Think Genesect EX with a G-Booster levels of power. The one exception was due to that Fighting Weakness. It was a main reason that Terrakion was such a great Pokemon to counter some top decks in the game, at least in the HGSS-On and early in the BLW-On formats. Landorus EX and the later Dugtrio (as well as things like Darkrai and Primal Groudon EX if considering the reprints of Darkrai EX making it useful in BCR-On) could also take advantage of a rather nasty Weakness. The Psychic Resistance on the other hand, was nice. Reducing damage by 20 wasn’t a lot, but requiring Mewtwo EX to use an extra Energy to hit the damage numbers it wanted was never a bad thing. Darkrai EX did need 2 Energy to retreat. This was usually negated by Dark Cloak but was something to keep in mind if up against Garbodor.

That Ability, Dark Cloak, was amazing. Each of your Pokemon with any Darkness Energy attached to it had no Retreat Cost. This made pivoting much easier, though using Tool Scrapper alongside it was a good idea if your deck had the room. Getting rid of a Tool on an opposing Garbodor could be a big deal for Darkrai decks. It should also be noted that things like Prism Energy counted toward this requirement, letting Darkrai EX pair with things that weren’t necessarily of the same type.

Darkrai EX’s attack was quite nice as well. Night Spear needed 3 Energy, 2 of which had to be Darkness, but there was always Dark Patch to speed things up. What you got was a solid 90 damage along with 30 to 1 of the opponent’s Benched Pokemon. Being able to take out an opposing Pokemon EX, as long as it wasn’t one of the later Mega Pokemon EX, was really nice. Eviolite could technically get in the way of this, though, and was common in the HGSS-On format. It was a really nice attack that could pressure the opponent quite nicely throughout the game.