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Forretress (Undaunted)
Hello and welcome to a new week of Pojo’s CotD.
Wow . . . is it time for a new set already? Doesn’t seem
so long ago that Unleashed was . . . unleashed, and now
we are getting preview cards for the new set, Undaunted.
As with all preview cards, you will find them on the
official website, complete with descriptions telling you
how amazingly awesome and powerful they are. The thing
is . . . the actual cards usually turn out to be a lot
less awesome than they claim, so stick around and
(hopefully) us reviewers will be able to tell you just
how playable they really will be.
First up is Forretress, a Stage 1 Steel Type Pokémon
whose ok-ish 90 HP is made better by the fact that it
can take advantage of Special Metal Energy to prolong
its life a bit. It also has an attack which is designed
to do the same thing: Mirror Shot does a fairly poor 30
damage for [M][C], but it does make your opponent flip a
coin to see if they can attack with that Defending
Pokémon next turn. Of course, they could always just
retreat and attack with something else with no problems,
but at least it does give Forretress a little more
protection.
Just sitting there, doing small amounts of damage won’t
get you very far though. Luckily, there is a point to
Forretress’s minor tanking strategy in the shape of its
brilliantly-named second attack: Everyone Explode Now.
For [M][C][C] this does 30 damage times the number of
Forretress and Pineco you have in play (so a maximum of
120 base damage, practically speaking). The drawback
(apart from needing the relevant Pokémon in play) is
that it does it then does 30 damage to each of your
Pineco and Forretress.
This card is clearly designed for its very own deck. You
try and keep a Forretress out long enough to get the
required Energy on it while you fill your bench with its
friends and then hit big. Is it any good though? Ummm,
not really. It does seem to need a lot of setting up,
and after one decent attack you are left with a lot of
damage on your side of the field, making your Pokémon
easy prey for snipers. Of course you could always
include cards like Manectric PL and/or Bench Shield to
protect your Pinecos, but that’s yet more set up . . .
and for what? Yes, 120 damage for three Energy is pretty
good, but the trouble you have to go through to get it
means that it isn’t really worth it.
Combine those negative qualities with a huge retreat
cost of three and a double Fire Weakness, and that means
that Forretress is unlikely to see much play. Which is a
shame as I really wanted to shout ‘EVERYONE EXPLODE
NOW!!!!!!’ during a match.
Rating
Modified: 1.75 (Could be a fun deck – and by ‘fun’, I
mean ‘not remotely competitive’)
Limited: 2.5 (lots of damage if you pull a few Pinecos,
but sadly no way to protect them)
Combos with . . .
Manectric PL
Bench Shield
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