Nidoqueen
(Triumphant)
Nidoqueen
is all about girl power. Ever noticed
how we sometimes get good
Nidoqueen
cards (the FRLG one won Worlds and the
RR version has been a nice tech for some
decks), while her boyfriend (?),
Nidoking is
always somewhat clunky and useless?
That’s pretty much how I feel about the
King and Queen we get in Triumphant.
While Nidoking
is a horribly slow Pokémon, his female
equivalent has a quite a bit more going
for her.
Stats-wise, she is basically what you
would expect: a Psychic Type Stage 2
with the standard-but-good 130 HP,
Weakness to her own type, and a slightly
hefty Retreat cost of two. A couple of
Warp Point or Switch would make sense in
a Nidoqueen
deck, to make for easy retreating and
healing in combination with the Queen
from Rising Rivals.
The good news is that
Nidoqueen
has a very handy, very cheap attack.
For one Energy
of any Colour, Return does a decent 30
damage AND lets you draw until you have
six cards in hand. The damage itself is
good value, but won’t get you many
Prizes, while the effect has some nice
synergy with Judge. Use the Supporter to
disrupt your opponent’s hand,
then attack
with Return to re-stock your own. This
is a neat combo to be using early in the
game, fuelling your set up, while
hopefully making life difficult for your
opponent.
The not-so-good news is that
Nidoqueen
doesn’t have much to press home the
advantage with. Her Prize Count attack
isn’t terribly expensive at [P][C][C],
and at least you can use a Double
Colourless, but the trouble is that it
only does 50 damage, or 80 if you are
behind in Prizes. The sad thing is that
this doesn’t work very well with the
Return/Judge combo: if you can disrupt
your opponent, then you should be able
to prevent them going ahead in the first
place, leaving you stuck with just a
very poor 50 for three Energy attack.
Nevertheless, it’s a nice early-game
Stage 2 and is certainly worth a slot in
a Nidoqueen
deck which focuses mainly on the RR
version.
Rating
Modified: 2.5 (just like in chess, the
Queen is more useful than the King)
Limited: 4 (draw is gold here . . . if
you can get a Stage 2 line out)
Combos with . . .
Judge UL
