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Camerupt Lv 49
A 120 HP Stage 1 that can do 100 damage a turn? I
imagine that a lot of players gave this card a second
look when it was released.
Of course, you would expect such a card to have some
hefty downsides as well, and Camerupt certainly has
those. A Retreat cost of four means that you will need
some Warp Points and/or Switches in your deck, and the
predictable weakness to a popular type (Water) doesn’t
help matters. Thanks to Camerupt’s high HP, though,
Kingdra and Palkia G will struggle to OHKO without a
Lucario GL or a Lake Boundary on the field. Gyarados SF
is a different matter entirely . . .
Camerupt’s first attack, Moving Fire, does a meh 30
damage for [C][C] with the option of moving a Fire
Energy to one of your Benched Pokémon. Maybe semi-useful
if Camerupt is about to be KO’d, but not something you
will be using very often. The main attraction here,
however, is Volcanic Crash, an attack which does a
massive 100 damage for [R][R][C][C].
At this point we hit another drawback. 100 for four
Energy is pretty good, but getting four Energy on a
Pokémon in the first place is not an easy task in this
fast-paced format of OHKOs. Some kind of Energy
acceleration is definitely needed. The most practical
(but risky) option is probably the Rayquaza LA/Stark
Mountain combo and maybe some Upper Energy. But that’s
not the only problem. Unless your opponent has a Water
Pokémon on the Field (which would be bad news for
Camerupt anyway), every time you use the attack you have
to flip three coins and discard a card from your deck
for each tails.
Well, at least it makes a change from Fire Pokémon that
have to discard Energy to do their big attacks, and
maybe the 100 damage will be worth the risk of losing
cards from your deck sometimes. However, the
unpredictability factor is a serious downside, and you
need to consider it carefully before running this card.
In the end, though, a slow Fire Pokémon in an Format
which contains some popular and powerful water decks is
unlikely to be a sound choice anyway.
Rating
Modified: 2.5 (big damage, high HP, but serious
downsides and a lack of speed keep Camerupt from being
truly competitive. It’s good enough for a fun League
deck though)
Limited: 2 (discarding cards from my 40 card deck? Uh
oh!)
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