Name:
Team Magma’s Houndoom
Set/Card#:
Team Magma Vs Team Aqua, #10/95
Type:
Dark/Fire
Stage:
1 (Evolves from Team Magma’s Houndour)
HP:
70
Weakness:
Water
Resistance:
None
Retreat:
(C)
Attack#1:
(RC) Roasting Heat [30+]
If the
Defending Pokémon is Burned, this
attack does 30 damage plus 20 more damage.
Attack#2:
(RCC) Magma Spurt [30x]
Discard
the top 5 cards from your deck. This attack does 30
damage times the number of (R) and (F) basic Energy cards
discarded in this way.
Name:
Team Magma’s Houndour
Set/Card#:
Team Magma Vs Team Aqua, #35/95
Type:
Fire
Stage:
Basic
HP:
50
Weakness:
Water
Resistance:
None
Retreat:
(C)
Attack#1:
(R) Singe
Flip a
coin. If heads the Defending Pokémon is now
Burned.
Attack#2:
(DC) Dark Shock [20]
Flip a
coin. If heads, the Defending Pokémon is now
Paralyzed.
Name:
Team Magma’s Houndour
Set/Card#:
Team Magma Vs Team Aqua, #62/95
Type:
Fire
Stage:
Basic
HP:
50
Weakness:
Water
Resistance:
None
Retreat:
(C)
Attack#1:
(R) Combustion [10]
Attack#2:
(RC) Super Singe [10]
The
Defending Pokémon is now Burned.
Name:
Team Magma’s Houndour
Set/Card#:
Team Magma Vs Team Aqua, #63/95
Type:
Fire
Stage:
Basic
HP:
50
Weakness:
Water
Resistance:
None
Retreat:
(C)
Attack#1:
(C) Kick Away [10]
Your
opponent switches the Defending Pokémon with 1 of his or her
Benched Pokémon, if any.
Attack#2:
(RC) Steady Fire Breathing [20]
Attributes:
The only Team Magma’s Houndoom, this
cards main advantage over any other Houndoom is that
it is Dual-Typed-that is, this card is both a Dark- and a
Fire-type at the same time. There is only one
Fire-Resistant Pokémon Evolutionary Chain-the one that
belongs to Holographic Salamence from Dragons. Only
artificial sources of Resistance (like Unown N) exist for
Dark-Types. There are many, many good Pokémon that are Weak
to Fire-in fact, that is the only Weakness Metal Pokémon
have in the TCG. Dark-Weakness
is rare, but it exists. All in all, I think this may be the
second best type combination available (second only to
Dark/Metal, which doesn’t exist).
Team
Magma’s Houndoom is a Stage 1 Pokémon. So it has to come
from somewhere, and your choices are
Maxie or Houndour.
Looking at the Houndour, Maxi
may be the best choice, except that does eat up your
Supporter slot. All three Houndour
have the same Type, HP, Weakness, Resistance, and Retreat,
but all have badly priced attacks. I guess #35 is the best
of the bunch.
Moving on,
we come to Team Magma’s Houndoom’s
HP, which is 70. This is the
minimum acceptable HP for an Evolution-just enough to
survive a shot from most [main attacker] Pokémon’s attacks.
It is Weak to Water: Fighting would have been better: this
card won’t see play in Unlimited outside of fun decks, so
the fact that Tyrogue would then own it wouldn’t matter. It
would make the most sense, however, since Dark are Weak to
Fighting and Fire Pokémon are Weak to Rock. There is no
Resistance, which means this Pokémon had better have
something good to compensate somewhere. Retreat is nice:
just one, which is easy enough to pay in most circumstances.
Abilities:
Roasting Heat does 30 damage for
(RC), which is a little more than you pay for. It also will
do 20 more damage, for a total of 50, if the Defending
Pokémon was Burned. Since
Houndoom cannot inflict Burn on its own (though it’s pitiful
lower Stages can with over-priced attacks), this is a decent
bonus-maybe worth another (C) onto the attack cost. So a
solid discount for a Stage 1. Magma Spurt is horridly
over-priced though. (RCC) should yield
about 35 damage. The attack does no solid damage
though. Instead it makes you discard five cards from your
own deck. If they are either Fighting or Fire basic Energy
(maybe a third of your deck normally), then you do 30 damage
for each of them. This is horrid. It should
either be much cheaper, much more
flexible, affect your opponent’s deck as well, or do
something like 30 base damage, then another 30 for each
Fighting and/or Fire Energy. Perhaps
giving an option of how much to discard as well.
Uses/Combinations:
The best I can think of is running it with Team Magma’s
Zangoose and/or Sandstorm Dunsparce. Go very heavy on
Energy. Use ‘Sparce or Zangoose
to get all your basics out, then
follow up with Fast balls and the like to thin get all the
evos out. With any luck, you can probably get it
down to maybe 1 non-energy for
every 5 cards. Of course, there are also many of the Team
Magma Specific cards, and some Energy replenishment cards
like Town Volunteers. If that worked, you’d have a killer
deck… for Modified, it the Firestarter variants weren’t so
popular.
Ratings
Unlimited:
1.75/5-I guess you could use Chaos Gym to protect it, then
run the above deck. You’d lose a lot, but maybe it would be
fun?
Modified/2-on-2/ TMP:
2.5/5-Purely on combo potential, though I took of .5 as sort
of the “Firestarter Curve”, since that deck is so potent.
Limited:
3/5-Huge risk. You actually stand a decent chance a
drafting something approaching the deck I mentioned.
Unfortunately, with the smaller deck sizes, you will also
stand a significant risk of decking out.
Summary
Another
card saddled with too contradictory abilities (random
discard for a card designed to make use of special
Energies?).
