Baby Mario
2010 UK
National
Seniors
Champion |
#9 Drifblim
The thing that makes Plasma Blast such a good set is the
number of neat little tricks and synergies it has, all
of which interact with the metagame
in interesting ways. Probably the best illustration of
this is today’s card, Drifblim.
Driblim
is a Stage 1 Pokémon with 100 HP and a single attack,
costing three Energy.
Normally this would be enough to send it straight into
the pile marked ‘useless filler’, never to return.
However, in this case Drifblim
redeems itself with the Drifting Balloon Ability which
states that for each Team Plasma Pokémon your opponent
has in play,
Drifblim’s attacks cost one
Energy less. Obviously, this is great against Plasma
decks, with their Benches full of
Deoxys-EX and Kyurem,
allowing you to attack for free with Derail which does
70 damage and discards a
Special Energy from the Defending Pokémon. However,
there is still the problem of
Drifblim being a weak Stage 1 which takes two or
three turns to KO anything. This is where the new Silver
Mirror Tool comes in (more on that later in our
countdown) which gives protection (damage
and effects)
from Plasma Pokémon.
Put the two together and you can see that
Drifblim can function as a
pretty hardcore counter to the very popular and
successful Team Plasma decks. If they can’t find a Tool
Scrapper or a non-Plasma Pokémon, they are pretty much
going to be walled to death by a giant balloon with
sticking plaster for a mouth. How embarrassing is that
for a bunch of overpowered Legendaries like
Thundurus-EX and
Kyurem? Like all counters,
though, its effectiveness depends on how often you run
into the relevant match up. As useful as he is against
Plasma decks, Drifblim is a
pretty poor card if you happen to be playing against
anything else, making his worth directly dependent upon
the specific metagame.
Rating
Modified: 3.75 (useful to have in a Plasma–heavy format)
Limited: 2.5 (not really designed to work here)
Combos with:
Silver Mirror, Drifblim DRX
(the PLB one discards the Special Energy and the DRX on
hits hard as a result)
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