By Jack Snell
Hey everyone, hope youre all well, Jack Snell here , and today I bring you part 1 of a review of every Pokemon Prime card in the HGSS-on modified format. Lets get right to it:
HGSS;
Typhlosion Prime: One of the two best Pokemon Prime in the set, Typhlosion rocks in at a respectable 140 HP. The water weakness is negligible right now with only Beartic, Samurott and Suicune Entei Legend seeing competitive play, after Ross Cawthon popularised it at Worlds. The two retreat cost is a little heavy but respectable, given its PokePower Afterburner.
Any Power/Body/Ability that breaks a fundamental rule of the game, energy attachments in this case, is going to be powerful. Afterburner allows you to take a fire energy from the discard pile once during your turn and attach it to one of your Pokemon at the cost of one damage counter. This Power is synergetic with Reshiram, in particular, because the 130 HP beast which is easily searchable via Collector/Comm/Dual Ball, has an attack Outrage dealing 20 damage plus 10 more for each damage counter on it for CC. Afterburner adds damage to increase the power of this attack. Also Blue Flare costing RRC deals 120 damage and instructs you to discard 2 Fire Energy attached to Reshiram. Afterburner allows you to use this attack on consecutive turns, making Reshiphlosion a very popular metagame deck.
Typhlosion also has a very underrated attack of its own, Flare Destroy. For RRC it deals a sub par 70 damage but has the effect of discarding an energy on Typhlosion and also discarding one on the defending Pokemon. For you this is irrelevant because you can just attach another the following turn, or use Afterburner to get it back, but you can discard an opponents Double Colorless Energy that was providing a large amount of their attack cost or a Rescue Energy to prevent their Pokemon returning to their hand when its KOd.
Finally Typhlosion combos with the draw engine Ninetales, whose PokePower allows you to discard a fire energy from your hand and draw three cards. This provides you energy in the discard to Afterburner with Typhlosion.
Overall I give Typhlosion a 9/10 for competitive play Combos with: Ninetales, Reshiram, Lost Remover
Meganium Prime: Atrocious, terrible, dire, pathetic, disappointing, I cannot think of enough adjectives to describe this card. Lets start with the positives, of which there are few. 150 HP makes Meganium Prime a real tank, until you see the dreaded fire weakness, the most popular type in our format right now. The water resistance is a minor bonus but realistically you should never have Meganium Prime active. The two retreat cost is acceptable but the atrocious attack Solarbeam isnt. GGCC for a meagre pathetic 80 damage with no effect is beyond words terrible. To put it in context, Yanmega Prime, a stage 1 deals 70 damage for no energy if you can match hand size with your opponent.The only attraction of Meganium Prime is the PokePower Leaf Trans which allows you to move as many grass energy around your Pokemon as often as you like, look familiar? Yes its base set Venusaur. However when there is an easily searchable, more diverse and splashable energy transferrer, Shaymin UL in the format, Meganium Prime is put to shame. Shaymin has a one time use PokePower Celebration Wind which when you play it from your hand allows you to move ANY type of energy around your Pokemon as you wish. Its a basic Pokemon, so searchable with Collector,Comm, Dual Ball and fits easily into any deck. To run Meganium Prime as a tech youre looking at a minimum of 2-1-2 with 3 Rare Candy and suddenly 8 spaces of your deck are lost to a tech.
Overall I give Meganium Prime a 2/10 and thats being generous Combos with: The binder
Feraligatr Prime: Feraligatr Prime, the destructive Crocodile also weighs in at a sturdy 140 HP. Its typing is really useful right now hitting commonly seen Pokemon like Typhlosion Prime, Emboar, Reshiram and Donphan Prime for weakness. The weakness to grass is in my opinion the second best weakness to have atm, second only to steel. The most popular grass attacker Yanmega’s sonicboom attack deals 70 damage but doesnt apply weakness and resistance, so Feraligatr wont be OHKOd by it.
Feraligatr has a hefty three retreat cost so be sure to pack some Switch if youre running it, particularly in this Pokemon Catcher infested format. Feraligatrs PokePower Rain Dance is a nostalgic throwback to the same PokePower that Base set Blastoise had. It states that as often as you like during your turn you may attach a water energy from your hand to one of your water Pokemon. Now, this isnt as broken or flexible as Emboars Inferno Fandango which allows you to attach as many fires as you like from your hand to ANY of your Pokemon, but it stil has potential.
The most common partner for Feraligatr is Blastoise UL whose attack Hydro Launcher for WWCC can snipe an opponents Pokemon for 100 and return two W energy to the hand. Not only does Feraligatr Prime allow you to chain this attack but also accelerate it faster. However the deck is extremely slow and isnt very competitive in a format where Yanmega Donphan variants are hitting 60-70 damage consistently by turn 2 and Zekrom will annihilate you by hitting for weakness unless you have a hard counter.
The more accepted way to run the deck is Blastoise Floatzel, not only is Floatzel a speedier stage 1 Pokemon but its Water Acceleration Power allows you to attach 1 water energy from your hand to it once during your turn. You can then use Blastoises Wash Away to move as many energy as you like from your benched Pokemon to your active and chain Hydro Launcher that way, literally rinse and repeat.
Feraligatr has a lone attack of its own, and not a very effective one. Hydro Crunch does 60 base damage for the massive cost of WWWW, and adds 10 more for each damage counter already on the defending Pokemon. A plus side is that it can 2HKO every card in the format right now, apart from Meganium Prime ironically and maybe Torterra or something, but retreating to an undamaged Pokemon will ruin Feraligatrs day, and dedicating 4 water energy to a support Pokemon isnt really viable.
Overall I give Feraligatr a 5/10 for competitive play, although with the hype its seeing combined with Kyurem in an upcoming set that could increase
Please return to the next part of this article where I cover the 3 remaining Primes from the HGSS set, Blissey, Ampharos and Donphan. Thank you for checking it out, and I appreciate any feedback you guys may have, Peace
Jack Snell
Tags: Card Collecting, Feraligatr, Meganium, Typhlosion