Baby Mario
2010 UK
National
Seniors
Champion |
Camerupt
EX (Primal Clash)
Camerupt
is the latest in a long line of Fire Pokémon that
discard Energy in order to do
a lot of damage. The line goes right back to the
original Base Set Charizard
and includes Blaziken ex,
Reshiram BLW, and numerous
Infernape and other
Charizards.
With Camerupt you get
Explosive Jet. The two nice things about this attack are
the huge and flexible damage potential (50 for each Fire
Energy discarded), and the fact that the Energy doesn’t
have to be discarded from Camerupt
himself. This means you can KO stuff without having to
keep powering up your active Pokémon, as long as you can
fuel Explosive Jet from the Bench.
Obviously, a high-maintenance attack like this needs
support, and the go-to cards (at least for now) are
Emboar LTR and Superior
Energy Retrieval (I suppose Scorched Earth/Blacksmith is
another possibility). With this combo, you can attach
and recover the Energy you need each turn. Clearly, this
isn’t going to make Camerupt
EX the fastest deck around, and the vulnerability to
Seismitoad EX is
considerable, seeing as Quaking Punch will shut down
Rare Candy and Energy Retrieval while hitting your
Pokémon for Weakness.
Nevertheless, any Pokémon capable of getting OHKOs
against absolutely anything can’t be written off
totally. Given the chance to set up,
Camerupt is quite a scary
proposition, particularly for Fire-Weak decks like
Virizion/Genesect
and M Aggon EX. I wouldn’t
be at all surprised if Camerupt/Emboar
decks started showing up at tournaments. This kind of
deck is always fairly popular.
Rating
Modified: 3.25 (has a chance if it can avoid the dreaded
Toad)
Expanded: 3 (I still like Rayquaza
EX more)
Limited: 4 (not the best suited EX for this format, but
still quite usable)
|
aroramage |
Whoever thought there'd be a Pokemon that was
basically a camel with a volcano on its back? GameFreak,
you guys are so crazy clever sometimes. Welcome back to
today's card, one of the many new EX Pokemon released in
this set, Camerupt-EX! Is he a new ace for Fire decks,
or do other Fire-types outmatch it? Let's take a look!
Camerupt-EX's Tumbling Attack isn't terribly impressive,
it's just a 2-for-30 with a 50/50 on getting another 30
tacked on. SNNOOORRRREEE! I know it's only a Camerupt,
but come on guys, if you can give a Pokemon an attack
that devastates formats and defines deck archetypes, you
can afford to stop flipping coins on a couple of others!
So we're left to face off against the better, more
interesting Explosive Jet. At a hefty cost of 4 Energy,
Explosive Jet lets you get rid of Fire Energy from any
of your Pokemon and deliver 50 damage for each one.
Doing the math, it's easy to see that 3 Energy is KOing
most Evolutions, 4 Energy KOs most EX, and 5 Energy
scrapes by and kills everything! That's scary!
But that is a lot of Energy, and unlike M Gardevoir-EX
who leaves the massive amounts of Energy on the field,
Camerupt-EX wants to discard as much as needed.
Sometimes though, you might want that Energy to be
powering up some guys in the back, but getting rid of
Camerupt-EX's Energy would mean he's not using his
attack anymore...what to do then...
Blacksmith can partially relieve Camerupt-EX's burden if
need be, but Explosive Jet would be difficult to make
run over and over and over again. If the deck had gotten
a bit more support than, say, Fighting for instance
(just as an example, of course, Maxie, you traitorous
SONUVA), then Camerupt-EX's attack might be doable. As
it stands, he can at the very least OHKO M Aggron-EX for
3 Energy, so there's something to let you sleep at
night.
Rating
Standard: 3/5 (a powerful attack that just...doesn't
quite hit the mark turn after turn. But hey, it'll
definitely KO stuff!)
Expanded: 3/5 (bout the same here)
Limited: 4/5 (a +39 deck with this guy? Maybe, but
Tumbling will only get you so far. Maybe combine that
massive amount of Fire Energy with Scorched Earth!)
Arora Notealus: Camerupt's humps explode violently about
every 10 years or so...no wonder my backyard's covered
in lava right now. Dang it, Camu!
Next Time: Volcanoes can explode all they want, but the
seas...
|
Otaku |
Today we are looking at the next runner-up, having tied
with yesterday’s CotD as a runner-up: Camerupt-EX
(XY: Primal Clash 29/160; 146/160). Being a
Fire-Type seems like a good deal right now, primarily
due to exploiting Weakness on VirGen decks and most
attackers you’ll see in Bronzong (XY:
Phantom Forces
61/1149, XY Promos
XY21) decks, no Resistance. There are a few
anti-Fire-Type effects like Thick Fat, which allows
Hariyama (XY: Furious Fists 52/111) to fake
being Fire Resistant but none of that is widely played.
On the other hand there is some solid direct Fire-Type
support like Blacksmith for Supporter based
Energy acceleration or indirect support like Scorched
Earth for some extra draw by discarding basic
Fire Energy. What is missing so far has been the
breakout Pokémon to take advantage of it; while there
are some stellar Fire-Type attackers, none have been
really good without intense set-up of some sort.
Being a Pokémon-EX usually entitles a card to better
attributes and/or effects than normal, but sometimes it
doesn’t and often enough even what they get won’t
adequately compensate for the guaranteed drawbacks;
giving up an extra Prize when KOed, being the target of
some potent Pokémon-EX counter-cards and being unable to
tap a few pieces of support (though that last one rarely
matters). The first compensation that is evident is
Camerupt-EX being a Basic Pokémon as normally its a
Stage 1. Being a Basic Pokémon is the best right now;
they are just easier to get into play and outside of
being blocked by Pyroar (XY: Flashfire
20/106) and its Intimidating Mane Ability. Its 180 HP
is 50 points higher than you see on the only other
currently legal Camerupt (BW: Boundaries
Crossed 22/149). At the same time the last few sets
have advanced the power creep even more as Mega
Evolutions go from “meh” to “somewhat playable” to
possible potent; alongside this damage output is also
creeping up again, or perhaps its just that the hardest
hitting attacks that used to be wasteful overkill are
now valuable.
Camerupt-EX
has Water Weakness; while not the worst Weakness to
have, its is more damage now than in the last few sets
as the Type got a little more support and few more heavy
hitters this set. The lack of Resistance is common so
no sense docking the card for being “normal”. The
Retreat Cost of four is massive and you’ll need to
prepare your deck to tank up front or have a means of
more easily getting it out of the Active slot, though
the need for such a thing has long been standard for
decks. In Expanded, it comes with the silver-lining of
being a legal Heavy Ball target. All in all,
decent stats for a Pokémon-EX. So what about the
effects? Camerupt-EX has two attacks: Tumbling
Attack for [RC] and Explosive Jet for [RRCC]. The good
news is that these costs are staggered so that you
aren’t left unable to attack for several turns, though
it is in a way where you still might end up with a dead
turn if forced to open with this card (which is good for
future game balance but bad for the card’s immediate
success), plus another turn using the opening attack
before you can hit the big attack, at least if using
just manual Energy attachments. Of course this might
not be bad if the attacks are good enough and again,
might be an answer to the power creep. Tumbling Attack
does 30 damage with a coin flip for an extra 30 while
while Explosive Jet brings back a familiar mechanic; you
can discard as many [R] Energy attached to your Pokémon
in play to score 50 points of damage per.
So are these attacks any good? I can stop worrying
about power creep with this card, I think as both
attacks are below the standards set by successful
Pokémon-EX. Of course this might be taking into account
that with Blacksmith a Fire-Type can go from zero
to [RRCC] in a single turn, but if that is the intent I
think I’d prefer the card have just a single scalable
attack with a lower initial cost. Ignoring moments of
“overkill” or effects that would otherwise alter damage
output, is going to average about 45 points of damage
with each hit. Factoring in Blacksmith (which is
awkward since you do have to burn your Supporter for the
turn on it, plus have [R] Energy in the discard to
fuel), a T2 Tumbling Attack isn’t an impressive return;
a Mewtwo-EX with X-Ball and a Double Colorless
Energy is going to score 40 plus damage, no coin
flips required. A T2 Explosive Jet sounds impressive,
but that means you’re going second and managing to both
pull off a Blacksmith and drop a Double
Colorless Energy so it isn’t all that likely and as
you can only discard fire Energy, you’re just scoring
100 points of damage (though that early in the game I
consider that a decent amount).
Explosive Jet seems to miss the point of attacks like
it; they generally don’t cost a lot so that you have a
reason to access Bench Energy. A lot of the time,
you’ll struggle to have more than the Energy in play
that Camerupt-EX needs for the attack, so you’ll
have to discard from itself anyway… and given the risk
of being KOed on your opponent’s turn (especially with
attacks like the aforementioned X-Ball that do more
damage for the Energy attached to both players’ Active
Pokémon as well as Max Potion have no drawback
when you’ve got no Energy to discard and you might as
well just be discarding off of Camerupt-EX. You
might take a more optimistic view and think of it as a
typical Fire-Type attack that is enhanced by being able
to discard off of everything instead of itself, but
we’ve seen this similar attacks before so this doesn’t
seem that impressive, especially with the Energy Type
restriction.
Still you’ve got the obvious option right now of pairing
this with Emboar (last printed as BW:
Legendary Treasures 27/113). If you can get set-up,
you’re only limited by how much Energy you can get
(back) into hand as you can rain it down onto your
Pokémon with Inferno Fandango. Five Fire Energy
attached and discarded per turn is going to OHKO
everything in the format, at least before defensive
buffs and other protective effects. Just four will take
out everything that isn’t a Mega Evolution or Wailord-EX.
The thing is, we’ve been able to do something similar
with Rayquaza-EX for a while now, and it hasn’t
proven worth it, so I’m doubting it will be for
Camerupt-EX either.
Ratings
Standard:
3/5 - Deck specific of course as the Energy specific
discards means it isn’t the kind of thing to work into a
Fairy Transfer deck. While I’m not overly impressed by
it, it can deliver some massive hits and isn’t a glass
cannon. It is just that when a OHKO isn’t overly
important, I think I’d rather the same deck focus on
something like Reshiram (last printed as BW:
Legendary Treasures 28/113, 114/113 and
RC22/RC25). While its Blue Flare attack doesn’t scale,
it does good damage as can its Outrage attack and of
course, its 130 HP but still only worth a single Prize.
Expanded:
3/5 - As above with the usual adjustment; additional
cards that help, hurt and sometimes both help and hurt
as more combos, counters and competition are present
with the increased card pool, but nothing that really
stands out occurs to me.
Limited:
4.9/5 - If you don’t pull a better Pokémon-EX, you run
this, probably as a +39 deck. I’d say “definitely” as a
+39 deck as the attacks are actually pretty great for
that but this set does have a significant Water
presence.
Summary:
Camerupt-EX isn’t bad but it doesn’t seem like
anything special. That could simply mean its waiting
for future dance partners (I can think of a few among
the cards spoiled by their Japanese release) or perhaps
rotation to lessen the competition or even both. While
it tied with yesterday’s CotD, that does include some
points from being my 14th place pick: I submitted a Top
15 list to help with tiebreakers, though in the end it
didn’t change anything for the Pojo Top 10 list. Still,
being a big new Fire-Type I expect people to try to make
it work.
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