Buzzwole – Pokemon Cosmic Eclipse Review

Vince

Looking at this Buzzwole card today, I think it is capable of playing football and is fast enough to reach the goal for a touchdown, giving the sports team (Team Ultra Beasts) six points. Both the ability and attack makes me want to make an analogy of that.

The Beast Boost Ability lets Buzzwole’s attack go through 20 more yards for each prize card you’ve taken. Since you start the game with six prizes, if you took five prizes and you’re down to your last prize, you already get to sprint 100 extra yards. This would be useful depending on its only attack. Touchdown launches 60 yards for GC and gets to drink Powerade to energize itself for the next round after running super fast to reach the goal with its four legs. Even better, if it wears a Beastite vest, combined with the ability, it’ll be able to go further at every increments of 30 yards!

I think I went too far with football puns, but I hope you got the picture!

Ratings:

• Standard: 2.5/5
• Expanded: 2.5/5
• Limited: 4/5

Otaku

Buzzwole (SM – Cosmic Eclipse 21/236; SM – Black Star Promos SM 218) is not a Throwback Thursday pick; we have so many new cards to review before the year ends, we’re going to take a little break with those on the Pokémon portion of the site.

Back to Buzzwole.  It is a [G] Type, which is mildly useful for exploiting Weakness and for tricks like Net Ball.  Being a Basic is still the best, and being an Ultra Beast is still on the whole a positive; there are some strong anti-Ultra Beast effects, but it is hard to top support like Beast Ring!  130 HP is a little more likely to be OHKO’d than not but that’s still good on a Basic.  [R] Weakness is one of the reasons those OHKO’s are on the “more likely” side of things.  Technically, so is the lack of Resistance but -20 wouldn’t have meant much even the HP.  A Retreat Cost of [CC] is low enough you probably can pay it but high enough you’d prefer not to.

Buzzwole has the Ability “Beast Boost”, and it is a stronger version of the Pokémon Tool we reviewed Monday, Beastite.  Beast Boost grants a +20 bonus to the damage done by this Buzzwole’s attacks for each Prize card you’ve already taken; double the bonus an Ultra Beast receives while it has Beastite attached.  As I thought Beastite granted a good bonus, as long as Buzzwole has at least a half-decent attack, we’ll have a winner.  It’s lone attack is “Tounchdown” for [GC], doing 60 damage and healing 30 from itself.

…

Indeed, Touchdown is “at least a half-decent attack,” maybe even wholly decent, but also not exceptional.  60-for-two is just “okay”, though Beast Ring or maybe even something like Counter Gain can help speed things up.  Healing 30 on something with 130 HP isn’t going to matter against most decks, but the [G] Type does have many other healing effects, so it could still come in handy.  Beast Boost won’t help with the healing but Touchdown’s damage can actually range from 60 (no Prizes taken) to 160 (five Prizes taken), ignoring Weakness or Prize-adding shenanigans.

Buzzwole should be a solid choice for [G] decks, as well as Ultra Beast Toolbox decks.  That may be niche right now, but we’ll see what happens in the future.  You may also be wondering about Buzzwole (SM – Forbidden Light 77/131; Shiny Vault SV24/SV94) and I think the two should work well together; unless you need a full four-count of one or the other, play them together.  Strict Type support, like the Ability of Diancie {*} can’t be shared but stuff like Martial Arts Dojo could be, assuming you have a basic [F] Energy attached to today’s Buzzwole (alongside a [G] Energy).

I expect a weaker performance in Expanded for the usual reasons; more combo opportunities but more competition and counters.  As for the Limited Format, Buzzwole isn’t large enough to run totally solo in a +39 build, though it should work its way into almost any other kind of deck you can build.  Beast Boost can’t add as much – both players start with four Prizes in Limited – but this is offset by healing 30 being a much better deal here.

Ratings

Standard: 3.3/5

Expanded: 3/5

Limited: 4/5

Buzzwole strikes me as a good card but in the wrong metagame.  Even at a time when Ultra Beasts are good but not great, when its 130 HP is a bit low to enjoy its healing, and when [R] attackers are still fairly common, it brings enough to earn solid scores across the board… but that wasn’t enough to make my Top 11.  As such, taking an effective 14th-place is still good for Buzzwole.