If you think this review is too long to read, just skip straight to the scores and then read the summary for a concise overview!

Name: Rocket’s Moltres ex

Set: EX: Team Rocket Returns

Card#: 100/109

Rarity: Pokémon ex

Type: Darkness

Stage: Basic

HP: 100

Weakness: Water

Resistance: None

Retreat: CC

Poké-Body: Dark Lift

If Rocket’s Moltres ex has any (D) Energy attached to it, the Retreat Cost for Rocket’s Moltres ex is 0.

Attack#1: (RC) Fire Dance [30]

Search your discard pile for (R) Energy card and attach it to 1 of your Pokémon.

 

Attributes: Being a Rocket’s Pokémon is an advantage: you get to use a lot of Rocket’s supporting cards.  There are a few cards you will be unable to use, but the only significant ones (in Modified) wouldn’t work for you anyway since they don’t work for Pokémon ex anyway.  There are card that negatively affect Pokémon ex that wouldn’t hurt a Rocket’s Pokémon, so being a Pokémon ex means that you need some compensation in other areas: after all, not only are there cards that specifically hurt Pokémon ex, but they are worth two prizes when Knocked Out.

 

The first area where Rocket’s Moltres receives a slight boost is HP: it has a solid 20 to 30 more hit points than any other Moltres that has been releases stateside, and a full 40 more HP than the original Rocket’s Moltres.  Sadly, this is also just high enough to trigger Desert Ruins.

 

This Moltres is Weak to Water Pokémon, which is not good: Water Pokémon see a lot of play.  At least Water Pokémon also tend to be in the OHKO category anyway, so the doubling of the damage is not as significant.  Still, it’s a nasty Weakness to have.  Rocket’s Moltres ex has no Resistance: another card that really needed it.  Finally, we have a Retreat Cost of two.  This is low enough that if you have to pay it, you can, but high enough that if you can avoid it, you should.  Fortunately, as you’ll see, there is a built in way to avoid it in this card’s Abilities.

 

Abilities: Dark Lift (and having a (D) Energy attached to Rocket’s Pokémon ex) means never having to discard Energy for a retreat.  The way the Poké-Power is worded, it will even override other effects, like Dark Muk.  As long as it has some form of (D) Energy attached, it’s a free-retreating Basic, and that is pretty useful.

 

The first attack, Fire Dance, is pretty good.  You pay for 25 damage, but you do 30 damage, and if there are any Fire Energy cards in the discard pile, you can attach one to one of your Pokémon.  While this won’t let you power itself up any faster, it does mean that you could prepare it as a back up hitter, attack a few times with Fire Dance to set up a new main attacker, and hopefully free retreat back to the safety of the bench before they can nail you.  If not, attaching just one more Fire Energy to use Combustion and at least take one thing (preferably a second thing) with you.  Combustion itself is a nice, no-nonsense 50 damage.  What makes it nice is that you only paid (RRC), which should yield 40.

 

Once again, the individual abilities are not worthy of being a Pokémon ex, but together, they seem to warrant it.

 

Uses/Combinations: Here’s the problem: the job it does can be done infinitely better by a Stage 2 Pokémon.  That’s right: Fire Starter Blaziken.  If that didn’t exist, I’d suggest using it with Energy Draw Delcatty to set up with lighting speed.  As is, I am hard pressed to find any better way to use it.  I guess run it with a lot of supporting Rocket’s cards.

 

Ratings

 

Unlimited: 2/5-It’s slower than its fellow Rocket’s Legendary Bird Pokémon ex; it doesn’t really fit in much of a niche deck.  If you really wanted to, you could try to make some sort of bizarre Fire Beatdown deck using this, Dark Vileplume, and any decent Basic Fire Pokémon.

 

Modified: 3/5-Remember, this is the focus of the deck I described (this active with Delcatty and other Fire Pokémon waiting to be powered up on the bench), so that means its rating is more or less the deck rating.  It can work, and if this format wasn’t OHKO oriented and Fire Starter Blaziken didn’t exist, we might have a solid deck.   

 

Limited: 3.5/5-The rub lies in needing the Energy in the discard to begin with.  Unless you have to retreat a lot before you bring this out, you can only make use of the first attack to power up you bench after losing a prize already.  Which means this has a small window of opportunity for use: after the opponent draws their first prize but before they draw their second.  Still, it’s big and can hit hard, which helps.  And if you can draw some supporting cards like Rocket’s Hideout, t gets even better.

 

Summary

Too little too late: this card tries to be a reasonable Fire Starter Blaziken, and succeeds.  Since the original is still available, that means it’s just a second rate.