Cofagrigus
47/101 (Noble Victories)
I dunno, you
wait two sets for the first
Cofagrigus
Pokémon card, and then two come along at
once . . . This one is the ‘rare’
version (yesterday’s card was an
uncommon), and that usually means it
will be better. Will that be enough to
make it playable? Let’s take a look.
When it comes to Basic stats, the two
versions are pretty similar: both are
Stage 1 cards with a low-ish
90 HP. The Dark Weakness is pretty good
at the moment (you sometimes see
Absol Prime
techs, but that’s about it), but will
likely end up being irrelevant: you
don’t really need to hit for Weakness to
KO 90 HP Pokémon these days. The Retreat
cost of two is a slight improvement on
the other
Cofagrigus, but still a bit of a
pain.
Cofagrigus’
Ability, Durable Body, will bring back
memories for anyone who remembers the
olden days of Pokémon, as it has
basically the same effect as Focus Band.
If Cofagrigus
would be knocked out by damage, then you
flip a coin and, if heads, it survives
with 10 HP remaining. Note that this
effect does not apply if it is KO’d by
Status Condition damage (Poison and
Burn) or damage counter placement (like
Gengar
Prime’s Cursed Drop or
Chandelure’s
Cursed Shadow). Is it any good? Well, it
gives Cofragrigus
a 50-50 chance of surviving every turn,
but that would only be useful if it did
something worthwhile while it was
active.
Unfortunately,
Cofagrigus’ only attack, Ambush,
is very mediocre (to put it nicely). For
one Psychic and one Energy of any Colour,
you get 40 damage and
a coin flip
for another 20. With this level of
damage output, you would need
Cofagrigus
to survive at least three turns with
Durable Body flips before it could KO a
130 HP Pokémon (such as a Dragon or a
lot of Stage 2 Pokémon), and that is
just too much to ask from your luck.
The old Focus Band card was effective
for two main reasons. Firstly it was
played with the old Baby Pokémon that
already required a coin flip to be
attacked, which meant an opponent then
needed double heads to get a KO.
Secondly, it was used on Pokémon that
had relatively decent attacks for their
time (like Tyrogue
from Neo Destiny).
Cofragrigus doesn’t have any of
these good things going for it:
basically you end up hoping to flip
heads so you can use a poor low damage
attack every turn. That’s not really
much of a strategy, is it?
Rating
Modified: 1.5 (needed a better attack to
make the Ability worthwhile)
Limited: 3.75 (was incredibly annoying
at prerelease)
