Chandelure
Hello and welcome
to a new week of reviews here on
Pojo’s
CotD. We’ll
start with three more cards that
narrowly missed out on the reviewer top
10 from Next Destinies and finish with a
couple of . . . interesting cards from
the set.
We kick off the
week with
Chandelure, a Pokémon whose
quirky design appeals to me a lot. Decks
featuring the Noble Victories version of
this Pokémon were the surprise hit of
City Championships, so let’s see if this
new card can add anything to the deck,
or if it is just going to be
overshadowed.
Chandelure
is a Stage 2 Fire Type Pokémon with 120
HP, Water Weakness, and a Retreat cost
of two. The Fire Typing is quite nice at
the moment: it might not be hitting much
for Weakness (the occasional
Cobalion),
but it also rarely runs into any Water
Pokémon that can exploit its own
vulnerability (apart from the even more
occasional Kyurem).
120 HP is a bit of a problem though:
it’s low for a Stage 2 and what’s worse
it puts Chandelure
into unboosted
OHKO range of
Reshiram BW and
Zekrom BW.
The Retreat cost could be a pain if this
Chandelure
was run outside of traditional
Chandelure
decks which use
Dodrio UD.
Flame Burst,
Chandelure’s
first attack, has pretty much the best
(reliable) damage/cost ratio in the
game. For a single Fire Energy, you do
30 to the active, plus 30 damage
to two Benched
Pokémon: that’s a total of 90
damage for one Energy! Ok, I am
over-selling it somewhat as that 30
damage puts very little pressure on the
active Pokémon (especially if it is a
huge Legendary Basic), but that snipe
attack is still good enough to OHKO Baby
Pokémon or exceptionally weak Basics
like the ever-popular 30 HP
Tynamo or
the increasingly less popular
Solosis. It
can also be used to set up easier OHKOs
against higher HP attackers. The second
attack, Inferno, is pretty good value
too: just [R][C]
for 80 plus Burn (although you do have
to discard all Energy attached to
Chandelure
to use it).
On its own, neither
Flame Burst nor Inferno
are likely to
get many OHKOs and this, together with
the fact that
Chandelure is a low HP Stage 2,
means that it can’t really carry a deck
as a main attacker. As a tech in
existing Chandelure
decks though, it can be very useful. The
snipe damage has great synergy with
Chandelure
NV’s
Cursed Shadow Ability
(which places counters without using an
attack). This is probably going to be
where you see
Chandelure played the most. The
other possibility is to use it as a See
Off tech in Mew Prime decks (credit to
Mees
Brenninkmeijer
for this idea). Being able to use Flame
Burst on turn two when facing Eelektrik
decks that need to Bench multiple
Tynamo is
great, as you stand a much higher chance
of picking them off before they evolve
than you would if you had to wait to
actually get the Stage 2 into play.
So . . . not a card
to build a deck around, but a good card
to place as a single copy to increase
the effectiveness of existing decks.
Rating
Modified: 3 (If
you’re still playing
Chandelure,
find a slot for him)
Limited: 3.25
(sniping is a very effective strategy
here . . . but getting a Stage 2 out
isn’t always easy)
