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Swalot Lv 40
Hello and welcome to another week of Pojo’s Pokémon Card
of the Day.
We kick off the week with Swalot, a card that has great
. . . artwork. Normally Swalot is one of the
sillier-looking Pokémon, but this time the artist has
managed to make a rather cool looking card with it. But
is it the kind of card you would want in your deck?
That’s the really important question.
Well, it has a nice (for a Stage 1) 100 HP. It also has
Psychic Weakness, which isn’t too good, but isn’t quite
as bad as its Retreat cost of three. Ouch. Still,
Psychic Pokémon can always take advantage of Moonlight
Stadium, as well as Warp Point and Switch.
Damage Roller is a cheap attack for [P], which lets you
put damage counters on the Defending Pokémon until its
HP is the same as Swalot’s. Although placing counters
can sometimes be a useful alternative to a damage
attack, it is shut off completely by Unown G. What’s
more, it is only going to be useful after Swalot has
taken substantial damage (it is this, rather than the
Energy Cost that slows it down). The biggest drawback
with this attack, though, is that it is impossible to
get a KO with it, leaving the Defending Pokémon free to
retreat or be PokeTurned, or Scooped Up next turn while
something else knocks out your damaged Swalot.
The second attack, Entangle Tackle is quite a bit more
expensive at [P][P][C] (sigh . . . no Upper Energy). It
only gets you 50 damage too, which is very weak.
Luckily, you have the option to increase the damage to
80, provided you do 30 damage to one of your Benched
Pokémon. Obviously, you could avoid taking the damage by
protecting your Pokémon with Manectric PL or Bench
Shield, or Playing a Pokémon that is immune to Bench
damage like Quagsire GL. Really though, I suspect that
the idea behind the card is to swarm Swalots and pile
damage on them so that they can get the most out of
Damage Roller.
Trouble is, it’s not a very viable strategy. Swalot
needs to be on the verge of a KO just to put the
Defending Pokémon in a similar position, making it a
very fragile, hard to manage, and not very effective
combo. Try it if you want something quirky for League,
but leave it in the binder when you go to a tournament.
Rating
Modified: 1.25 (clumsy and not worth the effort)
Limited: 1.5 (not really any better here, but 100 HP
could keep it around for a few turns)
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