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Pojo's Pokemon Card of the Day

 

Heatran Lv. 58

Arceus

Date Reviewed: 09.21.09

Ratings & Reviews Summary

Modified: 1.25
Limited: 2.25

Ratings are based on a 1 to 5 scale.
1 being the worst. 
3 ... average.  
5 is the highest rating.

Back to the main COTD Page

Baby Mario
Top 4 UK Nats
Heatran (Platinum – Arceus)

Hello, and welcome to a new week of Pojo CotD!

This week, we begin with a couple of cards from the new Arceus set which (I think) is going to be released in November.

The first thing to say about Heatran is that the art is absolutely amazing. Just look at that flame effect! If the actual card can be half as good as the illustration this is going to see a lot of play.

Hreatran boasts an impressive 100 HP. Excellent for a non-SP Basic, but pretty much what we have come to expect from a Legendary in the TCG. The Retreat Cost of three is a bit of a nightmare, but hey, Heatran LA (the Fire one) has FOUR Retreat! Either way, you are going to need some Switches or Warp Points if this is in you deck. An X2 Water Weakness isn’t a surprise, but it will be a problem if Kingdra, Gyarados, or Palkia G see play in your area.

Looking at the attacks, Fire Fang, which does 20 damage plus Burn for [R][C] is reasonably costed and it is always nice to have a 1-2 Energy attack. Heatran’s big attack, though, is Magma Mantle which does a base 60 damage for [R][R][C][C] but then you discard the top 3 cards from your deck and do 20 damage for each Metal or Fire Energy discarded. While there are ways to manipulate the top cards of your deck (Delcatty PL’s Power Circulation being the best), this is never going to be worth it. At a cost of four Energy, Magma Mantle is just much too slow. Couple this with the fact that Fire and Metal decks don’t usually enjoy discarding more Energy than they have to and usually have much more efficient ways of doing large damage, and the result is that Heatran is not a card that you will want as an attacker.

Like all the other Heatrans, the only time this will see play is as a necessary step towards Heatran LV X which is sometimes used as a bench-sitting tech in Fire decks which like to inflict Burn, or have to discard Energy in order to attack (such as some Infernape, Blaziken, or Magmortar lists). For this purpose, the Heatran from POP 8 remains the best choice, simply because it has a +30 Water Weakness (not X2), which gives it a better chance of surviving if you are unfortunate enough to ever have it active. Decks that use Heatran tend to use plenty of Warp/Switch/Level Max to try and avoid this, though.

Rating

Modified: 1.25 (if only it was as good as it looks)
Limited: 2.25 (the attacks are much better in a slow environment with plenty of Energy)


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