Galvantula
(Dark Explorers)
Hello and welcome
to a short (and interrupted) week of
reviews here on
Pojo’s CotD.
This is because our US readers have the
4th July holiday coming up. I
hope you have a great time!
We kick off the
week with a look at
Galvantula from Dark Explorers.
While I’m not fussed about the big
yellow spider itself, I do think that
its Basic, Joltik,
is completely adorable, so I guess I’d
like a reason to play him. Let’s see if
this card can provide it.
Galvantula
is a Lightning Type whose 80 HP seems a
bit low, even for an
unevolving
Stage 1. The best thing you can say for
it is that it makes the Fighting
Weakness somewhat irrelevant.
Terrakion
NVI and Groudon-EX
won’t have too many issues
OHKOing this
regardless. On the plus side, the
Retreat cost of one is fine, and
Lightning Types do have access to
Eelektrik NVI for Energy acceleration.
Not that
Galvantula
is likely to need it, as both its
attacks are very cheap. For one
Lightning Energy, Quick Turn lets you
flip two coins and do 20 for each heads.
This is yet another generic ‘filler’
attack that you see quite a lot of. I
guess doing 40 for one isn’t bad if you
flip two heads, but any other outcome is
pretty bad. This isn’t an attack that
you would ever use as part of a
strategy,
it’s just there if you have nothing
better to do. The second,
Electrisilk
seems to have a bit more of
Galvantula’s
personality about it. For one Lightning
and one Colourless Energy, it will do 30
damage (which is poor), but if the
Pokémon has no Retreat Cost, it will do
40 more damage.
There aren’t many
free Retreat Pokémon that are played
these days (the Babies, I guess . . .
Mew Prime . . .
Zebstrika), but of course you
could fix that with the
Skyarrow
Bridge Stadium which reduces the Retreat
cost of Basic Pokémon by one. Now things
like Smeargle,
Shaymin, and
Tornadus
become vulnerable. You might also care
to know that if your opponent uses
Darkrai-EX
any Pokémon the attach Dark Energy to
will also trigger
Electrisilk’s attack due to the
Dark Cloak Ability.
But is any of this
worth it? I mean yes, you could use
Galvatula to
KO Smeargles
fairly cheaply or even do substantial
damage to a
Tornadus-EX. But if you think
about how frail
Galvantula is, and how limited it
is as an attacker, then it’s pretty
clear that there are a lot better things
you could be putting in your deck that
this. A Stage 1 that can max out its
attack at 70 only under certain
circumstances is just not doing enough.
Sorry
Joltik . . .
you still deserve better.
Rating
Modified: 1.75
(just not powerful enough)
Limited:
2 (there are only 2 Pokémon in
the set with free Retreat, so it’s even
underpowered here)
