Eelektross
41/101 (Noble Victories)
If you read yesterday’s review (or
played in any recent tournaments), you
will know that the Stage 1 of this card,
Eelektrik, has a fantastic Ability.
Evolving him means losing that, so this
Stage 2 Pokémon had better be something
utterly brilliant, or it’s just going to
go unused . . .
Well, it gets off to a decent start with
140 HP, even though that’s pretty much
become the standard for Stage 2s these
days. The important thing is that it
hits the magic 130+ that will save it
from the Unova
Dragons. Even with Fighting Weakness,
this also puts him out of the range of
an unboosted
Earthquake from
Donphan Prime, but then
Donphan
isn’t even the biggest Fighting Type
threat anymore and now it’s
Terrakion NV
and Landorus
NV that will be dishing out the OHKOs.
Needless to say, the Retreat cost of
three is abysmal, but Switch is a card
you should probably be running anyway.
Eelektross’s
first attack, Acid, is pretty good. For
the cost of a Double Colourless Energy,
it does 30 damage
and prevents the Defending Pokémon from
Retreating next turn. Retreat Lock can
be a nice little strategy in combination
with Pokémon Catcher: drag out a
non-attacker, use Acid, and buy yourself
a turn or two if your opponent doesn’t
have a Switch.
Nothing game-breaking, but a good start.
Unfortunately, the Double Colourless
cost does not carry over into Wild
Charge (I hate it when that happens)
which needs [L][L][C] to do a vanilla 90
damage with a 10 damage recoil to
Eelektross.
Nothing much to say about that: it’s not
completely horrible, yet it’s certainly
not good enough to be worth getting a
Stage 2 out (and losing Eelektrik) for.
And that’s really the main problem with
this card. Playing it involves
sacrificing your Energy accelerator for
a mediocre attacking Pokémon. Yes, it
could be
situationally useful (when you
need 90 damage to close out a game and
all you have left are Eelektrik on the
Field), and that could tempt you to tech
one into a deck that already uses the
Stage 1. Honestly though, you are much
better off using the space for another
Zekrom,
Tornadus, or
even a Thundurus
(which has great synergy with Eelektrik-based
decks).
Eelektross
is a bit of a disappointment all
round. Not
least because it doesn’t reflect its
major asset in the video games: being a
pure Electric Type with Levitate as its
Ability means that
Eelektross effectively has no
Weakness in the game. If they could
somehow translate that on to a future
card (maybe as an Ability), then future
Eelektross
might be more playable. This one though?
Not so much.
Rating
Modified: 2.25 (nice first attack, but
otherwise outshone by its Stage 1 . . .
can’t remember when I last got to say
that in a review)
Limited: 3 (good if you can get it out .
. . like most Stage 2s)
