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Tyranitar (Unleashed)
Hello and welcome to a new week of Pojo’s CotD. No new
preview cards for us this time, so it’s back to mopping
up the Unleashed set.
When you get a Prime and a normal version of a Pokémon
released in a set, you know that the normal version is
going to be a bit rubbish compared to the Prime. That’s
pretty much the case with today’s card, but at least it
does have something unique to offer . . .we’ll get to
that bit later.
Tyranitar has a good 140 HP (above average for a Stage
2), a problem Fighting Weakness (Donphan will give it
fits), a useful Psychic Resistance, and a nasty but
predictable Retreat cost of three. Of course you can
always use Moonlight Stadium to get around this last
problem . . . until it is rotated out in September.
Tyranitar is a Dark type which is always good. It might
not hit many Pokémon for Weakness (Gengar and maybe
Dusknoir are the only Dark-Weak Pokémon that get
played), but it more than makes up for that by being
able to use Special Darkness Energy and smack anything
it likes for some extra damage.
The first attack Tyranitar has is, not to sugarcoat it,
utterly awful. For the substantial cost of [C][C][C] you
do 40 damage which might have been just about acceptable
in Base Set but definitely is not now. But wait! You get
to flip a coin and do an extra 20 damage if it’s heads!
That’s just pathetic really. They could have given you
the extra damage without the flip and the attack would
still be appalling.
Tyranitar’s second attack isn’t exactly cheap or
overpowered either. Hyper Beam costs [D][D][C][C] and
does 80 damage. Sure, you can boost it with Special
Dark, and make it slightly faster with Double Colourless,
but it’s still underwhelming and slow. It does however,
have a very nice and (as far as I know) completely
unique effect: you get to discard an Energy attached to
the Defending Pokémon.
True, there are other Pokémon that can discard Energy,
but only on a coin flip (like Dragonite LA) or at the
cost of discarding yourself (Typhlosion Prime).
Tyranitar has the only guaranteed, no drawback Energy
removal attack in the game. Unfortunately, Energy
Removal isn’t always going to be an effective
strategy with all the low Energy attackers dominating
the game (Jumpluff, Kingdra, Donphan, Gyrados). Even
against decks that would be hurt by the discard
(anything relying on DCE or Special Energy in general),
Hyper Beam is so expensive, and Tyranitar is so slow,
that it isn’t likely to make much of a difference.
Shame really . . . they brought a very powerful strategy
back into the game and then made it practically
unusable.
Rating
Modified: 1.5 (you’re better off with the Prime)
Limited: 2 (hard to KO . . . but mediocre attacks and
not easy to get into play)
Combos with . . .
I suppose you could charge it up with Weavile SW until
it rotates out.
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