Welcome to a new week of CotDs.
As someone living in the
Midwestern U.S.A. our spring weather is
looking more like winter, as we just got
hit by an ice storm (and further north,
are still being hit by ice and
snowstorms).
So I am trying to think optimistic
thoughts looking at today’s card;
Cherrim (BW: Plasma Storm
7/135), with its festive, warm and sunny
feel.
Stats
Miscellaneous:
This art is of a Cherrim in its Sunshine
Forme; in fact, of all
Cherrim cards released, only
Cherrim (Arceus 15/99) is
depicted in its Overcast Forme.
Type:
Cherrim is unsurprisingly a
Grass-Type (the only Type it would have
in the video games).
Right now, hitting Grass Typing
is strong when it comes to damage as
nothing is Resistant (or has been since
the Poison-Type shifted from the TCG
Grass-Type to the TCG Psychic-Type), and
some key Pokémon in the format are also
Grass Weak, like
Keldeo EX and
Blastoise (BW: Boundaries Crossed
31/149; BW: Plasma Storm
137/135).
Most Pokémon-Types lack support true,
Type-based support and instead are lucky
if an Energy-Type they can use is backed
by useful cards.
There are a few attackers that
specifically have beneficial effects for
Grass-Type Pokémon, but they aren’t even
remotely competitive.
Stage:
As a Stage 1,
Cherrim is at a disadvantage in our
format dominated by big, Basic Pokémon
(which are mostly Pokémon-EX).
Ignoring overly complex combos,
you’ll need two cards per
Cherrim; the Pokémon itself and its
Basic form
Cherubi.
You also need two turns (again,
barring overly complex combos) to get
Cherrim into play.
The earliest it can hit the field
right now is Turn 2, and in this fast of
a format, that isn’t abysmal but it is
at best average.
Hit Points:
70 HP is very, very small.
This
is so small it looks like something you
would have seen in the original Base
Set.
Cherrim is simply a OHKO for all
competitive decks I can think of, and
even supporting attacks/attackers have a
decent shot of taking it down in one hit
(especially factoring in combos like
Hypnotoxic Laser and
Virbank City Gym).
Probably not intentional, but in the
video games the Base HP Stat for Cherrim
is 70 as well, though the Base HP Stat
is merely used to calculate a Pokémon’s
actual hit points.
So while this score will require
this card do some pretty amazing things
to justify playing it, at least it is
somewhat accurate.
There is one small benefit; it is
a legal target for
Level Ball, as is its lower Stage.
Weakness:
Cherrim has the traditional
Grass-Type Pokémon Weakness to Fire.
Fire-Type Pokémon see very little
competitive play that I am aware of,
though when I say that it seems like a
new deck (or revived old deck) either
just popped up or soon will.
In this case, it hardly matters
as any Fire-Type that hits for 40 points
of damage will score a OHKO after
Weakness.
As usual, that is the bittersweet
aspect of having a low HP score; your
Weakness will often be superfluous.
Resistance:
Cherrim enjoys Water Resistance;
still a solid and relatively average
attack scoring 90 points of damage will
punch through that, again for a OHKO.
Considering that in the video
games, a Cherrim (as a Grass-Type) is
naturally Resistant to Water-Type damage
but takes double damage from Ice-Types
(the other half of the TCG Water-Type);
making this a “standard” Resistance for
Grass-Types honestly seems a bit off.
For the record, in keeping true to the
source material, Lightning-Type
Resistance would have been interesting
and avoided “clashing”.
Retreat:
Cherrim has a single Energy Retreat
cost.
This isn’t too hard to pay, but
given what we have seen of the card so
far and it having an above average speed
in the game, I honestly think they
should have just given it a free Retreat
cost.
Effects
Ability:
Fair Weather Heal is what I tend to
think of as pseudo-Type support, meaning
instead of supporting a Pokémon based on
its own Type, it supports an
Energy-Type.
In this case, if a Pokémon has a
source of (G) Energy attached, Fair
Weather Heal allows you to heal 20
points of damage off of it.
The Ability does stack, so if you were
to Bench multiples, you could heal as
much as 80 points of damage in a turn.
In fact, without multiples, it
would seem a bit underwhelming as this
isn’t even as much healing as one enjoys
from
Potion (at least since it received
that last erratum).
Attack:
Random Peck requires (GC) and does 20
points of damage, plus has you flip two
coins and does an additional 20 points
of damage per “heads”.
For a fully Evolved Stage 1
Pokémon, this is a poor return: right
now most competitive attackers, for two
Energy, are hitting for at least 30
unconditionally or 60 with some
drawbacks.
If we don’t worry about a Pokémon
being part of a competitive deck,
Pokémon can actually hit even harder!
Strange as that sounds, something
like
Infernape (BW: Plasma Storm
17/135) can hit for 120 at the price of
(RC), though it has to discard all
Energy attached to itself.
Random Peck, before Weakness,
Resistance, or other effects, one in
four possible coin flip results (no
heads) yields 20 points of damage, two
of four (so half) yield one “head” and
thus 40, and the remaining one in four
possible results is double “heads” for
40.
Synergy:
Minimal synergy; as the card is a
Grass-Type that needs a Grass-Type
Energy to attack, it is reasonably
likely it could use its Ability to heal
itself.
This ignores, however, that the
card is an almost guaranteed OHKO.
Usage
Card Family:
There is only one Modified legal
Cherubi, BW: Plasma Storm
6/135.
It is a Basic, Grass-Type Pokémon
with only 40 HP, Fire Weakness, Water
Resistance, and a Retreat of one.
Despite being so small as to be
an effective OHKO even first turn for
many decks (10 points of damage plus
Hypnotoxic Laser and
Virbank City Gym, or 30 points of
damage if you only have
Hypnotoxic Laser), it has a healing
attack that for (G) does 10 points of
damage while healing 10 points of damage
from itself.
There really are better versions of
Magikarp than this.
At least it did keep the
Resistance.
Combos:
The best thing I can think of is to
swarm it behind
Togekiss (BW: Plasma Storm
104/135); its Bright Veil Ability will
protect a Bench full of
Cherrim, which in turn may allow for
significant healing, given all the other
Items Bright Veil negates.
Togekiss doesn’t have a very good
attack, but it can easily use
Grass Energy or
Blend Energy GRPD.
Toss in
Aspertia City Gym and some fun
Pokémon Tools and you might have a fun
deck that is really, really annoying to
face.
Unlimited:
There are many better forms of healing
here, so even if you find yourself
facing decks that give you a chance to
heal, even tapping the added options
provided here (like
Broken Time-Space to speed up
Evolving), this card is not worth
playing.
Modified:
The above
Togekiss deck might be fun, but it
doesn’t sound very fast and thus likely
couldn’t win;
Togekiss really is not an offensive
attacker (it can hit for 30 points of
damage), so taking an early Prize or two
means even if you try to stall with a
Bright Veil/Fair-Weather Heal deck, good
chance you will lose.
That is also before considering
the decks prepared for the lock or most
importantly, the decks that just don’t
care about the lock because they hit
hard enough that a fully protected
Togekiss (Aspertia
City Gym plus
Giant
Cape)
can still OHKO
Togekiss.
Limited:
Cherrim is very valuable here,
though mostly as a Bench-sitter.
It is by no means a perfect card
to run;
Cherubi is better, but as it was
almost completely useless in constructed
play, that isn’t saying much.
You also need to be able to run
Grass Energy in your deck; you don’t
need a lot as a single copy will enable
healing of your Pokémon, but given you
won’t have a lot of search or additional
draw power at your disposal, you will
still want probably four, five, or even
six copies.
If
you only pull a 1-1
Cherrim line, that may not be worth
the effort.
Future:
The reason I only paired
Cherrim with
Togekiss is that without protection
from
Pokémon Catcher, your opponent has
little reason to worry about taking out
your main attacker, but instead would
constantly OHKO your copies of
Cherrim.
Yes it means your main
attacker(s) would go untouched, but you
would be wasting effort setting up a
Stage 1 Pokémon just for slaughter.
So I see no better attackers to pair it
with, though there is one card that
technically would help; a future
Mr. Mime likely in our next set
protects your Benched Pokémon from being
damaged by attacks, which in turn
reinforces the
Togekiss strategy.
Ratings
Unlimited:
1/5
Modified:
1.5/5
Limited:
3/5
Summary
Cherrim
is a very weak supporting Pokémon, and
in the current hard-hitting, fast-paced
format, that means it actually can
support very little.
I think that a Bright Veil
focused deck can find better Pokémon to
sit on its Bench, but if you really
wanted to this could make for a fun,
functional deck that is unlikely to win
a tournament, but can win single
matches.
