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Pojo's Pokemon Card of the Day

 

Forretress

HS Undaunted

Date Reviewed: July 12, 2010

Ratings & Reviews Summary

Modified: 1.75
Limited: 2.25

Ratings are based on a 1 to 5 scale.
1 being the worst. 
3 ... average.  
5 is the highest rating.

Back to the main COTD Page

Combos With:

Baby Mario
2010 UK National
Seniors
Champion

Forretress (Undaunted)

 

Hello and welcome to a new week of Pojo’s CotD.

 

Wow . . . is it time for a new set already? Doesn’t seem so long ago that Unleashed was . . . unleashed, and now we are getting preview cards for the new set, Undaunted. As with all preview cards, you will find them on the official website, complete with descriptions telling you how amazingly awesome and powerful they are. The thing is . . . the actual cards usually turn out to be a lot less awesome than they claim, so stick around and (hopefully) us reviewers will be able to tell you just how playable they really will be.

 

First up is Forretress, a Stage 1 Steel Type Pokémon whose ok-ish 90 HP is made better by the fact that it can take advantage of Special Metal Energy to prolong its life a bit. It also has an attack which is designed to do the same thing: Mirror Shot does a fairly poor 30 damage for [M][C], but it does make your opponent flip a coin to see if they can attack with that Defending Pokémon next turn. Of course, they could always just retreat and attack with something else with no problems, but at least it does give Forretress a little more protection.

 

Just sitting there, doing small amounts of damage won’t get you very far though. Luckily, there is a point to Forretress’s minor tanking strategy in the shape of its brilliantly-named second attack: Everyone Explode Now. For [M][C][C] this does 30 damage times the number of Forretress and Pineco you have in play (so a maximum of 120 base damage, practically speaking). The drawback (apart from needing the relevant Pokémon in play) is that it does it then does 30 damage to each of your Pineco and Forretress.

 

This card is clearly designed for its very own deck. You try and keep a Forretress out long enough to get the required Energy on it while you fill your bench with its friends and then hit big. Is it any good though? Ummm, not really. It does seem to need a lot of setting up, and after one decent attack you are left with a lot of damage on your side of the field, making your Pokémon easy prey for snipers. Of course you could always include cards like Manectric PL and/or Bench Shield to protect your Pinecos, but that’s yet more set up . . . and for what? Yes, 120 damage for three Energy is pretty good, but the trouble you have to go through to get it means that it isn’t really worth it.

 

Combine those negative qualities with a huge retreat cost of three and a double Fire Weakness, and that means that Forretress is unlikely to see much play. Which is a shame as I really wanted to shout ‘EVERYONE EXPLODE NOW!!!!!!’ during a match.

 

Rating

 

Modified: 1.75 (Could be a fun deck – and by ‘fun’, I mean ‘not remotely competitive’)

Limited: 2.5 (lots of damage if you pull a few Pinecos, but sadly no way to protect them)

 

Combos with . . .

 

Manectric PL

Bench Shield

virusyosh

Hello, Pojo readers! This week we're taking a break from our Unleashed reviews to look at some of the cards that were spoiled from the new HS Undaunted set. Today's Card of the Day is Forretress.

Forretress is a Stage 1 Metal Pokemon. Aside from Dialga G and the occasional Steelix and Jirachi, Metal Pokemon are somewhat rare in today's metagame. 90 HP on a Stage 1 is about average, but still could afford to be higher. Double Weakness to Fire isn't great, as Blaziken FB is quite common. Psychic Resistance is very nice. A Retreat Cost of 3 is not so nice, however, so most of the time you'll want to get Forretress to your bench some other way.

Forretress has two attacks. The first, Mirror Shot, deals 30 damage for [MC] and gives a nice Smokescreen-type effect, making your opponent's attack fail if they flip tails. Having a 50% chance of not being hit during your opponent's next turn is great, but keep in mind that your opponent can still switch to bypass the effect.

The second attack, the very original and hilariously named Everyone Explode Now, costs [MCC] and does 30 damage times the number of Pineco and Forretress you have in play, but also deals 30 damage to each of them. In order to get the most out of this attack, you need to have to have the attacking Forretress with 3 more Pineco and/or Forretress, which ends up dealing 120 damage to the opponent and 30 damage to four of your Pokemon. As we all have seen with Crobat G and Poke Turn, 30 damage can be a very significant amount that could easily put most of your Pokemon within KO range. There are many better ways to deal 120 damage in Pokemon that don't require the energy investment, bench space, or harmful recoil that this attack needs to work properly. Sure, you can use Special Metal Energy for damage reduction, but it's not really worth it, in my opinion.

Modified: 1.75/5 I can't see Forretress making a splash in Modified any time soon, unless there is some huge combo that I'm missing. However, it is very original, which is nice to see in a game where so many Pokemon in the newer sets have had very vanilla attacks.

Limited: 2/5 I'm guessing it's not going to be much better here, although Mirror Shot can cause some problems if your opponent flips a lot of tails. Everyone Explode Now should probably be avoided.


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