Excadrill 56/98 (Emerging Powers)
Hello, and welcome to another week of
Pojo’s CotD. We’re looking at Stage 1s
from the Emerging Powers set this time
around (and eagerly awaiting the new
Noble Victories set which looks like
being awesome).
We kick off with a look at one of the
two Excadrills from Emerging Powers.
Excadrill is a pretty cool Pokémon in
the game, so let’s hope that translates
into a decent card.
Well, at first glance, things don’t seem
so bad. 110 HP is acceptable for a Stage
1, even if it does make it easy prey for
the Unova Dragons. Actually, Zekrom
would need a PlusPower to one-shot
Excadrill, thanks to its useful
Lightning Resistance, so that’s a bonus
too. The Water Weakness isn’t too bad
either, as that same Zekrom has been
pretty successful in keeping Water
Pokémon out of the metagame recently
(well, that and the fact that we don’t
have any
really good Water Pokémon to use).
The Retreat Cost of two seems fair for
this kind of Pokémon, and is at least
payable with Double Colourless Energy.
Excadrill’s first attack, Metal Claw,
costs a single Energy of any type and
does 30 damage.
That’s a decent cost/damage ratio, but
it’s going to be no more that something
to use while you wait for the Energy to
do something better, in this case Drill
Run. But just how good is Drill Run?
Well, it’s very expensive at a cost
of three Fighting
Energy, and the Damage output of
80 seems to be below average these days.
You do get the nice effect of discarding
an Energy attached to the Defending
Pokémon, but there are so many attackers
around at the moment that have very low
Energy needs (Yanmega Prime), or use
Energy acceleration (Typhlosion and
Emboar based decks), that this strategy
won’t always be especially useful.
Pokémon like Magnezone, Cinccino, and
Zoroark will be OHKO’d by Drill Run
anyway (thanks to Weakness) so the
Energy discard
will be moot. I suppose it could annoy
something like Gothitelle, but there are
better counters out there.
And then, of course, there is the
Donphan in the Room.
Which is . . . errrrrr . . . Donphan.
A far more durable Fighting Pokémon with
an extra 10 HP and the damage-reducing
Exoskeleton PokéBody. Its first attack
hits harder and faster than Excadrill,
while its second does
an extra 10
damage. All the while we have Donphan,
there seems little point in putting this
card in a deck, and even when it gets
rotated, Excadrill does seem
underpowered and a little too fragile to
be truly competitive.
Rating
Modified: 2 (one of those cards that
isn’t bad exactly, but is never going to
be good enough either)
Limited: 3.25 (decent HP Stage 1 with a
fast attack, and the Energy disruption
will work much better here)
