During the old days of modified, revelation Crobat was quite a powerful card. Trigger Poison and Cross Attack were excellent forms of disruption. And now a few years later, we've got that card remade...somewhat.
Crobat ex (G) 130HP
Stage 2 - Evolves from Golbat
Poke-Power: Distortion
Once during your turn (before your attack), if Crobat ex is your Active Pokemon, you may put 1 damage counter on 1 of your opponent's Pokemon. This power can't be used if Crobat ex is affected by a Special Condition.
[CC] Cross Attack 20x
Flip 4 coins. This attack does 20 damage times the number of heads. If you get 2 or more heads, the Defending Pokemon is now Confused.
[GGC] Pester 60+
If the Defending Pokemon is affected by a Special Condition, this attack does 60 damage plus 40 more damage.
Weakness: [L]
Resistance: [F]
While Crobat ex doesn't have a ton of HP for a Pokemon ex, it does have free retreat and it can make use of Low Pressure System. Weakness to Lightning is one of the better weaknesses to have, as there aren't as many common Lightning Pokemon as other types. Fighting resistance gives Crobat ex an even larger advantage over any Magma decks that it encounters.
Distortion is a great Power in general. The ability to do damage without energy is always good, and Crobat allows you to do the damage to any of your opponent's Pokemon. If one of your opponent's Pokemon has 80HP, hitting it with Distortion leaves you room to combo Crobat ex's Pester with a Strength Charm and KO the Pokemon. The ability to place damage counters before you even attack also allows Crobat ex to combo with any Pokemon that has a Feint Attack or a Rend Attack.
Cross Attack's original cost was 2 grass and a colorless energy. Its cost has been dramatically reduced to a mere 2 colorless, allowing for the possibility of up to 80 damage and confusion on the second turn. It's a relatively strong attack for the low cost, even with flips. On average, you can expect 40 damage and confusion from Cross Attack. Again, you get that to a more common amount of HP with Strength Charm or hitting the Pokemon with Distortion.
There's a handful of Pokemon that have combos with themselves like Crobat ex, and there always have been. The idea behind Pester is that you'll confuse the defending Pokemon and then do 100 damage on the next turn. Of course if your opponent sees that coming they'll retreat, so here you can take advantage of the other modified legal, non-dark Crobat. Using Hidden Legend Crobat's Triple Poison attack will force your opponent to retreat or play something like Switch or Warp Point. If they don't, they'll be recieving heavy poison damage and face taking 100 damage. With a combination of both Crobats, your opponent will be faced to use up a lot of their defensive board control and healing just holding back Crobat ex from doing that 100 damage.
With Crobat ex's variety of attack, there are some cards that combo extremely well with it. First up is Strength Charm, which helps Crobat ex increase the amount of 'stray' damage it does. Stray damage referring to the damage that isn't calculated in its attack. Using Distortion on the Defending Pokemon and then having Strength Charm, you've already increased your damage doing for the turn. If you use Pester, you're doing 80 damage instead of the normal 60.
Three possible Crobat ex combos are Sandstorm Arcanine, Sandstorm Cacturne and Dark Sandslash. Those three Pokemon all have PokeBodies that automatically inflict the Attacking Pokemon with a status condition if it's attacked. Perhaps the best choice of those cards is Sandslash. After getting hit the Defending Pokemon would be poisoned, so you can retreat for free to Crobat and Pester for 100. The problem is Dark Sandslash's low HP, although that can be remedied with Rocket's Hideout...and Dark Sandslash can use multiple types of Special Energy if it's needed to attack.
Finally of course, you'll want to include at least 2 Crystal Shard in a Crobat ex deck in case you come across a Dragonite/Electrode deck or even a Salamence deck. Remember to keep your mind open for other combos as more sets come out and as the metagame changes. That's all for this article, thanks for reading!
-Bolt
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