Today we take another look at
Magnezone “Prime”.
Just… give me a moment as I fight
the urge to fuse Transformers and
Pokémon.
So wrong and yet so very right…
Ahem.
Magnezone is Lightning-Type Pokémon,
which is solid for Type matching and
might let it work in some pre-existing,
good decks.
It is a Stage 2 Pokémon like all
but one version of it, requiring it
possess good stats and/or effects to
offset the amount of deck space it
requires to run: even a TecH copy
requires three slots (or two if you
already max out your
Rare Candy).
140 HP is quite good, though the
Fighting x2 Weakness means a card like
Donphan Prime just needs another +20
points of damage for the OHKO (and of
course, that is what
Plus Power are for).
At least you enjoy Metal
Resistance -20: it won’t come in handy
all that often, but it’s always better
than nothing.
Make sure you pack some cards to
get around the chunky Retreat Cost of
(CCC), as you don’t want to discard that
much Energy if you can avoid it.
Magnezone
Prime has a single Poké-Power and
attack.
The Poké-Power, Magnetic Draw,
allows you to draw until you have six
cards in hand.
Extra draw power is always nice
but don’t forget the chicken and egg
dilemma: your deck must set up
Magnezone Prime before it can use
Magnetic draw to set anything else up.
This means it will actually be
important for maintaining your deck as
the game progresses, rather than
enabling a reliable, early game open all
by itself.
The attack is Lost Burn, and it
is Energy intensive but potent.
It only requires (LC) to use, but
the attack requires removing Energy
attached to your Pokémon and sending
that Energy to the Lost Zone to do any
damage; 50 points per Energy card
put in the Lost Zone via this attack.
We’ve been a bit spoiled lately:
it clearly states “Energy card” so a
Double Colorless Energy is only good
for 50 points of damage.
At least you can pull Energy from
your Benched Pokémon.
The damage yield seems adequate
for the hassle, so I am calling this a
good attack.
With at least a little Energy
acceleration, you should be able to
score several OHKOs in a row with this
card.
Remember that you’ll need to take
into account the removed Energy is
effectively gone as there are currently
no means of recycling Energy sent to the
Lost Zone.
As it ties directly to the
optimum use for this card, let us look
at the other
Magnemite,
Magneton and
Magnezone cards?
It looks like we have four
Magnemite, four
Magneton and four other
Magnezone plus a Level X form to
work with.
For the
Magnemite I’d go with the
Stormfront 66/100 version, since it
has an effect that lowers its Retreat
Cost by one for each
Magnemite on your Bench.
The attack is merely okay but the
only version with a useful attack also
has 10 less HP than the others, and
really you should be trying to avoid
attacking with this card anyway.
The
Magneton require a little more
forethought.
Sure, you can try to bypass them
completely with
Rare Candy but Devolution and/or
Trainer lock are still options for
multiple decks, so I’d want to run at
least one or two anyway.
The
Magneton are actually an
interesting, diverse lot with their
individual stats and attack effects all
proving potentially useful.
You’ll have to deck test,
methinks, and find out what suits your
anticipated metagame and playing style.
Something I missed when we
reviewed it about two weeks ago, Call
of Legends
Pachirisu can be dropped, power
itself up, and then
Magnezone Prime can just use its
Energy for the removal part of Lost
Burn.
We are covering most of the other
Magnezone this week.
In short,
Magnezone Lv.46 and tomorrow’s card
are the dance partners for
Magnezone Prime.
When you add in tomorrow’s CotD,
you’ll get an aggressive opening attack
that will load your discard with Energy
to recycle and remove for Lost Burn,
with the benefit of a Magnetic Draw on
top of it all.
Given that so much is coming
from one line, and that line include
re-usable draw power, you can even get
creative with assisting Pokémon.
When we first reviewed this card,
I mentioned
Togekiss to flush away damage, but
you can probably just use
Seeker and
Broken Time Space now.
You can load the deck up with
great Trainers, including
Junk Arm to speed up discards.
Ratings
Modified:
4/5 – Built in draw power, even on a
Stage 2, is good and so is the attack.
Fighting Weakness and requiring a
set-up to make repeated, strong attacks
turn after turn are the only real
drawbacks, and a good build should
mitigate those.
Limited:
4.5/5 – Draw Power.
This means even a
1-1-1
line, without Energy for it to attack,
is tempting.
Even with a poor Weakness, it
makes a great set-up card early game and
a brute mid-to-late game when you can
afford to remove Energy in play for its
attack turn after turn.
The lower average HP score means
removing two Energy cards will often be
a OHKO.
I am still selling my former
collectables on eBay. You can take a
look at what’s up for bids
here. Just a reminder, Pojo is in no
way responsible for any transactions and
was merely kind enough to let me mention
the auctions here. ;)
