Baby Mario
Top 4 UK Nats |
Breloom Lv 37
Breloom is one of those weird Pokémon that you tend to
forget exists a lot of the time. A boxing mushroom? . .
. Uh ok.
That certainly isn’t the fault of the people who make
the cards though, as they have certainly given Breloom a
coupe of interesting attacks that are well worth a
second look.
Hover Hit, is this Pokémon’s first attack, and it deals
a very nice 40 damage for a single Fighting energy. In
previous formats, that would have incredible OHKO
potential, with all the low-HP, Fighting-weak Basics
being played (such as Holon’s Castform). These days,
though, even non SP Basics seem to have 60+ HP, and the
SP Pokémon themselves are even tougher. Still, the
attack is very good value, though the attack’s downside,
giving the opponent’s active Free Retreat, is a bit of a
worry. At first, you may think of the obvious combo with
Breloom SW, which deals 120 damage to Free Retreating
Pokémon for three Energy. This isn’t really going to
work though, as your opponent will just retreat the
active on their next turn.
Breloom’s second attack, Crash Bomber, has some definite
possibilities in this format. For the low, and easy to
achieve cost of [C][C], it does a mere 20 damage. BUT,
if the Defending Pokémon has Special Energy attached,
that becomes 60 damage and you get to discard the
Special Energy. This in itself is nice as there are very
few cards which can retrieve Special Energy from the
discard pile (Electivire FB LV X, Conductive Quarry can
do it for Special Metal). What is more, Special Energy
is probably just about common enough to allow you to
benefit from this attack. Most decks play Call Energy,
Upper Energy is used in some Stage 2 decks (such as
Flygon), SP decks often use SP Energy, and Gyarados
(and sometimes Machamp) decks will often tech Cyclone
Energy. Add to that a smattering of decks that use
Special Dark or Metal Energy, and you can see that you
can reasonably expect to get full value for Crash Bomber
in most match ups.
But does that make Breloom worthy of a tech slot in your
deck? Well, you have to consider that its relatively low
HP and Weakness to the popular Fire type mean that it is
unlikely to stay on the Field very long. In addition,
the most common discard with Crash Bomber (Call Energy)
is not going to hurt the opponent much after the first
turn or two and 60 damage, even at a low cost, is
unlikely to be game-breaking.
So, while Breloom’s attacks can be useful, it probably
just falls short of justifying space as a tech in a
competitive deck.
Rating
Modified: 2.5 (nearly, but not quite)
Limited: 3.25 (40 for one Energy is great here)
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