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Pojo's Pokemon Card of the Day

Hinkbert	Swellow For a Pokemon that I never hear anyone talk about, except to complain about getting their twentieth POP one, Nintendo sure does seem to like making Swellow cards. The newest version actually seems alright, and it seems to be the best over-all. First the stats: 70 Hp which is to be expected, lightning weakness, fighting resistance, and a retreat for free. Pretty good bottom stats, lightning has some powerful hitters right now, but most can easily do 70 damage easily without even taking weakness into account. A resistance is always nice, although I suppose it’s a bit more dangerous to have a fighting resistance with the new Medicham ex, but still better than nothing. A retreat cost for free is the best and there’s really no down side to it. Swellow’s first attack does 20 damage for 1 energy, it’s nice that it has a one energy attack since that allows a quick Wally’s training and you can bypass those horrible Taillows. The second attack does 40 to anyone for 3 energy, a great attack, especially since it’s boostable. Swellow is a supporting Pokemon at best; the problem is that it’s hard to find a deck to use it in, even though it is colorless and should easily fit almost anywhere. Most decks that use boost energies use them on big hitters, like T-Tar or Gardy, so it would seem a waste on Swellow, plus it has nothing else special about it, and it’s encumbered by its its own low Hp, and horrible pre-evolution cards, all of which have either horrible attacks or Hp or combination of both. Theoretically one could make a deck with Surprise Time Machines and an assortment of Swellows, I’d recommend the Deoxys and R/S ones, if played correctly a deck like this could do well; not tournament level well but still pretty good. So while Swellow could fit into most decks, there’s usually if not always a better choice, at least for now. Perhaps our little bird friend will become more powerful after rotation, but for now it is relegated to the obscurity of the deck binder. Unlimited 2/5 Uses any energy, resistant to Tyrogue, and can OHKO benched babies, so it does serve some purpose, but like most new Pokes Swellow can’t compete that well in this format. Modified 2/5 Good for hitting the bench and not much else. Limited 3.5/5 Bench hitting is great here, but the weakness isn’t. Even a lucky Minun with 2 energy, of any color I should add, can OHKO this bird. Free retreat is good though, so you could potentially save it and the energies on it for a late game bench hitting win. The only Taillow in this format has a tails/fails attack, weakening its evolved form since Taillow so ineffectual.
PokeGuru	Swellow EX Emerald - 41/106 - Uncommon Nice Stage One we have here, slightly more playable than the POP ones =P It has 70 HP; OK for a Stage One, but I've seen better. Of course, the Fighting resistance and Free Retreat make it more attactive. It only requires 1 Energy of any type to do 20 damage; great when wanting to get a head start. Its other attack does 40 damage to ANY of your opponent's Pokemon. Always nice to start hitting the Bench...Also, a lot of Pokemon have Colourless weakness nowadays, so seeing a Pokemon to take advantage of that is useful. The disadvantages of this card...well, it'll be terrible against Zappy ex decks. It might help a little against DragTrode, but can get OHKOed too easily. I personally don't think it'd be strong enough to last all that long. Unlimited: 2/5 Nice, but too easy to OHKO. Modified: 3/5 OK against DragTrode, for rest of comments, see Unlimited. Draft: 4/5 Great fast attacker and nice to attack bench to make the opponent more vunerable. Later, PokeGuru. pokeguru@gmail.com
Bullados	Swellow Attributes: Decent HP for a stage 1, it should stay alive for a good amount of time before anything major happens. Weakness to Electric is not so good, as 2 of the biggest decks today are fast electric decks, and would easily OHKO Swellow because of the weakness. Resistance to Fighting is very nice, as there are also a good number of top decks that use that type extensively. Also, having a Resistance is always better than NOT having one. The opposite is true for Retreat; the lower, the better, and you can't get much lower than 0, which is what this bird has. Not really surprising, as most of the birds have had very low retreat costs, never more than 1 from what I remember. Attack #1: [C] "Peck" Very simple, yet very effective. 1 for 20 is always good, and very cheap for the damage. However, this is your classic filler attack, and the other attack, as usual, is much better. Attack #2: [CCC] "Skill Dive" 40 damage anywhere for a simple Boost or Scramble is always good, also cheap by the old standards, although, I'm thinking of revising the standard due to the amount of cards out now that easily exceed those standards, and not just Pokemon-ex either. This is a nice backup attack if you want to pick off a weak Bench or something like that. Ratings: Unlimited: Scyther is better for free retreat, Umbreon is better for bench picking, Dark Raichu is better for spread damage. Simply put, whatever Swellow can do, there are others in the format that can do it better. 2/5 Modified: Actually, pretty nice here. Bench damage is something unexpected, and 40 HP basics are fairly common in the format today. Unfortunately, both Dark Tyrannitar and Steelix do a better job of spread damage than Swellow, and Electabuzz is easier to get rolling consistantly. Just like Unlimited, there is something that does what Swellow does BETTER than Swellow. 3/5 Limited: An uncommon stage 1 with a common basic, you should be able to get a good line of these in Draft and probably a 2-1 or 3-2 in Sealed. Free retreat is always nice, and people love retreating to protect their damaged goods on the bench. Just use Swellow to pick them off. Also, to add to the excitement, there is very little good Electric in Emerald, and a whole lot of Fighting, making Swellow a good defensive choice most of the time. 4/5 ~Bullados ~~Bullados@comcast.net