aroramage |
Yep, we're back baby!
Vileplume hasn't always appeared on
the radar of tourney decks, but when he has, it's almost
always ALWAYS because he's got a lockdown Ability! (says
the guy who was out of the game for many many years...)
Really though, it's a testament to Vileplume's heritage
that another promising young card takes to the scene to
lock down player decks - and he's probably going to be
the most dangerous one yet!
First off, let's kick out the old
Solar Beam attack so it's out of the way. You're never
gonna use it. It's a 3-for-70 vanilla blow, and it's not
worth your time to make it work, so don't. Vileplume was
built as a Bench-sitter, and by Arceus, he's gonna be a
Bench-sitter!!
Now here's the kicker: Vileplume's
Ability will keep players in check the way Seismitoad-EX's
Quaking Punch kept opponents at bay for so long. That's
right, Irritating Pollen completely neutralizes the
players' ability to play any Item cards from their
hand.
Please take a moment to look up
grammar and note that that apostrophe is coming after
the "s" there, not before.
That's because Irritating Pollen
affects BOTH sides of the playing field - not unlike
Undaunted's Vileplume did. At first glance though,
you'll recall that that Vileplume negated the entire
class of Trainer cards rather than just Items, so why
would this Vileplume be more powerful? Well, there's one
very obvious reason: Forest of Giant Plants.
That's right, the most powerful
Grass support lands itself right on top of Vileplume and
gives him the Ability to come out as early as Turn 1.
And a Turn 1 Item-lock is terrifying when you get down
to it! Heck, Seismitoad-EX proved that theory true for
the longest time - and now Vileplume's here to make it
ever more certain!
Now any deck tailored around
Vileplume is going to have to take into consideration
that they're out of the Item race just as much as their
opponent's gonna be, and that's where a smart player can
take advantage of this with Giratina-EX to lock the
opponent down. And if you're really crafty and play Hex
Maniac at just the right time, you can open up your
Items for the turn to devastate your opponent - though
be warned, your opponent will get their Items back too!
In any case, Vileplume is a nasty
little card that takes some skill to use, and as any
crafty player will know, he's a fairly powerful card in
the format - at least, in the right deck.
Rating
Standard: 4.5/5 (a little slow at
Stage 2, but that's circumvented by the introduction of
Forest of Giant Plants - and once the lock is down, say
goodbye to everything you ever cared for!)
Expanded: 4/5 (Item lock will still
be prevalent, but then there's also Garbodor to watch
out for)
Limited: 4.5/5 (the only reason you
wouldn't play him is you lack the evolutions...and you
drafted a lot of good Items...but hey, he's good for
keeping that opponent locked!)
Arora Notealus: Vileplume was
always an interesting Pokemon since day one, what with
that giant flower on his head. Seriously, how do you go
through life with what's basically a giant beanbag
growing out of your head? It's gotta be rough...well,
unless it's a really light flower on its head.
Next Time: Oh you probably know by
now...well if not, I guess I'll just count my 2000
Pokemon movies.
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Otaku |
Our second place card is the latest iteration of my
lovely dark rose, Vileplume (XY: Ancient
Origins 03/98)! @};-
If you’re not sure what I mean, it will become clear
almost immediately because this is one of those cards
where I’m jumping immediately to the main feature
that justifies running the card. In this case that
would be its Ability “Irritating Pollen” which states
“Each player can’t play any Item cards from his or her
hand.” This is a two-sided, no other requirements Item
lock. It is a bit weaker than some other examples
because you are also denied Items, but unlike those
others this one can work from the Bench and doesn’t
require you use a specific attack alongside it. My
goofy intro refers to one of my favorite older cards and
its string of successors: Dark Vileplume (Team
Rocket 13/82, 30/82), which sports an even more
impressive effect, its Pokémon Power “Hay Fever” that
prevents any and all Trainers from being played from
hand by either player (though it can be turned off if
Dark Vileplume is afflicted with a Special
Condition). That wasn’t the first Vileplume but
it was the first one to actually matter. Since then
other versions have taken up the Trainer denying mantle,
though like today’s they did things a little
differently.
Vileplume
has the attack “Solar Beam” for [GGC], hitting for 70
damage. This is a filler attack though not too bad of
one: if it required [GCC] and/or hit a bit harder it
would be good, but as is you’ll still may occasionally
find it worth using. Historically Vileplume have
not been great attackers. It has a Retreat Cost of
[CCC] that is painful to pay: probably requires more
Energy than you’ll have attached and definitely more
than most decks will be able to afford to discard.
Bring an alternative that the Ability won’t block and
if you have room in Expanded, Heavy Ball for a
decent spare search option. The lack of Resistance is
typical so we’ll move onto the Weakness which is also
typical but quite clearly present. The Fire-Type never
amounted to much most of the previous format, apart from
a few key attackers that didn’t always need Weakness in
the first place, but this new set gave us Flareon
(XY: Ancient Origins 13/98). You may remember
that one from me referencing it before and if not, we
did a whole CotD on it
here.
There are also a few promising Fire-Types in this set
(though the rest weren’t promising enough to make the
list). Between semi-random Stage 1 Pokémon becoming
Fire-Types and cards like Entei (XY: Ancient
Origins 14/98) and the other Entei (XY:
Ancient Origins 15/98) I am thinking you can’t trust
this Weakness to remain hard to hit but then I have to
remind myself I’ve thought that before, so just keep an
eye out.
Vileplume
has 130 HP. For a Stage 2, this is the “low” end of
“typical”: as if I didn’t sound wishy-washy enough right
now that amount is pretty badly split between “OHKO” and
“survival”. You’ve got the usual exceptions to the
OHKO: decks that have an incomplete set-up or which
focus on effects over damage, but you’ve also got a few
that are more 2HKO oriented or prone to misfiring and
either will whiff on the OHKO at least some of the time.
Too high to accurately write off as a OHKO and too low
to count on it being a 2HKO… except of course when that
Weakness factors in. As for the rest of being a Stage
2, it is a hurdle to overcome. You’ll need three cards
to get a single Vileplume into play, and without
Evolution acceleration you’ll also need two turns. Good
thing because this would be insane even with the
card investment if you could drop it first turn… which
demonstrates why I have trust issues with the
powers-that-be because they made it a Grass-Type. That
is right: with
our #12 pick
Forest of Giant Plants you can try to rush into a
Vileplume and cut your opponent off from his or
her Item cards on not only your first turn but even the
very first turn of the game! The slight break is that
your opponent probably needs to rely on their opening
Supporter plus any Shaymin-EX (XY: Roaring
Skies 77/108; 106/108) to puff off such a feat.
While it won’t too often be relevant, Vileplume
also enjoys exploiting a decent amount of Weakness if
you want it attacking and never has to worry about
Resistance. There is at least one anti-Grass-Type card,
maybe more: they are forgettable so even I only feel a
general mention is warranted.
Especially if you want to take advantage of Forest of
Giant Plants you’ll have to go through Oddish
and Gloom: no Rare Candy on this route!
The only Standard legal option for Oddish is
XY: Ancient Origins 1/98, while Expanded adds in
BW: Boundaries Crossed 1/149. For Gloom it
is the same: XY: Ancient Origins 2/98 for
Standard or Expanded, while BW: Boundaries Crossed
2/149 is Expanded only. Expanded also adds in a second
option for Vileplume, BW: Boundaries Crossed
3/149. All of these are Fire Weak Grass-Types
without Ancient Traits and everything that isn’t
Vileplume (BW: Boundaries Crossed 3/149) has
a Retreat Cost of [C] and no Abilities. The three from
BW: Boundaries Crossed all share Water Resistance
because that was common to Grass-Types at the time; the
newer ones have none.
Oddish
(XY: Ancient Origins 1/98) has 50 and the attack
“Trip Over” that costs [G]; it does 10 damage and has
you flip a coin with “heads” granting an additional 10
damage (“tails” just means the original 10 only). Oddish
(Boundaries Crossed) 1/149 Also has only 50 HP,
but two attacks: for [G] it can use “Absorb” to hit for
10 damage while healing 10 damage from itself and for
[CC] it can use “Acid” to hit for 20 damage. Gloom
(XY: Ancient Origins 2/98) has 80 HP and a single
attack (Drool) that does 30 for [GC]; Gloom (BW:
Boundaries Crossed 2/149) can use “Foul Odor” at a
cost of [CC] to Confuse itself and the opponent’s Active
or for [GCC] can use “Poison Powder” for 40 damage and
of course Poison. Vileplume (BW: Boundaries
Crossed 3/149) has the same [CCC] Retreat Cost as
today’s version but with 140 HP. Its Ability (Allergy
Panic) causes Weakness to count as 4x instead of 2x.
Its attack is “Pollen Spray” and it costs [GCCC] to hit
for 50 leave the opponent’s Active both Asleep and
Poisoned. It
was reviewed way back in late 2012
and we really, really overestimated it. You see with
the absurd damage output of competitive cards, most just
didn’t need to double the current Weakness they faced so
much as to find a way to hit more than one kind of
Weakness.
In Standard you have no choice with the line, but in
Expanded I’d use the older BW: Boundaries Crossed
Oddish and Gloom as they seem
ever-so-slightly better. If you have a spare slot go
ahead and include a lone copy of Vileplume (BW:
Boundaries Crossed 3/149) alongside two or three of
today’s Vileplume (XY: Ancient Origins
03/98), because “Irritating Pollen” doesn’t stack:
multiples are only there to function as an immediate
backup in case your opponent can somehow neutralize a
single one that is in play (and presumably can’t do the
same to a second). At the same time though you won’t
want to skimp on them because you’ll want to set them up
quickly and reliably. A full four is probably overkill
for the final Stage but not the lower Stages… this is
why for something so niche you still may wish to
consider including the older Vileplume. At least
in Expanded; for Standard it isn’t even an option.
Fortunately the most likely deck for Vileplume
doesn’t really need it anyway: instead it will focus on
attacking with
yesterday’s CotD,
Giratina-EX (XY: Ancient Origins 57/98,
93/98). While it isn’t worth the effort of pulling off
the entire lock (Vileplume on the Bench and
Giratina-EX attacking) on your first turn when you
go second (it is possible) you have a decent
chance of getting it going by your second turn and if
you do a lot of decks are going to struggle
without their Items, Special Energy and Stadiums plus
if their main attacker is a Mega Evolution, it needs a
work-around to touch Giratina-EX. There are a
few key cards (like Hex Maniac or Xerosic)
that can disrupt the lock.
Another option is M Sceptile-EX,
our review from two days ago.
Nice to the the Top 15 approach earning its keep, given
all the older cards I’ve linked back to in this one
review. I mentioned there that the deck would probably
want to hold off until it has access to Fisherman
(confirmed for a Japanese reprint and thus highly likely
to return to outside of Japan) to help with getting
basic Energy back into hand, but if you did want to try
it now you could also consider AZ: bounce
your own Vileplume into hand, use the needed
Items (Sceptile Spirit Link, Energy Retrieval
or Energy Recycler plus a Professor’s Letter,
etc.) then thanks to Forest of Giant Plants you
can immediately drop Oddish, Evolve back into
Gloom and finally back into Vileplume. Are
there other potential combos? I would assume so but
these are the two that seemed the most fleshed out.
Especially in Expanded, I suggest combing for other
dance partners for our lovely rose. As for Limited play,
that is a tough one. The set has a decent chunk of
Items and shutting them down sounds good, but
Vileplume isn’t overly easy to splash: you’d either
be forcing yourself to run more basic Grass Energy
or accepting Vileplume as a Bench-sitter. In the
end I think unless you’re running a deck built around a
single Basic Pokémon (+39 deck) then you should
try to work in Vileplume. Even here three slots
(or more if you can manage better than a 1-1-1 line) is
a lot to dedicate to such a thing, but blocking the
handful of Items your opponent is running can be
disproportionately important, enough to compensate for
the times when it ends up being a total waste.
Ratings
Standard:
4/5
Expanded:
4.2/5
Limited:
4/5
Summary:
Vileplume is somewhat deck specific; perhaps
people will find a way to run it in a as a stripped down
Bench-sitter but for now it will be a major part of any
deck which contains it, so that is not a “general
usage” rating. That being said it shuts down Items and
from the Bench, which is seriously potent. I can’t tell
if I’m just not encountering the people who are using it
well right now or if we had a false start on the best
dance partners for the card, but I still expect great
things from it.
My confidence has waned a little so were I writing the
list now I would have put it below the more
“general usage” cards that made the list, though not by
much. It probably shouldn’t be any lower than 5th place
unless everything else expected to help make it was
already rated above it.
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