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Ness' Card of the Day

Blaine's Ninetales

"50 for two fire is just sick." - Scott

"Blaine's Ninetales is good. Especially cause you can use Blaine with it. Hint hint." - Joe Brom

"Can heal itself and recharge for it's attack at the same time!" - Colin Peterik

"Venusaur would be like Ahh I'm freakin' out!" - Alex Brosseau

"A cheap, but risky attacker."

-become a quote giver for card of the day! e-mail me to sign up! i'll pick three of the best quote givers to give quotes often in cotd's!

12.04.00  It seems like gym cards get most votes over almost everything. This time, Blaine's Ninetales received about half of the votes. Vote for the next card of the day, like always, at the bottom of this page.

I went to a tournament in Rockford, Illinois, on Saturday, since it has 5 of the top 100 players in the world. I had a long story typed out, but I am going to keep it short. The judge started yelling at a kid for questioning his ruling, and started screaming about how he can give people bad DCI records for questioning him, and said how he can disqualify anyone he wanted to. he disqualified the kid for questioning him. It was ridiculous. There's a LOT more to it than that, and if you care to hear the whole story, E-mail me, and I'll tell you. I did end up winning the tourney, though.

Healing Fire

This isn't a bad power, it's nothing that makes you yell "Oh my!" and wet yourself, but it can help it stay in there. It's probably nothing that is going to have to be Goop Gassed that much, either, as one damage counter removed isn't always a huge threat. But it can be pretty useful in certain situations. An Electabuzz Thunderpunches, tails. You attach a fire and remove 10 (and use it's attack) Now Electabuzz needs this coin flip heads for the knockout, and tails knocks itself out. These type of situations aren't common, but they're not rare. If you play Blaine's Ninetales, you'll probably run into at least one situation a game where Healing Fire has at least a somewhat significant effect.

Another combo with Healing Fire is Blaine. With no energy and twenty damage, it's possible to still attack with it and remove 20 damage on the same turn, thanks to Blaine. You play two fire on it, and you remove two damage counters. This is something that will help a lot once in a while, too.

Burn Up

Burn Up isn't bad, it's one of the cheaper attacks in Pokémon: two energy for 50. It knocks out the Scyther, Rocket's Scyther and Venusaur. And against other cards, 50 is a nice amount. It is within PlusPower range from knocking out the 70HP basics, too, needing two PlusPowers, though this is hard to do more than once a game even if you're maxing out on PlusPowers. A Buzz can Thunderpunch with tails making Burn Up only one PlusPower away from a knockout, and you might be able to get away with sneaky knockouts like this thanks to Blaine, again. A Blaine's Vulpix with no energy can evolve and do 60 for the knockout with Blaine, a couple fire, and a PlusPower.

Of course, tails loses all it's energy, which should almost always be two fire. Again, Blaine allows Ninetales to attack next turn after flipping tails. This is a risky attack, since it's hard to get the Blaine and energy and make a recovery after tails, so a lot of times after tails, despite Healing Fire, Ninetales may not be able to build itself back up and attack again.

Blaine's Ninetales' Enemies

Unfortunately, Blaine's Ninetales has two major enemies that are quite common in tournament environment. The first one, Clefable, is not very common in tournament environment, but it seems like a lot of tournaments have that one Clefable player. Clefable does not need to discard energy when Metronoming Burn Up, so it's just one fire for 50, and with a PlusPower, that attack takes out Ninetales.

The more common enemy, with slightly less of an advantage, is Ditto. Ditto can also copy it's power, but it's weaknesses against Ninetales are the fact that Ditto can be stopped a turn by Goop Gas, Ditto needs two energy(or the double colorless), and Ditto must flip to see if it discards all energy attached to it, and Ditto may have more than two, since it may have been built or building to copy something else. In tournament environments, if you're playing Blaine's Ninetales, you'll probably be surprised by a Ditto, colorless and a PlusPower to take it out.

That can really hurt, since Stage 1's require evolution, and all that work will go straight to the discard.

Blaine's Ninetales worst enemies are the same of like Rocket's Zapdos' enemies, which, by the way, I think deserves a 9.5, instead of the 10 I gave it, earlier.

Blaine's Vulpixes

When building a Blaine's Ninetales deck, it may be hard to decide what Vulpix to use.  His 40 HP Vulpix has the ability to remove a damage counter on it, once a turn. Not really useful, since most of the time this thing is damaged, it goes straight to the discard, before it gets a chance to heal itself. For a fire, and a colorless, it has 50% confusion, but you don't want to put energy on it that won't be too useful with Blaine's Ninetales. (double colorless, or even more than two fire isn't good unless you're that afraid of removal, since Ninetales may lose all it's energy 50% of the time it attacks)

The 50HP one has a weak attack for 10, which isn't very useful, but it's second attack, "Call-Will-o'-the Wisp" has an ability to get up to 3 fire energy from your discard. You'll need them for Ninetales, but it's hard to get that much energy, since Vulpix probably won't be able to take more than one hit before it evolves. It's best to use this attack early game before things before 50 HP basic can be knocked out in one hit by your opponent, but it's also hard to get fire energy in the discard early in the game. Smart opponents take out evolution threats by taking out the basic, so be careful.

My Rating (1- Almost completely useless, 3- Pretty bad, 5- Useable, 7-Tournament level, 10-Totally broken)

Blaine's Ninetales is an evolution that goes down to Wiggly, even without the PlusPower. That hurts. It's attack is risky, it's Pokémon Power is nothing to be amazed about, but it's best quality is the ability to do 50 for just two fire energy, but this has a 50% chance of losing the energy. Blaine backs it up, but doesn't make it unstoppable. Ditto takes this thing out. I'd give it a 5.0. Oh, and by the way, it's weakness to water shouldn't make that big of a difference, as Rain Dance isn't too popular, and Blastoise could take it out anyway.  

In 15/3, Ninetales is pretty much just as strong. Clefable and Ditto are there to take it out, and Blaine takes up a trainer spot. It does take out the Venusaur, but it can lose it's energy, and despite other evolutions being useable at the STS, it still goes down to Wiggly. I'd give it the same rating, a 5.0.

~Jason Klaczynski

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