Umbreon
#60 (Dark Explorers)
Our last
Eeveelution
for the week is one of two
Umbreon from
the Dark Explorers set. I’ve always felt
that Umbreon
was the coolest looking of the
Eeveelutions
– partly because he’s a Dark Type, but
mainly it’s because he just seems to
have the nicest proportions of all of
them.
Being a Stage 1 in
this format is not a good thing, given
that Basics are so incredibly powerful
and well supported right now, and Stage
2s (with Rare Candy) are just as fast.
100 HP isn’t going to impress many
players, and neither is that Retreat
cost of two or the Fighting Weakness.
Being a Dark Type,
Umbreon does get some great
support from Dark Claw and Dark Patch,
but that doesn’t mean a thing unless he
has attacks that can make the most of
it.
The first, Shadow
Drain, cost two Energy of any Colour (or
a DCE) and does just 30 damage. It also
has the effect of healing the same
amount of damage from
Umbreon as
you just did to the Defending Pokémon.
With a Dark Claw and Special Dark
Energy, this means you could be hitting
and healing for up to 70, but that is a
really poor return for the investment of
so many important cards. When a Pokémon
has just 100 HP, healing strategies tend
to become irrelevant anyway because the
risk of OHKO is so great. Even if your
opponent’s Pokémon can’t knock him out
in one hit, Shadow Drain is going to be
unlikely to save
Umbreon from the 2 hit KO he was
going to suffer anyway, especially as
the damage output is too low to
seriously threaten another attacker.
This leaves
Umbreon with
his second attack, Slashing Strike. For
one Dark and two
Colourless Energy, this does 80
points of vanilla damage. Again, you
could boost that to 100-130 with Dark
Claw and Special Dark, which would make
it decent in terms of damage output, but
too costly in terms of what you
are having to
attach to get it. Slashing Strike is
such a mediocre attack that I don’t
understand why they felt the need to
give it a drawback – it cannot be used
on consecutive turns. Oh well, it’s not
like Umbreon
would likely survive long enough for
that to become an issue anyway.
As far as Dark
attackers are concerned, this
Umbreon is a
long way down the pecking order.
Darkrai-EX
stands miles above everything else of
course, but even
Zoroark DEX and BLW, the
Honchkrows
from UD, and
Mandibuzz
BLW are better than this. Even when it
comes to Umbreon
himself, the other version from DEX and
the UD one with Moonlight Fang are both
superior (but still not good). Play him
at Prerelease
by all means: there’s Dark support in
the set, and his healing effect could be
useful in a low damage environment. When
it comes to modified tournaments
however, leave
Umbreon in the binder.
Rating
Modified: 1.75
(Unnecessary restrictions on the second
attack make a weak Pokémon even weaker
than it needed to be)
Limited: 4 (can
hang around for a bit and make use of
those Dark Trainers)
