Baby Mario
2010 UK
National
Seniors
Champion |
Umbreon
(Plasma Freeze)
Everyone knows that Umbreon
is the coolest and the best of all the
Eeveelutions (they do,
right?), so it’s only fair that he also gets the best
TCG card. In fact, you could make a good case for saying
that this Umbeon is the best
supported card in the format. It has support for being
an Eeveelution (Signs of
Evolution Eevee); support
for being Team Plasma (Deoxys-EX
etc); and support for being a Dark Type (Dark Patch,
Dark Claw). Of course I’m not suggesting that you should
use all of these things with
Umbreon, but you certainly could if you wanted
to.
If a card is basically rubbish though, all the support
in the world won’t make it playable. This is where it
looks as though Umbreon
counts itself out. The retreat cost of one is fine, the
Resistance to Psychic semi useful, but the 100 HP is a
touch low and the Fighting Weakness not too good in a
format where we still see Landorus-EX
and the occasional Terrakion
NVI. Even the Darkness Fang attack is mediocre at best.
One Dark and two Colourless Energy
for just 70 points of vanilla damage won’t have
anyone rushing to put this card in their deck.
But Umbreon has something
else to offer: his Dark Shade Ability which gives +20 HP
to all of your Team Plasma Pokémon in play. The best
news about this Ability is that it ‘stacks’, meaning
that you get that +20 for every
Umbreon in play. You can have some fun times
thinking up ridiculous possibilities for this: a
Lugia-EX, for example, with
four Umbreon benched,
Aspertia City Gym in play,
and a Giant Cape attached, will have a ridiculous 290
HP! That kind of thing only happens in theory, but there
are still some attractive, more practical scenarios,
such as Snorlax PLS with
three Umbreon and
Aspertia having a massive
210 HP. Of course, Umbreon
benefits from his own Ability, so unless
Garbodor DRX’s
Garbotoxin is in effect, he
will always have at least 120 HP itself, making him a
bit harder to deal with than you would think.
So, does this mean that Umbreon
can be part of a competitive Team Plasma deck?
One that uses a strategy of tanking
with high HP attackers, rather than using
Deoxys-EX to boost their
attack? Hmmm . . . such a deck would be fun to
play, and hilarious when it works, but this is a format
that generally favours fast, high damage decks over
slower, stronger ones. Getting and keeping multiple
benched Umbreon out may also
be a problem. I wouldn’t count
Umbreon out completely though: I think he can be
used as a basis for something semi-competitive which can
be very difficult for an opponent to play against once
it gets set up. I don’t believe the deck can be as
outright powerful as the more conventional,
Deoxys-based Plasma decks,
but if you are looking for something a bit different, or
if you are turned off by the sky-high price of
Deoxys-EX, then you could do
a lot worse than some kind of
Umbreon/Snorlax deck.
Rating
Modified: 3 (very nice Ability, but there are maybe
better things you could bench in a Plasma deck)
Limited: 3 (lots of Plasma Pokémon in the set that would
benefit from the boost. Shame the attack
isn’t a bit better)
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