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Pojo's Pokemon Card of the Day

X-Act

Primeape Hello, I’m kinda back in the COTD section in Pojo. It’s been a while, I know. I’m not dead yet. Anyway, on to the card. Primeape from FRLG is an interesting little bugger. 70HP is low for a final evolution, but this is backed up by free retreat, which is all too rare these days. Also, its first attack, for [2], can deal almost limitless damage by discarding Pokemon Tools and/or Technical Machines from your hand, and, if you happen not to have them in your hand, you can always resort to the second attack that does 40 for [1F]. Thus, Primeape can solidly attack as from the second turn in any format, which is pretty nice. The problem with Primeape is finding a good way to recycle the TMs/tools it discards. Unlimited: In Unlimited, Primeape gets the help of Traveling Salesman, which lets him search for 2 TMs/Tools to deal an extra 60 damage. It’s not too SER-weak, and the attack that matters is colorless, so Primeape can be splashed. Free retreat is always nice, but its 70HP will give him a few problems. It helps that Psychic isn’t played much in Unlimited, unless it’s in the form of Pokemon Powers (Slowking). It could provide some fun for the casual player, but don’t use it competitively. 2.5/5 Modified: Here it’s okay at best. It can score you OHKOes, even to huge ex’s, but then you need to recover lost Tools/TMs, and only Rocket’s Wobbuffet enables you to do that (and only for tools). It also doesn’t get Traveling Salesman backup, so it basically needs to use draw cards to get the tools/tm’s, or else resort to Rocket’s Meowth (and again, only for tools). I’ve seen Primetool decks do alright in tournaments, but don’t bet on a Primetool deck to be in the Top 16 at Worlds. Top 32… maybe. 2.5/5 Limited: It’s a good pull in Limited, even if you don’t get any Pokemon Tools. [1F] for 40 is a solid, rapid attack, and free retreat is especially nice in Limited. Get it. 3.5/5

Prime

Primeape (EX: Fire Red / Leaf Green) #28/112 I’ll start from the top and work my way down. Hit Points (HP) - Primeape has 70HP. That’s a little below average but not that bad really. It won’t mean that much if you run into your weakness. If you get hit by 40 damage from a psychic pokemon, Primeape is knocked out (KO’d) whether or not it has 70HP. Not bad, not good, about average. Attack 1: Toss – You can discard any amount of Technical Machines and Pokemon Tools from your hand and the attack does 30 damage times the number of cards you discarded. Right off that bat, I notice that there is no limit on the damage this attack does. This is one of the reasons the deck can continue to one-hit-knock-out (OHKO) pokemon over and over again. You do have to discard though, which after time will be harder and harder. Without a lot of good draw in the deck, you might be left with a small hand and little to no damage coming out of Primeape’s first attack. But, for two colorless energy, which you can slap a Double Rainbow Energy down on or a boost energy even, it’s definitely worth using. Attack 2: Low Kick – [F][C] for 40 isn’t bad at all. If you face a pokemon that is weak to fighting, you are dealing 80 damage for just two energy. You can even attach a crystal shard to Primeape and deal 80 damage to the pokemon weak to colorless. This attack is not shabby at all. Weakness – Psychic weakness isn’t that bad right now, but it could be a problem at Worlds. Right now, you have the lone Deoxys ATK form in some Blaziken builds, Dark Slowking, and Metagross floating around that can KO Primeape. At worlds though, with Turn-2-Lock being much more popular, I see even more psychic being played. There are better weaknesses to have right now. Definitely. Resistance – None. What do you expect from a monkey that throws trash at people? Retreat Cost – None. Now this is really nice. Being able to jump around on the field fits Primeape very much. I still feel though, with 70HP, that jumping around won’t help that much because Primeape will be getting OHKO’d frequently. The Good: -Toss can do unlimited damage. -Free retreat is always good. -Low Kick can deal 80 damage for just 2 energy. The Bad: -Psychic weakness isn’t that good right now and will be worse at Worlds. -Discarding cards each turn means that your hand will be small unless you pack a good number of draw cards in the deck. Final Review: I really like Primeape. It is one of the few pokemon that can deal unlimited damage. It is a stage 1, which makes it easy to get out on the field, and it has free retreat. But because it is a stage 1, it is lacking in Hit Points (HP), which will allow it to be one-hit-knocked-out (OHKO’d) too easily. One great thing about the card is that the tools and technical machines you run with the deck to discard can be used on Primeape too. With new interesting tools being released in the upcoming set, EX: Unseen Forces, I see people giving Primeape another try. This time around, you can give him 20 more HP and no weakness with tools. That should make the deck work a little better. Unlimited: 3.5/5 – Although it would be awkward, you have a lot of draw in unlimited meaning that you could possibly setup a turn 1 Primeape and a hand full of tools. With many of the babies being weak to fighting and Sneasel being weak too, this might actually work well. Modified: 3/5 – It works, but I don’t see it working well enough to win a big premier tournament though. It’s too easy to OHKO a pokemon with 70HP, and there will be a lot of psychic at worlds, which hurts Primeape quite a bit. Limited: 2.5/5 – I think it’s only good quality here is that it has free retreat and can deal 40 for 2. You won’t have a lot of cards to discard in this format. Well this is Prime signing off for the day. Have a good day everyone and a pleasant tomorrow. ~ Prime (Matt Riddle) matthewriddle@gmail.com