Pokemon Card of the Day - Pokemon Tips - Pojo.com

espy87	Moltres(Skyridge) Fire/Basic/80HP Weakness: Water Resistance: Fighting Retreat: 2 Poké-Body: Fire Immunity: You can't attach [R] Energy cards from your hand to Moltres. [1] Collect Fire (10) If you have any [R] Energy cards in your discard pile, flip a coin. If heads, attach 1 of those Energy cards to Moltres. [2RR] Burning Tail (60) Flip a coin. If tails, discard 1 [R] Energy card attached to Moltres. Modified: Lets see. A basic w/ 80HP is not bad in this format. Once again being weak to the water is not good. His Poke-Body is pretty bad. Now lets look at his attacks: Collect Fire, Not a bad attack for its cost, BUT on a flip?! That is its downfall. Now lets look at its next: Burning Tail, this attack is a bit pricy for only 60 damage and a possible discard fire energy. I think that this card would work well in an Energy Transfer deck, but besides that, no use for this really. Rating: 1.8 Unlimited: I don't think that anyone will play this unless they are playing a Typhlosion deck. I recommend leaving this card out. The power simply ruins this card. Rating: 1.2 Limited: Here this card may be good if you flip alot of heads(Unlike me -_-;;). A Basic w/ 80HP and a decent first attack may just work. Once you get him up to his 4 energy attack you can just _roll_ through your opponents pokemon. I think that this would be a pretty good draft pick IMO. Rating: 3.1
X- Act	Aquapolis Moltres Hehe, here's one of the cards that would combo well with Skyridge Aerodactyl (see the previous COTD). This Moltres is a card similar to Aquapolis Zapdos. Similar HP, similar Poke-Body, similar first attack, similarly-priced second attack. Similar resistance and retreat cost, too. If you don't turn off its power, you'll find it really hard to power it up. You basically need two things: 1) Fire energies in your discard pile (which isn't that difficult, since Fire Energy seems to be the Basic Energy that prefers being in the discard pile the most) 2) 2 or more lucky flips for its first attack (which does a mere 10 =\). In compensation, its second attack does 60 with a 50% chance of discarding a fire energy card (thus needing to resort again to the first attack to get it back. =\). That 60 means 120 to a Metal or Fire-weak Grass Pokemon... It's just too hard to power up, though... Or is it? Unlike the other bird legendary Pokemon, Moltres gets a special treatment. Howl Entei can be used to power it up much more quickly. Since Howl attaches Fire Energies from your deck, rather than from your hand, you can attach them to Moltres without breaching its Poke-Body rule. However, I'd rather attach my Howled Fire Energies to something like Magcargo... although that certain 60 damage isn't bad at all. Unlimited: Besides the arguments mentioned above, Moltres needs to contend also with Energy Removal, which makes it almost impossible to do more than 10 damage. So, of course, don't use it here. 1/5 Modified: Well, it requires too much setup time and effort, as I already mentioned. It needs to be comboed with too many cards to be really effective, in my opinion. If you manage to pump it up (via Entei or Muk or Aerodactyl), it's not bad. 2/5 Draft: Well, here you won't have Entei or Muk, and you'd be really lucky if you get Aerodactyl. Thus, Moltres usually needs to resort to its first attack and discarded Fire Energies to get pumped up. And in the meantime, it is getting hits from your opponent's Pokemon, while you're doing a measly 10. Not really worthwhile. 1/5
TR Shadow
GymLeader Phil	Skyridge Aerodactyl Well we have another CotD for you crazy Pokemon People! Just a random note, but who is heading out to a Super BattleZone this weekend? You better folks. The chance to grab a Best Of Promo Professor Elm is worth the five dollar entry fee. Anyways I wish the best of luck to you with your Water/Fire/Grass deck. I mean... who plays any of the other colors anymore. See... they really need to start making different types of Starter Pokemon for the games. And no that is not an excuse to release Ruby or Sapphire again with Pikachu for the starter... gah. Anyways! We're looking at Moltres today. It seems to me that The Pokemon Company got bit by the Fossil Bug and decided to re-release all the broken cards, like Aerodactyl yesterday and Moltres today, into lackluster basics. Well I suppose they did a good job at it, because the card is a combo in itself. But see, the combo hurts you more than it does your opponents random Water Pokemon. Since its Poke-Body disallows Fire Energies to be attached to Moltres from your hand, you have no quick and easy way to get at least two Fire Energies and two Colorless to attack. So now not only is Moltres forcing you to not attach Fire Energies from your hand, its making you play Colorless. Sure you can just play with all Fire. But at the rate it takes: Moltres will never be able to use Burning Tail without the aid of another type of Energy. Speaking of Burning Tail, it makes you flip to see if you discard a Fire Energy. After all the trouble you went to to look into your discard pile if you got heads with Collect Fire, its making you discard something so hard to get onto Moltres. Eighty Hit Points is decent for an average Basic Pokemon. But Moltres is so slow that you would probably need one hundred and twenty Hit Points to actually start attacking. Like Aerodactyl yesterday, weakness will cause some problems with so many viable Water Pokemon in all the different formats. Resistance is nice, but does not help to speed up the tempo. Unlimited - Slow and steady does not win the race in this format. Energy Removals run rampant, causing added chaos to anything with an attack cost of four. Not to mention that once you finally get the Fire Energies from the discard to attack, you'll end up discarding one. Counterproductive! 1/5 Modified - I refuse to go to the trouble of building a deck with Legendary Collection's Muk or Skyridge Aerodactyl to get around the Poke-Body. Really, X-Act, I applaud you for your efforts to save such a horrible card. But I do agree with X-Act about Revelation's Entei, this would set up this card so quickly if you managed to get a good Howl. Sixty damage is not too shabby in Modified for a Basic. But then you'll end up discarding a Fire Energy. Counterproductive!! 2/5 Limited - The Poke-Body blocks all fire energies. The less amount of prizes in a Limited Event does not allow enough time for a one per turn retrieval of energies from the discard. But that's only if you get heads mind you. Sure most Limited Decks are multi-colored, but that does not get around the fact that Collect Fire takes alot of time. Even so, once you attack with Burning Tail, you end up discarding a fire energy. Counterproductive!!! 1/5
Thundachu	Moltres Skyridge Edition Overlook: A legendary bird with a weakness. Gasp. Still pretty good IMO though. The Poke-Body slows it down, not allowing you to attach fire energy from your hand to Moltres. Collect Fire is good though. If you play your cards right you may get to have him powered up in 2 turns. Burning Fire is a pretty good attack. 2 Fire and 2 colorless does 60, coin flip if tails discard 1 fire. Not bad at all. 80HP 0wnz for a basic pokemon. Resistance to Fighting makes it an Anti-Rouge. 2 Retreat is ok. Unlimited: 3/5 Modified: 4/5 Draft: 5/5(This card is great in Draft)
Meganium45	Moltres - Skyridge Another of these fabulous Legendary Pokemon that you cannot attach basic energy to, yech. Check out the stats: 80 HP, great for a basic Pokemon Retreat 2 - not good, but acceptable Weakness - Water (Ech, especially with all the big water flying around right now) Resistance - Fighting - protects you from Tyrogue, Chan, and maybe the new Kabutops Pokemon Power - you cannot attach fire energy to Moltres - that is not good, but of course, the first attack lets you suck energy up out of your discard, so it's not that bad, First attack - only 10 damage, heck, you are more likely to help Jumpluff rather than hurt it. You do get to put a fire energy from your discard onto Moltres, so, heh, not that bad. Second attack - 60 damage for 4 energy is not good. Even if you get to flip a coin, and if heads you get to keep your energy, still, as long as it takes to power this poke up (no less than 3 turns, maybe 2 with a quick NG Typhlosion help), it will be most likely dead before it is powered. And 60, that's not enough to hurt anything, unless you are fighting a grass deck! This pokemon could be good late game tech in a discarding fire deck, such as Magcargo or Typhlosion, but it still does too little too late. Fighting resistance does not help this card, and there are too many Pokemon that deal 40 water damage for 2 energy (Mantine and Wartortle) that could take this out in one shot. Combining it with Muk would not help, in that I feel it is too weak of a pokemon to count on as a big hitter, especially in the era of Magcargo (NR) and big water. At least fossil/legendary Moltres was not weak to water! Ratings - Unlimited 1/5 - no use for it here, better fire pokemon (F Magmar), too slow Modified - 2/5 - maybe some use for it here as a BBP, with late game clean-up ability Draft - 4/5 This is where the card shines, 80 HP basic with a colorless attack, that can be easily splashed into any fire/color deck! In draft, you can live with a pokemon being a tad slow, and having a resistance could really help!
pERfeCt 0nE	Skyridge- Moltres Well this is a pretty big step down from the AQ entei. I have seen many decks splash in either an entei, suicune, or zapdos with a few rainbow energy to fight off their weakness. For instance: In a Jumpluff AQ deck that used rainbow energy to activate its power. If it faced a fire deck- it could power up a suicune with 2 grass energy and the a rainbow energy- to be treated as water- giving it a fighting chance- In comparison to entei- Moltres is a second choice. Even though it gains 10HP- it gains a heavier retreat cost- so what if its your only pokemon on turn 1? Its attack is too slow to use as a pokemon to 'splash' too. Unlimited: This card is very horrible here. ER and SER kill it too easily. Plain and simple: unlimited=sneasel+ER+SER+GoW and all of those rip apart Moltres completely. He has no possible strong points here!!! rating---0.5 (really! he has 0 strong points here!!!) Modified: It has more of a fighting chance here. It can be used with typhlosion to have a chance to fight- most likely it will only weaken your DoubleGust and the point of splashing a pokemon fo its type is to get a FAST and decently strong attack in before you get slaughtered. rating---2.25 Draft: It has some potential here. The main problem here will be attatching the energy to him. It will be a while before 4 fire energy hit the discard pile unless u get some great trainers- if u draft a pack of Expedition as well- try to pick energy switch- most people will leave it there and go for a pokemon with colorless attacks =/. I just think its damage can be game controlling here but his attack cost and poke-body make him a sitting duck....or chicken...err...phoenix..or whatever it is =) rating---3.25

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