OK, this Pokemon is FRUSTRATING to play against in
limited!!
1 energy attack with heads, 30 and prevent all damage
done to tropius the next turn.
Talk about floating Chinchous!!!
Hit heads and you are golden. Hit tails and your are meh.
Great staller. Then a 2 energy attack to remove all
damage from one of your benched Grass Pokemon. Somehow,
an Alakazam damage swap strategy with Torterra screams
at me…but that is a lot for a little.
Then a 4 energy solarbeam for 60. Overcosted. Way
overcosted.
Modified…not too good. I would smile if it was flipped
against me. 1.5/5
Limited…much better here. 3/5
Steel_Winger
Welcome back to the Pokemon COTD!
Today's card happens to be the promo card given out to
those who went to the Rising Rivals Prerelease. I
present to you: Tropius!
Let's look at the basics. 80 HP on a basic is nice on a
non-legendary and non-SP Pokemon. It's Grass-type, but
not that many notable Pokemon are weak to that except
Claydol, Armaldo, and Rampardos, and the former will
rarely be active if whoever you're playing is sane. A
+20 Weakness to Fire is expected; Ninetales can OHKO it,
amongst other Fire-types. A -20 to Fighting is okay;
Machamp will need to hit all 4 heads on Hurricane Punch
to OHKO it if Tropius has Unown [G] attached. A Retreat
Cost of 2 is a bit high, though... you can use Sceptile
(GE) so that you'll only have to use 1 energy to retreat
it.
No Powers or Bodies, but there are 3 attacks. The first
attack is Fly. For 1 energy of choice, you get to do 30
damage, but it's on a flip. Tails means the attack
fails. Heads, means that you actually do the damage and
Tropius is protected by attacks next turn, similar to
Flygon when it uses Sand Wall. Only use this attack if
you're lucky or you're starting with it and don't have a
Call Energy at the ready.
The second attack is Blessed Fruit. For 2 Grass
energies, you can heal one of your benched Grass Pokemon
completely. If Tropius sees any play at all, this will
likely be the reason for it. Maybe this could work in a
Tortile build; when Torterra takes enough damage,
retreat it and bring in Tropius to heal it completely.
Not to mention Shaymin (Land Forme) LV. X gives Torterra
(and Tropius, and any other Grass Pokemon) even more
endurance, it could be worked in as a tech there.
The last attack, Solarbeam, does 60 damage for a
whopping 4 energy, one which must be Grass. Very
overpriced attack for mediocre damage. Again, you can
use Sceptile with it, but there are better options for
attacking.
Ratings:
Modified: 2/5 Blessed Fruit is Tropius' only saving
grace, but it can be excellent when played in certain
decks.
Limited: 2.5/5 There are quite a few Grass Pokemon in
the set, mostly thanks to Aaron and Gardenia, so Tropius
could have a chance to help is breteren. Just watch out
for all of the Fire Pokemon in the set as well.
This is Steel_Winger, wishing everyone luck going to
Worlds and/or the Supreme Victors Prerelease in a few
days!
drtomoe123 Professor
League Leader
Tropius Rising Rivals
Uncommon
Oh boy, we've got set filler on our hands here. Tropius
has always been a oddball Pokemon, coming from the Hoenn-era
(which is pretty fuzzy for me to begin with...the
initial shock of Johto/Kanto not being in R/S never
really faded...). While Tropius received some help in
the DS games to improve it from an extremely lackluster,
boring Pokemon into an interesting, yet still flawed
upgrade, the TCG version from Rising Rivals is stuck as
flippy filler.
So we've got the basics. 80 HP is okay, but pretty
disappointing for a non-SP basic with no evolution. +20
Weakness to fire hurts against Infernape 4 (and Blaziken
FB, which will probably overtake the ape), which is
crazy popular right now, and it's -20 Resistance to
fighting really won't help it too much, especially
considering that Machamp still KOs it with Take Out. To
make things worse, the 2 retreat cost is never good.
Looking at its attacks, Fly could be pretty useful. 30
for one colorless, with the chance of invincibility next
turn? Sign me up!...until you realize that if you get
tails, you get NOTHING. Aside from Level Max and Super
Scoop Up, I'm not a very flippy person, so I could see
myself using this first, second turn maybe, but not for
much else. Blessed Fruit heals one of your benched Grass
Pokemon completely for two Grass, which may be nice, but
is completely overshadowed by a Leafeon deck running
Dawn Stadium and the Leafeon from Rising Rivals.
Solarbeam, which only does 60, is completely not worth
one Grass and three Colorless. Honestly, I don't see
Tropius ever getting the chance to use Solarbeam unless
you get REALLY lucky with the Fly flips. Tropius just
can't last four turns, especially with Infernape 4 in
this format.
Of course, combo-wise, Tropius works well with Sceptile
and Shaymin Lv. X (Landmin), but seriously, what Grass
Pokemon doesn't? Tropius gets 120HP, Blessed Fruit goes
down to one and Solarbeam goes down to two, but in this
case, why would you end up using Tropius in the first
place? There are so many better Grass Pokemon out there,
Tropius just can't match up. While you're wasting time
on Tropius, you could be getting out a Torterra, Shaymin,
or Leafeon. Poor guy, maybe he'll get an evolution in
the next generation.
Ratings:
Modified: 2/5 I could really see this card being useful
early game or late game to stall for a little bit, but
in today's format with Machamp, Infernape 4, and high
output Lv. Xs, he's down as soon as your Fly flip fails.
Limited: 3.5/5 Higher HP basic is nice in this format,
but don't really try to use anything other than Fly. Use
it to stall a few turns and maybe grab a KO.
So overall, Tropius is average filler. If Fly didn't
require a heads to work, I'd probably like him a lot
more...otherwise, he requires a lot of luck to do a
little damage. He's just not worth it, guys.
