|
Politoed Unleashed
Hello and welcome to (nearly) another whole week of
Unleashed previews here on Pojo’s CotD.
We kick off with Politoed, an alternative Evolution in
the Poliwrath line.This is one of those Pokémon that
doesn’t make many appearances in the TCG. The only
modified legal one we have is the one from LA which
failed to make any impact whatsoever on the tournament
scene. Will this new version fare any better?
Well, at first glance, it doesn’t look promising. 120 HP
is a bit below par for a Stage 2 these days (which says
quite a lot about the power creep in the game). Double
Luxray Lightning Weakness is a huge drawback
right now, and the Retreat cost of two won’t win this
card any fans either.
Politoed does have a Pokémon Power though, which is
always nice. In this case, Leap Frog (Pokémon obviously
find it hard to resist the obvious!). Leap Frog has the
effect of giving you a free Switch for any Water Pokémon
once per turn. This could be handy, as it saves any
Retreat costs and gives you an extra Retreat on your
turn. Whether it is actually worth playing a Stage 2
Pokémon in order to get this effect is another matter.
There is probably some combo lurking around with Palkia
LV X (not the SP one), but even that seems clunky and
hard to pull off. Why not just run Switch and save on
resources, deck space, and Bench room? Or you could use
Flygon, which has one huge advantage over Politoed . . .
It has attacks which are actually good.
Politoed, by way of extreme contrast, has Big Chorus, an
attack which costs [W][C][C]. For this you get to flip a
coin for every Water Pokémon you have in play and do 30
damage for each heads. Yep, that’s right, with a full
Bench of Water Pokémon and an obscene amount of luck,
you can do 180 damage! Unfortunately, with a well built
deck, you are not going to have six Water Pokémon in
play (where are you going to put your Claydol, Uxie,
Azelf, or other non-Water tech?), and with average luck,
you will not be hitting the big damage that an
investment of three Energy really requires.
So, a terribly unreliable attack that makes huge demands
on your deck construction, and a Power that doesn’t
justify running a Stage 2 . . . all this means that at
tournaments I will expect to see this card about as
often as its LA cousin . . . in other words, not at all.
Rating
Modified: 1.5 (Terrible attack, mediocre Power)
Limited: 1.5 (You would have to pull a lot of Water
Pokémon, and an entire Stage 2 line . . . not going to
happen)
|
