I am afraid I must once again give a highly abridged
review (at least by my standards) or submit no review at
all. When I chose these cards, I didn’t know my
schedule for work, and for the first time in two months
I work I am scheduled for full eight hour shifts both
Wednesday and Thursday of the week. Yes, I could have
done it all this weekend, but I was trying to find
someone to deck test against. Sadly, that didn’t happen.
Bronzong LV.40
is a Stage 1 Metal Pokémon. Being a Metal-Type is an
advantage (yes, Resistance is more common than Weakness
to it, but only Darkness-Type Pokémon enjoy a similar
advantage of a personal Special Energy card. It has 90
HP, which is solid for a non-Evolving Stage 1. Fire
Weakness is a big issue right now (given that it’s
fairly easy to come by Infernape, Firestarter
Blaziken, and Energy Draw Delcatty), but it
won’t ruin the card. Why? Because it is clearly meant
to be a bench sitter. Likewise, the Psychic Resistance
at -20 is nice but will only matter early/late game or
if things go exceptionally poorly. I am still just
glad to see Resistance. The triple Energy Retreat Cost
is a concern, since if you are forced Active, it will be
a pain to get back to the Bench. Still, solid deck
construction can handle it easily.
The Poké-Power, Miracle Oracle, is what really catches
my eye. It doesn’t seem all that good: draw then
discard. If you hit an Energy card, however, you can
draw again. So it’s seems like a Delcatty that
has traded quantity for reliability. You can always try
to draw with Bronzong. If you have no hand, and
don’t hit an Energy card, it can be really bad if you
have to throw away something nice… but then again if it
was something useless, it gets it out of the way before
your next draw phase. In Pokémon, though, it is
somewhat rare to go too long without a draw card or to
have a poor hand, so I think more often than not a
player will be happy drawing one and chucking a
situational bit of TecH that has proven useless an
Evolution that just can’t be played in the immediate
future. If you do hit an Energy card, then you gain two
cards for one, and that isn’t bad. Not especially good,
but certainly not bad.
The attack, Shady Stamp, is solid, and I always loved
Confusion (more so under the old rules). 50 damage for
(MMC) and automatic Confusion will probably force most
opponents to burn a card switching out or Energy
Retreating, and if you are fortunate then either way
they won’t be able to get the same Active back up
front. Few people like attacking through Confusion:
that 50% chance of three damage counters is just not
worth an attack most of the time, especially considering
they should already have at least 50 damage on them from
Shady Stamp.
Since Bronzong is a Stage 1, let us look at its
Basic form, Bronzor LV.8. Bronzor is also
a Metal-Type Pokémon, and has the typical 50 HP of a
Basic that can Evolve. It has a minimal +10 Weakness to
Fire but still a full -20 Resistance to Psychic, though
either should only matter if your set up was
unsatisfactory. If you have to attack, Dull Light is
alright: 20 and a flip for Confusion, exactly what you
pay for. At least it is only one Energy to retreat it.
I think the best place for this card is a deck built
around Aggron LV.49/Aggron from EX Power
Keepers. The former is a solid attack who can take
advantage of Metal Energy (the Special Energy
version) in the discard (and then shuffle all Metal
Energy back into the deck). The EX Power Keepers
version has the Poké-Power Terraforming that lets you
see the top five cards of your deck, and rearrange them
as you wish… so yeah, make sure the best card is first
with an expendable Energy being second. Or just first
if there are no expendable Energy (or you already have
one in hand, etc.)
Ratings
Unlimited:
1/5 – Don’t be silly. If you were going to run a
Bench-sitting Stage 1 other than Mind Games Slowking,
and wanted to improve your set up, you’d go with Smooth
Over Magcargo.
Modified:
3.25/5 – A little better than average, in my opinion,
but I can’t think of an easy way to make it payoff.
Limited:
5/5 – You generally have to run a lot of Energy in this
format anyway, to avoid “droughts”, but half the time
you get a flood instead. Either way, this is draw
power, the above just means that most of the time you
should be able to afford it for the second draw.
