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Pojo's Pokemon Card of the Day

		Mamoswine #5/102 HS Triumphant Date Reviewed: Dec. 1, 2010 Ratings & Reviews Summary Modified: 2.50 Limited: 2.87 Ratings are based on a 1 to 5 scale. 1 being the worst.  3 ... average.   5 is the highest rating. Back to the main COTD Page
Combos With:

Baby Mario 2010 UK National Seniors Champion	Mamoswine (Triumphant)   One look at a Mamoswine should be enough to tell you that you are not going to get a one Energy attack free retreater here. This Mamoswine, like all the others, is appropriately big and bulky.   The good side to this is that you get very nice HP, even for a Stage 2 (140). Couple this with Mamoswine’s Metal Weakness (if a Pokémon must have a Weakness, this is probably the best one), and you have a Pokémon that isn’t getting KO’d easily. The bad side, of course, is one of those Retreat costs that are so large the Pokémon almost looks as if it has Colourless Resistance, plus some very expensive attacks.   The first of these, Icy Wind, costs [W][C][C], so at least you can try and offset some of that cost with a Double Colourless Energy. Even so, 40 damage is a poor reward for your investment, even if you do get auto-Sleep. If you are lucky, this might cause your opponent some inconvenience if they can’t evolve, retreat, or Warp their active back to the Bench.   Up the Energy to [W][W][C][C] and things get slightly more interesting. Snowstorm’s damage output of 70 might be unimpressive for the cost, but it does come with the nice bonus of doing 20 to each of your opponent’s already-damaged benched Pokémon. Of course, the issue here is how to get that damage spread started. One possibility might be Abomasnow from Stormfront. For a Double Colourless, he spreads 20 to all non-Water or Grass Pokémon, and has a PokeBody which lets him hang around too. Combine this with Mamoswine and you potentially have a spread deck that’s slow to set up, but very difficult to stop. Throw in Solrock TM and Lunatone SV and you can even stop your opponent from countering your spread with cards like Nidoqueen RR and Garchomp C LV X with its Healing Breath Power.   It’s not quite a real competitive deck: being slow is a very bad thing in this format, spread is a lot less effective than you would like, and of course Dialga G LV X would be a nightmare to face. Nevertheless, if you are looking for something fun, with a different type of strategy to most popular decks, then you could give this a go at League.   Rating   Modified: 2.25 (not totally horrible, and spread may even be viable again someday) Limited: 2.5 (very hard to take down, but still slow and it’s a Stage 2 after all . . . )   Combos with . . .   Abomasnow SF
conical	12/1/10: Mamoswine(Triumphant)  The saddest thing about this card is that the weather where I live looks to soon resemble the card art on Mamoswine. Le sigh.  Actually, now that I think about it, all the ice around Mamoswine might explain why this card is so painfully slow. Well, probably not, but work with me here. Both of its attacks can abuse DCE at least, but even with that bonus, the attacks are rather weak. Icy Wind does 40, plus sleep, which again, is the most mediocre status effect. Snowstorm is a better attack, dealing 70, plus 20 to everything on the bench. It's a decent attack, but I'd prefer something like Abomasnow, a Stage 1 who does 20 to the bench and active for a DCE, rather than WWCC. Mamoswine could be a possible partner for Feraligatr Prime, but then again, Gyarados HGSS is a Stage 1 with 10 less HP, and for WWCC does more damage to the active and discards energy, so Mamoswine's still stuck in the cold there.  Modified: 2.25/5 Limited: 2.5/5
Otaku	Mamoswine is a Water Type Pokémon, but owing to it being a Ice-Type in the video games it "enjoys" taking double damage from a Metal Weakness and not, say, a Lightning or Grass.  I haven’t caught up with the results of Cities, but it'd take a radical shift to make Lightning Weakness "okay": our elephantine swine got off good. 140 HP is good for a Stage 2: most playable Stage 2 Pokémon clock in at about that. Outside of Weakness, most decks will need two or three shots to take Mamoswine down. The lack of a Resistance is disappointing: besides feeling like the game is over-simplified, it also robs Mamoswine of a potentially solid match-up. Mamoswine has an expected but no less troubling four energy Retreat Cost. You either pack some cards to change it out, heal it, or preferably both. Mamoswine has two attacks, and chunky Energy costs are somewhat mitigated by Double Colorless Energy usage: you won't be able to use Rare Candy or Broken Time Space to jump to Mamoswine in a single turn and still be able to attack without help.  If you take at least two turns to build it, you won't have to sit without attacking a turn (at least because of Mamoswine). Icy Wind for (WCC) isn't brilliant, but its passable: 40 damage is a bit low and automatic Sleep is alright. That gives you a 50% chance of your opponent's Active being unable to attack… if your opponent can't evolve, Level-Up, or simply use an effect to heal/change out their Active. In short, even if they don't naturally wake up you shouldn't count on it. Ultimately, it isn't a horrible attack and it will be a decent "still powering up" attack for Mamoswine, and when Sleep does work it tends to be a nearly universal combo opener: if the Defending Pokémon can’t find back, all your attacks seem better! The second attack is Snowstorm for (WWCC) and hits for 70 damage to the Defending Pokémon and 20 point to each of your opponent's Benched Pokémon that already have any damage counters on them. A solid attack, but it needs a lot of support to be more than a vanilla 70: most players will be able to avoid getting any damage on Benched Pokémon unless you force the issue. Getting damage spread fast can take some doing. You could run this in a Rain Dance deck, which would certainly speed it up, but there are so many other options that would serve you better: you need to spread damage before this really becomes good. If you actually felt you could risk running an even split of the Modified Legal versions of Feraligatr, it could be quite nasty: neither is Lightning Weak and besides the Prime version's Rain Dance the other has Spinning Tail for (WCC) and doing an adequate 20 damage to everyone of your opponent's Pokémon, or 80 for (WWCC). If you can squeeze in Double Colorless Energy as well, you might even be able to cope with Power denial strategies. Personally, I am thinking you are better looking for non-Water dance partners for this porcine pachyderm. An untested idea just for this review: open with Absol Prime. Drop a Call Energy on it so you don't waste your first term, and if it isn't getting pounded drop a Darkness Energy and start taking 70-a-pop pot shots. Build up Mamoswine after Absol Prime's Poke-Body has made sure everything your opponent plays already has two damage counters on it, and bring up Mamoswine to slam, slam, slam for multiple Prizes. We could also use Crobat G to drop counters fairly quick - is it possible to build a Pokémon SP deck with this as the non-SP splash? For Limited play, Mamoswine is great! The attacks make it not easy to work into an off-type deck, but feasible. If you have enough Water Pokémon to make sure it is one of the types that go into your average triple-typed Limited deck, it’s pretty handy to need only two of your Type of Energy. The bad news is that you'll be stuck up front once you get Mamoswine there, without access to Trainers to easily Bench it, but your opponent won't be able to use that to get around Sleep as easily. Plus, retreating an injured Pokémon is a common Prize denial strategy in this format, so Snowstorm stands to net multiple Prizes. Ratings Modified: 3/5 Limited: 4/5 I think this card has some potential, but mostly for clever League decks or one-time tournament showings that rely on the element of surprise.