Pokemon Home

Pokedex

Price Guide Set List

Message Board

Pokemon GO Tips

Pokemon News

Featured Articles

Trading Card Game
- Price Guide
- Price Guide
- Card of the Day
- Professional Grading
- Killer Deck Reports
- Deck Garage
- William Hung
- Jason Klaczynski
- Jeremy's Deck Garage
- Johnny Blaze's Banter
- TCG Strategies
- Rulings Help
- Apprentice & Patch
- Apprentice League
- Spoilers & Translations
- Official Rules
- Featured Event Reports
- Top of the World
- An X-Act Science
- Error Cards
- Printable Checklist
- Places to Play

Nintendo Tips
- Red/Blue
- Yellow
- Gold & Silver
- Crystal
- Ruby & Sapphire
- Fire Red & Leaf Green
- Emerald
- SNAP
- Pinball
- TCG cart
- Stadium
- PuPuzzle League
- Pinball: Ruby/Sapphire
- Pokemon Coliseum
- Pokemon Box
- Pokemon Channel

GameBoy Help
- ClownMasters Fixes
- Groudon's Den
- Pokemon of the Week

E-Card Reader FAQ's
- Expedition
- Aquapolis
- Skyridge
- Construction Action Function
- EON Ticket Manual

Deck Garage
- Pokemaster's Pit Stop
- Kyle's Garage
- Ghostly Gengar

Cartoon/Anime
- Episode Listing
- Character Bios
- Movies & Videos
- What's a Pokemon?
- Video List
- DVD List

Featured Articles

Pojo's Toy Box

Books & Videos

Downloads

Advertise With Us
- Sponsors
- Links

Chat

About Us
Contact Us

Pojo's Pokémon Card of the Day

Baby Mario 2010 UK National Seniors Champion	Slurpuff (Phantom Forces)  Since we lost Claydol GE and Uxie LA (many years ago now), the card designers’ effort to give us Pokémon-based draw have been somewhat half-hearted and not exactly widely played (I’m thinking of things like Musharna NXD and Electrode PLF here). At first, it seemed as though this Slurpuff would fall into exactly the same category, but as things turned out, he seems to have found himself a home in a new and reasonably successful variant of an existing deck.  That would be almost entirely down to Slurpuff’s Tasting Ability. Every turn, it allows you to draw a card if Slurpuff is on the Bench, or two if he is active. In most decks, this is insufficient reward for committing Bench and deck space to a weak Stage 1 with a fairly mediocre and expensive, if sometimes situationally useful, attack. However, it so happens that Seismitoad EX has proven to be exactly the right partner to make Slurpuff shine.  This is because Seismitoad EX does so much by himself: he dishes out damage, inflicts Trainer Lock, and provides a substantial 180 HP wall. As a result, there is room for Slurpuff to come into a Seismitoad deck and seriously improve consistency. This, in turn means that Seismitoad decks can make very efficient use of VS Seeker, together with a range of one-off tech Supporters like Cassius, Xerosic, Team Flare Grunt, and Pokémon Centre Lady to take control of games and give themselves a real edge over decks that do not have a ready answer to the annoying Toad.  Of course, Slurpuff does little or nothing to help Seismitoad decks deal with their existing unfavourable match ups. They are still in a very bad place against Virizion/Genesect, for example. However, when it comes to mirror matches, or games against things like Donphan or Yveltal, the extra consistency that Slurpuff brings can tilt a fairly even contest in your favour. Somehow I suspect that Toad/Slurpuff decks will be only briefly fashionable, but for the moment, they are certainly something to look out for. Just don’t expect Slurpuff to start showing up in too many other places.  Rating  Modified: 3 (Tasting is historically sub-par, but at least something can make it work) Expanded: 3 (possible use in Accelgor decks) Limited: 4 (any kind of draw is worthwhile)
aroramage	I'll still never know what they thought of with Slurpuff. Then again, we've got Vanilluxe who's basically ice cream, and let's not even start with Aromatisse being the embodiment of perfume. Welcome back to another week as we take a look at Slurpuff!  Slurpuff is an interesting Pokemon to say the least, both in his attack and his Ability. His attack, Light Pulse, is a hefty 3-for-60 attack that prevents all effects of an attack from happening to Slurpuff...except for damage. The only card I can think of that prevents damage and would make Slurpuff incredibly hard to beat is Silver Mirror, except that only works on Team Plasma Pokemon. So you've got a counter to half of a VirGen deck...and that's it. So Slurpuff shouldn't really be in the Active slot.  Except oddly enough, it could be argued that you want Slurpuff in the Active slot for Tasting, his Ability. Once a turn, you can draw a card with Slurpuff OR draw 2 cards if he's Active. This is some decent draw support outside of Supporter City, and it could give Fairy decks an extra rush with Xerneas spilling Energy from the deck and Slurpuff drawing through it. Now if only they had a Fairy attacker that could compete against the Lucario-EX and Seismitoad-EX of the world...*winkwinknudgenudge*  Now I'd keep Slurpuff drawing on the Bench for as long as I can if I ran Slurpuff in a Fairy deck, using his "draw 2" only if I had to put him Active or else had a means to switch him out right away like with, say, Switch! Drawing cards is always beneficial, and in a world where once per turn you can get the ability to draw 7 cards, it's nice to know you can get ahead of that and go for 8 or 9. Rating  Standard: 2.5/5 (good draw support for a deck that can always use more support)  Expanded: 3/5 (I add an extra half-point for the extra Items that can get Slurpuff and Swirlix out faster)  Limited: 3.5/5 (DRAW IS INVALUABLE HERE)  Arora Notealus: Seriously, a meringue-based dog. Who would have thought of such a thing? Although now I want more Pokemon to evolve with the "Whipped Dream" Item. You know, like what they used to do with Metal Coat way back when?  Next Time: THE MOST BUFF OF ALL MONS ARISES
Otaku	We begin the week with a card I alluded to in an earlier CotD: Slurpuff (XY: Phantom Forces 69/119).  When I first saw it, I didn’t think much of it: being a Stage 1 isn’t the kiss of death that being a Stage 2 is at the moment, but its still twice as many cards for half as many actual Pokémon.  The Fairy-Type enjoys direct and indirect support but its mostly the latter that ends up being influential in the format.  It enjoys hitting the XY-era Dragons for double Weakness and so far nothing is Fairy-Resistant… but that isn’t really important for this card.  90 HP occasionally survives a hit but usually doesn’t; in Expanded it would allow you to make use of Level Ball, though.  With an HP score this low the Metal Weakness will only matter when dealing with attacks that hit for between 10 and 40 damage: it is the difference between a Muscle Band sporting Cobalion-EX scoring a OHKO with Righteous Edge versus a 2HKO.  The Resistance can come in handy but an effective 110 HP is still something a (for example) Yveltal-EX can still do it with Y Cyclone if it has a Muscle Band handy.  The single Energy Retreat Cost is good and if it was free, we’ll see how in this case that might make it too good.  Slurpuff has an Ability and an attack.  The attack is something you’re very rarely (if ever) going to use but let us get it out of the way: [YCC] allows for Light Pulse, which hits for 60 points of damage and will protect Slurpuff from all effects of your opponent’s attacks during said opponent’s next turn excluding actual damage.  Given your HP score, damage is all it should take to score a KO and 60 is a good 10 to 30 points too low to be worthwhile.  The Ability on the other hand is quite generic; you get to draw an extra card once per turn before you attack with Tasting and if Slurpuff is Active when you do so, you get to make it two cards instead of one.  Multiple copies of Tasting will stack as well, so a few of these can really add up as the turns go by… which is something I didn’t give it credit for but recent reports have indicated that yeah, that does matter.  Before that, let us touch upon the options available for Swirlix and the other Slurpuff.  There have been six Swirlix cards released in English but only three that are distinct: all are of Basic, Fairy-Type Pokémon with 60 HP, Metal Weakness, Darkness Resistance, a Retreat Cost of [C} and no Abilities.  Kalos Starter Set 24/39; McDonald’s Collection 2014 9/12, XY Trainer Kit Wigglytuff Half Deck 1/30 and 18/30 have a single attack - Draining Kiss -  for [Y] which does 10 damage while healing 10 off itself.  As 60 HP isn’t much, healing for something so small tends to be pointless and you don’t generally expect good damage from something that Evolves anyway.  XY 94/146 is very vanilla: for [C] it can use Tackle for 10 damage and for [Y] it can use Fairy Wind for 20… neither of which are good deals.  Lastly is the newest option XY: Phantom Forces 68/119, which can use the attack Lick Away, which costs [Y] to remove all its Special Conditions… though as you can’t attack while Asleep or Paralyzed it naturally can’t take care of those.  Otherwise it can Tackle for [CC] and do 20 points of damage.  There is no good tie breaker here; run whichever one you like and hope that you don’t have to attack with it.  There are two other Slurpuff, both of which a Stage 1 Fairy-Type Pokémon with Metal Weakness and Darkness Resistance like today’s version.  Both of these versions require [CC] to Retreat though.  XY 95/146 has 90 HP and the Sweet Veil Ability which removes/prevents Special Conditions for Pokémon with a source of [Y] Energy attached and Draining Kiss, which requires [YC] and both hits and heals for 30.  It hasn’t proven all that good so far, being rivaled by Virizion-EX and Keldeo-EX even those those are more complicated to use in a similar manner.  XY Black Star Promo XY15 enjoys 100 HP (not that 10 more HP makes a huge amount of difference) has two attacks; for [YC] it can use Cotton Guard to hit for 30 points of damage while reducing the damage it takes from attacks by 30 (after Weakness and Resistance).  For [YCC] it can use Sleep Ball to put the opponent’s Active Pokémon to Sleep and do 60 damage to it.  This other option is a pretty bad card and you shouldn’t bother with either of them, whether you’re running today’s version or not, with the possible exception of XY 95/146 if your deck already run’s today’s version, also runs a good source of [Y] Energy and has the room… plus Virizion-EX still might be better if - for example - the source of [Y] Energy is Rainbow Energy or something similar that would also count as [G] for its Verdant Wind.  So what does this partner with?  Seismitoad-EX, possibly other big, Basic Pokémon focused decks that don’t also try to shut down Abilities.  You might even be able to squeeze it in with another Stage 1, but the reason it works with Seismitoad-EX is because of the protection Quaking Punch grants  from Items while Slurpuff simultaneously allows you to keep digging each turn for more and more cards that make things hard on your opponent from more traditional fare like Crushing Hammer, Enhanced Hammer, Hypnotoxic Laser, Muscle Band, etc. to more recent options like Head Ringer to older cards that finally have a chance because Tasting makes them less risky, like disruptive Supporters such as Team Flare Grunt.  Ratings  Note: Scored for use with Seismitoad-EX.  Subtract a point for general usage scores.  Standard: 3/5  Expanded: 3/5  Limited: 4.9/5  Summary: Additional draw power is a welcome and potent thing, though at first I didn’t think a Stage 1 that only provided a single card draw (two when Active) would provide enough of a “boost” to be worth the space and effort, but I didn’t factor in how well this works when you’re already denying your opponent access to part of their own deck.  Honestly I find it a little creepy thinking of how this makes it easier for Seismitoad-EX to turn a 2-player game into mock solitaire as you lose Items plus your opponent can more easily keep you doing nothing with additional disruptive cards.  It might work elsewhere, but we pretty much know it works here.