Swanna
(Dark Explorers)
Our final card of
the week is Swanna
– one of the more ‘realistic’ Pokémon.
It’s a lot easier to imagine
Swanna
existing than
Spoink, for instance. It’s quite
an interesting card in its own way too,
so let’s take a look.
Swanna is a
Stage 1 evolution with a low 90 HP and
horrible Lightning Weakness. The Retreat
cost of one is ok, and the Resistance to
Fighting is nice enough I suppose,
though it will rarely be a factor.
Nothing special or notable here though,
so it all comes down to the attacks.
The first, Healing
Pirouette costs just one Water Energy
and heals 30 damage
from all of your Pokémon. I’m
sure we can all think of situations
where this would be very useful – say,
against Kyurem’s
Glaciate, or a
Groudon using Tromp – but
generally speaking, healing is not
something that is worth using an attack
for (that’s why we have Max Potion and
Super Scoop Up), and spread damage isn’t
massively popular in the game right now.
It’s not that Healing Pirouette is bad
exactly, more that Pokémon has been very
offensive-based for a while now, and
it’s difficult to see how it can be part
of a winning strategy.
Swanna does
have an offensive attack too. The cost
is a bit impractical on a low HP Pokémon
(two Water, one Colourless), but the
damage output
could be decent. Incessant Peck has
a mediocre base damage of 60, but you
get to flip a coin until you get tails
and do an extra 20 for each heads. In
theory this means that you could hit for
. . . well anything, really, and OHKO
every Pokémon ever printed. In practice
though, you are investing a lot of
Energy in a weak Pokémon to do 80 or so
damage on average (probably).
It’s a bit more
than your generic filler Stage 1, for
sure, but in the final analysis,
Swanna
doesn’t offer enough to be worth playing
in Modified. In Limited though, Prize
denial through healing
and potential big damage all on the
same card makes
Swanna an excellent pick.
Rating
Modified: 2 (a 90
HP Stage 1 attacker would have to be
spectacular to get a send look, and
Swanna isn’t
that)
Limited: 4 (does a
lot for your deck in this format)
