Baby Mario
2010 UK
National
Seniors
Champion |
#7 Miltank
How ironic that a non-evolving Basic Pokémon which has
never been
any good before could be the thing that makes Stage 2
decks competitive again.
Yes, very low cost attackers like
Empoleon and Garchomp
have enjoyed the odd success here and there, but the
problem that all Stage 2 decks face is the difficulty of
streaming replacement attackers turn after turn in the
face of Basics that can OHKO. Even up against EX decks
where the Prize trade is 2-1 in their favour, Stage 2
decks really struggled to keep up. Now they have
Miltank, a card that can
solve that problem.
On the face of it, there’s nothing that great
about Miltank, it is a
Colourless Pokémon with only moderate HP and an
inconvenient retreat cost. Its Hammer In attack is
actually bad . . . but take a closer look at Powerful
Friends and you will start to see what make this card
good.
For just one Energy
of any Colour, Powerful Friends does a pathetic 10
damage. However, if there are
any Stage 2 Pokémon on your Bench, this is increased by
70! Yep, this thing can do 80 for one. Stick a Muscle
Band on it and that’s 100 for one: enough to two-hit KO
anything short of a Mega evolution (which no-one plays
at the moment anyway). You can pair
Miltank with Empoleon
DEX, Greninja XY,
Infernape PLS or any of the
Chandelures,
it’s perfectly splashable
because it’s Colourless. What you get is an attacker
that can go and do work while you set up or when you
need to recover from a KO. It will only give up one
Prize and uses minimal resources within the deck.
If you feel the urge to play a Stage 2 attacker, then
you need to find room for 2-3 of these in your deck:
you’ll be glad you did.
Rating
Modified: 3.5 (the cheap support attacker that Stage 2s
need to compete)
Limited: 3.5 (if you get a viable Stage 2 line of
anything then this is a no-brainer)
|
HEZ
Intro to
Unlimited 150 |
7. Miltank.
Unlimited 150 review.
Miltank has never really had a good card and now all of a sudden it
gets this monstrosity! By U150 standards this is one of
the scariest cards in Flashfire. Using Stage 2s isn’t a
calculated risk in this format, it’s just regular play,
so a card that can 2 hit KO just about any Pokémon used
in the format for just 1 energy is obviously going to be
good!
It has a nice bulky 100 HP, good for a non-EX Basic and
even a reasonable backup attack with Hammer In if you’ve
got stuck without a Stage 2. It’s quite nice because
it won't often be too aggressive in the first few turns
of the game, allowing players to set up. But once you
get a Stage 2 online it’s doing 80 damage for very
little investment in itself. 80 is an important number
as no Pokémon go over 160 HP other than Megas and
Wailord and many staple cards have around 80 HP such as
Claydol and Uxie.
The decks that get this biggest boost out of this card are Stage 2
swarm decks like Beedrill, Empoleon and Nidos as it fits
into their strategy of setting up Stages 2s for the
benefit of doing cheap damage. That said, any deck that
runs even just a few Stage 2 cards can probably find
room for this if they’d benefit from a cheap, efficient
beater.
Rating: 4.5 (Any deck with Stage 2s should consider
freeing up a slot for this card!)
|
