Today we are looking at
Magmortar (BW: Dragons Exalted
21/124); you got good summary of what it
was like in my review of its Basic
counterpart yesterday,
Magmar (BW: Dragons Exalted
20/124), but I’ll lay it out again with
a touch more detail.
At least I remembered an intro this
time, instead of just having the place
holder “Intro” text from my template.
I am just so professional, aren’t
I?
Stats
Magmortar
is a Fire-Type Pokémon.
This isn’t very useful right now;
they’ve got no real Type support, only
some Energy Support that doesn’t see
much play or works best in decks that
can’t fit a Stage 1 Pokémon.
The good news is you can hit most
Grass-Type and all Fire-Type Pokémon I
am aware of for double damage… the bad
news is that those are two of the least
played Types right now, pretty much
beaten only by Fire-Types; in a word,
“ouch”.
Being a Stage 1 Pokémon is just a little
easier than being a Stage 2; generally
speaking the speed is the same (most
Stage 2 decks will liberally use
Rare Candy) but they always need one
more card; said
Rare Candy and sometimes the
relevant Stage 1 form.
Unfortunately in a format where
the best attackers are almost all Basic
Pokémon, that still makes it a tad slow.
120 HP is 10 less than a Stage 1 really
needs right now; cards like
Zekrom (Black & White 47/114
and multiple other printings) may not be
the premier attackers of BW-On, but the
120 damage in a single shot they
delivered is still approximately the
threshold for survivability; if a
Pokémon can take a Bolt Strike and hang
on, even if only just, it’s in good
shape.
If not, most decks will have to
work to hit for 120 in one shot, but
they have the capacity, and they
certainly can strike that hard over the
course of two shots.
Still, I do have to acknowledge
that
Magmortar isn’t known for its HP,
Defense, or Special Defense in the video
games, and so 120 HP isn’t bad from that
perspective.
Water Weakness matters more on
Magmortar than it did on
Magmar because the Water-Type
Pokémon that see play will actually want
and need that double damage.
Empoleon (BW: Dark Explorers
29/108) normally needs both players to
fill their respective Benches in order
for Attack Command to score 120, but now
the
Empoleon player does not even have
to completely fill his or her own for
the OHKO.
Kyurem (BW: Noble Victories
34/101) just needs to have 40 points of
damage on it for Outrage to score the KO
in one hit, and Glaciate can always
score a 2HKO; it isn’t good when
Weakness allows a spread attack to hit
your Active hard.
Despite these concerns, this is
the logical Weakness for it and the
other reasonable choices (based on
Typing) would have been worse.
No Resistance is still the worst
Resistance, but is also the most common
to have so it isn’t so much hurting
Magmortar as a missed opportunity:
based on the video game Resistances
available, Fire, Grass, and Metal might
not have been overly useful right now,
but would have been interesting.
Moving onto the next and final
Stage is a Retreat Cost of three; far
too high to pay manually unless
desperate, and even then you might not
be able to afford it.
Slight benefit in that it makes
Magmortar a legal target for
Heavy Ball, but especially with
Magmar not also being a legal
target, that doesn’t help nearly enough.
Make sure you’ve got something to
aid with or bypass manually Retreating.
Effects
Magmortar
has two attacks, and the Energy “spread”
for them looks good.
What I mean is the first attack,
Flame Screen, only requires (R) to use
while the second attack, Flamethrower,
just needs (RCC); the first attack can
be handled easily without any Energy
acceleration, while almost every
currently legal form of Energy
acceleration is compatible with the
second, even something as simple as
dropping a
Double Colorless Energy.
What do the attacks actually do, though?
Flame Screen delivers a
reasonable 40 points of damage while
reducing the damage
Magmortar takes by 20 (after
Weakness, of course) during the next
turn.
The good news is that is just
enough (when not being hit for Weakness)
to keep a fully healthy
Magmortar from being KOed except by
the biggest attacks, those hitting for
140 or more damage.
The bad news is those attacks are
very uncommon but not truly rare in this
format, and most decks will have ways of
wiping the effect from play (like
Pokémon Catcher).
Flamethrower is so close to being a
solid attack.
The good news is that two shots
will take out anything unprotected based
on “natural” HP scores, except the now
infamous
Wailord (BW: Dragons Exalted
26/124); 90 points of damage is an
important number to hit.
You will need to discard an
Energy from
Magmortar with each use, and that is
where you can see the real cost; if you
find a way to make
Magmortar last, you basically will
need four total Energy (at least one
providing (R)) to get off those two
attacks.
The first attack doesn’t hit quite hard
enough to set-up for an almost
guaranteed KO from the second attack;
the larger Evolutions, Pokémon-EX, and
even the biggest Basic Pokémon that
aren’t Pokémon EX can survive, though
the last two will be relying on
Eviolite or (much less likely)
Giant Cape.
In a format of mostly OHKOs for
anything that doesn’t exceed 120 HP
before “help”, that becomes an
issue.
Looking purely at Energy-to-damage, both
attacks are good, close but not quite
“great” levels.
Looking at the investment as a
whole, and the fact that a Stage 1
Pokémon
will require effort and isn’t a good
candidate for splashing into another
deck, and we see that
Magmortar probably needed something
even less expensive (and thus faster)
for its “big” attack, or something a
little pricier but bringing the big
damage.
Usage
The good news is that if you love
Magmortar, you should be able to
create a functional deck with this card.
“Functional” in this case means
if your opponent doesn’t have a great
open (or is running Water), you should
be able to put up a fight, with the deck
actually setting itself up even if it
doesn’t win.
The big problems are the usual;
many decks can use
Max Potion quite effectively, so the
2HKO strategy isn’t reliable enough,
plus as already stated once the opposing
deck gets going,
Magmortar is doing good to remain a
2HKO itself.
Most (if not all) of what you can
effectively back
Magmortar with are better used with
other cards.
Sticking to the most generic will
give you a shot at winning, but the odds
will be against the deck, barring some
very key match-ups (which may favor
Magmortar, or give it little chance
of winning).
When I look at how close
Magmortar comes, I really have to
focus on…
Magmar.
If you didn’t read the CotD for
Magmar (BW: Dragons Exalted
20/124), I’ll explain what I just wrote:
Magmar contributes nothing to
Magmortar save having the slightly
above average “once Evolving Basic
Pokémon” HP score of 80.
It has the same Type, Weakness,
and lack of Resistance, but its
technically better Retreat of two is
disappointing as it means
Magmar can’t be searched out via
Heavy Ball but still isn’t easy to
Retreat.
Worst of all, not only does
Magmar have vanilla attacks that are
boring and a little overpriced, since
they are vanilla they do
nothing to truly help
Magmortar.
This is a huge area where card design
seems to be failing, and why it is so
hard for the designers to balance the
various Stages of Evolution; Evolving is
purely a penalty, which goes against the
“flavor” of Pokémon while also wasting a
potential balancing factor.
“Evolving” Pokémon need to
protect themselves, accelerate set-up,
or disrupt the opponent; doing more than
one of those things is fine.
So while it isn’t a total waste, I can’t
recommend
Magmortar for Modified.
If Unlimited were a tad slower,
it might have some potential there, but
because of
Magmar (Fossil 39/62) and its
Smokescreen attack, with
both
Magmar and
Magmortar being backed by Trainer
denial and hopefully with an equipped
Focus Band.
It would still just be
“functional”, but that beats being
worthless… unfortunately that was if
Unlimited didn’t have decks that
reliably won so long as they went first,
or effectively won by initiating some
kind of “lock”.
So Modified is the place where
Magmortar can burn brightly.
Magmortar is nearly a must run; if
you only pulled one
Magmortar and one
Magmar, as long as you had room for
three to five
Fire Energy in your deck, I still
say
run it!
As usual, HP scores and average
damage output are lower with so many
Evolutions being pulled without adequate
support.
For
Magmortar, this means Flame screen
can protect it almost completely from
lesser attacks, 2HKOing most of what you
face, while Flamethrower scores OHKOs.
Plus the Energy requirements are
very friendly to splashing into other
decks;
Magmar may not be that great, but
Magmortar needs just one
Fire Energy to start doing its
thing!
Ratings
Unlimited:
1.5/5
Modified:
1.75/5
Limited:
4.25/5
Summary
Magmortar
is a near miss, which is always bitter
sweet.
Most of what it does, other cards
can do better with the kind of support
it demands, and the Basic it Evolves
from is almost pure filler, though at it
isn’t intentionally horrible like some
Pokémon lines receive.
I would actually keep an eye on
this card; it could be some simple combo
away from being a decent card, despite
the low score I am giving it now.
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clicking
here.
It’s me whittling away at about
two decades worth of attempted
collecting, spanning action figures,
comic books, TCGs, and video games.
Exactly what is up is a bit
random.
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