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Nidoking
(Plasma Freeze)
We finish the week with a look at
Nidoking from Plasma Freeze. This card has an
attack called ‘Lovestrike’
which does 20 damage plus 40 more for each
Nidoqueen on your Bench. I
don’t really know what message the card designers are
aiming for here with that attack name . . . the way to
attract and impress multiple girlfriends is to be more
aggressive? Oh well, at least Pokémon can’t be accused
of sexism: the very old Nidoqueen
from Jungle had an attack called ‘Boyfriends’ which used
the same concept.
More important than my amusement is the fact that the
attack isn’t very usable. Yep, with 3-4
Nidoqueen out and
Hypnotoxic Laser/Virbank
City Gym, you can pretty much OHKO anything with
Lovestrike for just a Double
Colourless Energy. But think about what I just said . .
. that entails getting 4-5
Stage 2 Pokémon
out on the Field at once, and that just isn’t happening
in today’s format.
It’s not even as if there are any particularly good
Nidoqueen either, and
Nidoking’s second attack
isn’t anything to write home about (Horn Drill does 90
vanilla for four Energy). Put
that together with Water Weakness (hello
Keldeo!) and a massive
Retreat, and Nidoking is
really a card that you only want to use for very casual
play indeed.
Rating
Modified: 1.5 (need a lot of Stage 2s to work? This
format says ‘no’)
Limited: 1.75 (chances of you getting both
Nidos out are pretty much
zero)
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