Slowking
(Dark Explorers)
A long, long time
ago, way back in the early days of
Pokémon, Wizards of the Coast (who owned
the game back then) printed
Slowking in
the Neo Genesis set. Trouble is that,
for whatever reason, they didn’t do a
very good job of the translation from
the Japanese original and the result was
an utterly broken card which pretty much
ruined the format (if you think
Mewtwo-EX
was bad, it had nothing on this). I like
to think that this whole episode
frightened the card designers so much
that they made sure that the same thing
would never again happen . . . and
that’s why every
Slowking since has been average
at best (with the possible exceptions of
Dark Slowking
and Slowking
GS, which at least had some use).
So, it should come
as a surprise to absolutely no-one that
this card is a bit . . . well, bland and
underpowered. For a start we are looking
at a Stage 1 with just 90 HP, a Psychic
Weakness that
Mewtwo-EX will enjoy, and an
inconvenient Retreat cost of two.
We get the same
story with the attacks.
Psy Bolt is
fair for the cost at least – one Psychic
Energy for 20 damage and a coin flip for
Paralysis – but its rarely going to be
any more than a minor annoyance for an
opponent or a desperation move by
yourself.
Hand Press adds a Double Colourless to
the cost so that
Slowking can do
50 damage with 30
more if you are holding more cards than
your opponent. Even with the extra
damage this is nothing special, and it
isn’t really that easy to manipulate the
game state to guarantee that your hand
size is bigger. You can hold onto cards
instead of playing them I suppose, or
you can fall behind on Prizes and play
N, but neither of those options are a
particularly good idea . . . not when
the reward is just 80 points of vanilla
damage anyway.
Yep, this
Slowking
isn’t ruining anyone’s format. It’s just
a mediocre Stage 1 that is making up the
numbers in the set.
Rating
Modified: 1.75 (so
many cards that are just better)
Limited: 3.5 (not
too bad here – cheap paralysis is nice
for one thing)
