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Pojo's Pokémon Card of the Day

 

Raichu  #40

Next Destinies

Date Reviewed: April 27, 2012

Ratings & Reviews Summary

Modified: 1.75
Limited: 3.00

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: See Below

Baby Mario
2010 UK National
Seniors
Champion

Raichu (Next Destinies)

We finish the week with another card that has absolutely adorable artwork. Just look at Raichu strutting down the street with his balloons: he could well be the happiest Pokémon I have ever seen. The question is, would putting him in a deck bring a smile to the face of TCG players?

Raichu is a Stage 1 Lightning Pokémon with Fighting Weakness (which makes him an easy KO for Donphan and Terrakion) and just 90 HP (which makes him an easy KO for everything else). The Retreat cost of one is decent enough, but doesn’t really give you a reason to use him.

At least Raichu has a cheap attack to start with. Thundershock costs just one Lightning Energy and for that you get 20 damage and the chance for Paralysis. That’s pretty good value, and can be disruptive if the coin comes up heads, but it’s really little more than a low-damage inconvenience for an opponent. You could use it with Victory Star Victini I guess, but even then it’s outclassed by the options offered by Lilligant EP’s Bemusing Aroma which is similar, only better.

Actually, you may as well keep Victini around to use with Raichu’s second attack. Slam is more expensive at [L][C][C] but it does offer the possibility of big damage: you get to flip two coins and do 80 for each heads. Sadly, flippy attacks like this are almost never worthwhile unless the either have a low failure rate (like Vanilluxe NV) or offer at least something when they fail (such as that Lilligant I mentioned earlier). Even then, you don’t exactly see flippy decks dominating the tournament scene because players (understandably) prefer consistency and reliability over the chance of complete failure. Slam is a great attack if you flip two heads, but if you don’t? You are going to wish you had used something else.

As usual with Raichu (and he does get printed a lot in the TCG), the designers seem to be going for a ‘glass cannon’ type of Pokémon: something that can do huge damage but at the same time is very vulnerable. That isn’t really a very good thing to be in a format where we already have a lot of very durable cannons, and when you factor in the flippy nature of the card . . . well, you don’t have anything that will ever be a part of the competitive scene.

Rating

Modified: 1.75 (Raichu doesn’t care about my bad review – he has balloons!)

Limited: 3 (taking a gamble on flips isn’t such a bad option here)


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