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Zebstrika
(Boundaries Crossed)
I’ve been doing CotD here
for a few years now, and one thing I’ve learned is that
bad cards come in three flavours. The first and most
common is the boring filler card which is just all round
lacklustre and gives you no reason to play it. The
second, and second most common, is the card that tries
to do something but just doesn’t execute it well enough
to be worth using (the Tangrowth
from this week is an example). The third, and by far the
rarest type is the card that is so spectacularly,
self-sabotaging-ly bad that
you can’t help asking yourself ‘just what were they
thinking?’. Today’s review is
all about one of these ‘special’ Pokémon.
Zebstrika
is a Stage 1 with an ok-ish
100 HP and retreat cost of one. It’s Weak to Fighting,
which is bad with all the Landorus-EX
and Terrakion around but . .
. eh? What did you expect from a Lightning Pokémon? So
far, this card just seems to be mediocre . . . until we
look at the attacks.
The first, Flame Charge, costs a Colourless Energy and
lets you search your deck for a Fire Energy and attach
it to Zebstrika. That’s
right. A FIRE Energy. On a
LIGHTNING Pokémon that has no Fire requirement in its
attack costs. Why? Just why?
So you can power up the horrible, self-damaging Thunder
attack a turn earlier than you would if you couldn’t get
a DCE? Ugh. Thanks, Pokémon card designers: now I have
to run off-Type Energy in my Lightning deck so I can use
an attack which hastens the demise of my terrible
Pokémon (at least it puts it out of its misery). This is
so bad, it’s almost funny.
Except that there is a real kick in the teeth that makes
this card a whole lot less amusing. See, it’s a
Holo Rare in the set. That’s
right, the card slot in your
Boundaries Crossed pack that should go to something nice
is taken up by this utter trash. I like jokes as much as
the next person, but not really when they are
(literally) at my expense. I don’t often give a card the
minimum score, but just because of that, today I will.
Rating
Modified: 1 (Poor, TPCI, poor)
Limited: 1.5 (Don’t even want to use it here)
Thank goodness we are reviewing the top 10 next week!
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