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Pojo's Pokemon Card of the Day

		Vibrava Lv. 36 Rising Rivals Date Reviewed: April 7, 2011 Ratings & Reviews Summary Modified: 3.33 Limited: 3.25 Ratings are based on a 1 to 5 scale. 1 being the worst.  3 ... average.   5 is the highest rating. Back to the main COTD Page
Combos With:

Baby Mario 2010 UK National Seniors Champion	Vibrava (Rising Rivals) Most of the time, the best you can hope from an evolving Stage 1 is that it won’t be a liability. Sometimes you get lucky and find one with some minor synergy with the Stage 2. Vibrava is almost unique in that it can be a great mid/late-game attacker in its own right. Although it has virtually disappeared from the tournament scene, Flygon was once a top tier deck. One of the many weapons it had up its sleeve was this card. It might have mediocre HP, a worthless second attack, and meh stats all round, but what it does have is Energy Typhoon. For the low, low cost of a single Colourless Energy, Energy Typhoon will do 20 damage for each Energy card in your opponent’s discard pile. Early game, this is weak. Later on, when your opponent has five or more Energy in there (which they will unless they are playing Gyarados), it’s amazing. Who doesn’t want a Stage 1 that can do 100+ damage for one Energy? With Broken Time-Space or Rare Candy, this thing could set up in a turn and get a surprise one-shot KO when your opponent was certain that you didn’t have the resources to get out the Stage 2. Sure, it didn’t feature in every game, but the fact that it was there if you needed it was great. I’ve even seen it used as a 1-1 tech line in decks that played no Flygon at all. Against Colourless-weak Pokémon, against decks which run a lot of Energy . . . this card was shock and awe. Rating Modified: 3.5 (The best evolving Stage 1 I have ever seen)
Mad Mattezhion  Professor Bathurst League Australia	Vibrava (Rising Rivals)   Here we have the Stage 1 that made this week's list of useful evolving Poke'mon. vibrava is one of those incredibly rare evolving Stage 1 Poke'mon that are worth using, as opposed to skipping the stage with Rare Candy.   Vibrava is a Colourless type Stage 1 with 70 HP, +20 Colourless weakness, Lightning resistance, a retreat cost of 1 and 2 attacks. The HP is the main problem with Vibrava's stats, as 70 HP just isn't enough to survive a serious hit and at the point of the game where you will be evolving Vibrava you need that ability to take a punch. The resistance is good against Luxray GL but the weakness is a liability with a lot of Colourless techs seeing play. The retreat is manageable but it is better to evolve first.   Quick Attack is the absolutely tErrible second attack. For [c][c] you deal 20 damge with an extra 20 for flipping Heads, which is terrible value even with a rigged coin. Quite simply whenever you see the words "Quick Attack" next to more than one energy symbol, you know that the design team are just filling space. It's okay as a cheap first attack if it has solid backup, but otherwise it ruins the card.   The main reason to keep Vibrava in play is its first attack. Energy Typhoon is a much better offering which costs [c] and shuffles all energy in your opponent's discard pile into their deck (that includes Special Energy, which cannot be recycled any other way in the current game [with the exception of Special Metal Energy]). In retrun fro your extreme generosity in returning the energy, you deal 20 damage per energy card to the Defending Poke'mon. With Vibrava's Colourless typing, it becomes a very effective counter to Garchomp C. Sadly, Double Colourless Energy only counts as one card but the damage still stack up quite quickly with Garchomp causing discards left, right and centre. Energy-heavy decks like Rain Dance, CharPhlosion and Magnezone can also be made to suffer with the possibility of massive damage, provided you time it right.   However, as I mentioned above Vibrava has terrible HP so attacking directly with Energy Typhoon should only be a last resort/revenge KO. You are far better off using a Memory Berry and Flygon Lv X, especially since you can cause a lot of discards with that lovely Poke-body. This method isn't worth anything against Gengar and Dusknoir though, as the damage is absorbed by the resistance and those decks typically run low energy counts (though the discard from still hurts).   Vibrava RR is the only legal Vibrava we have right now but it is still great, and both the evolution and the Lv X are worth playing in a variety of decks.   Modified: 4 (Mostly you will want to skip straight to Flygon due to the HP, but the attack can be a lifesaver in the right circumstances) Limited: 3 (Flygon RR is even more awesome in Limited, but even without the evolution Vibrava can make Energy Typhoon work due to the energy discards from retreating and Volkner's Philosophy)  Combos with: Flygon RR (I know, it's stating the blindingly obvious but we have to do it)
conical	4/7/11: Vibrava(Rising Rivals)   What is with the Flygon line having such good basics and Stage 1s? Trapinch SW isn't being reviewed, since it's out of the format, but it was a critical part of Flygon's strategy at one point.   So instead, we have Vibrava RR, a pretty good card in its own right. Energy Typhoon is the primary weapon here, dealing tons of damage once to any opponent with lots of energy in the discard pile. Originally, this was a great Kingdra counter, as Kingdra generally had lots of energy after using Dragon Pump multiple times. Nowadays, Kingdra isn't played much, meaning that Vibrava isn't as good. It could still potentially deal some heavy damage against a Charizard deck, or maybe a LostGar deck based on energy acceleration via Mismagius UL/Jirachi UL, but otherwise, its uses are very limited. Still, it's a decent evolving Stage 1, and the one you should use for any Flygon deck(assuming these still exist).   Modified: 2.5/5 Limited: 3.5/5