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Pojo's Pokemon Card of the Day

Baby Mario 2010 UK National Seniors Champion	Cubone (Triumphant) OK, here is a real strange one. Most evolving cards, however good they are, are the support act to the main event – the evolution. With Cubone, however, it is the other way around. Marowak TM is the mediocre and uninteresting card that just seems to exist to give power to its Basic form. This is because of Cubone’s Lonely Bone PokeBody. For every Marowak in the discard pile, attack damage done to Cubone is reduced by 20. It’s not hard to discard Marowaks with cards like Junk Arm and Regice and with a full set gone, it means that Cubone reduces damage done to it by a massive 80 points, making it a really tough OHKO, especially if it has an Expert Belt attached. So, can Cubone Tank work as a deck? You’re joking, right? With only 40 HP, you don’t even need to attack to KO it half the time. Crobat G Flash Bites and/or Poison damage will take care of it very quickly. So will any attack that places damage counters (see Gengar SF for details). Thanks to Cubone’s Water Weakness, Gyarados doesn’t care if it has Marowak in the discard pile or not, and I haven’t even mentioned Dialga G LV X yet: a commonly played card that basically flushes the whole of Cubone’s strategy down the toilet by negating the PokeBody. Even if none of the above were true, Cubone’s actual attack is so lame (unless you are extremely lucky with coin flips), that it will struggle to take any Prizes at all. Even more so than your opponent will against a fully-tanked Cubone. I give Cubone bonus points for originality and uniqueness, but at the end of the day, it’s just a bad gimmick card. Rating Modified: 1.5 (I suppose it might be fun for casual play. But that’s it)
Mad Mattezhion  Professor Bathurst League Australia	Cubone (HS Triumphant)   Unlike Call of Legends, HS Triumphant has had a great reception in the Poke'mon TCG. Today's card is one of the more quirky offerings from that set, Cubone.   Just on a side note, you may want to watch out for Call of Legends cards when department stores put them on sale. Unsold cards get destroyed, which means CoD cards may well become scarce in a couple of years, making them a decent investment for collectors. Players should still stay well clear of that set.   Back to the review. Cubone is a Fighting type evolving Basic with 40 HP, Water weakness, Lightning resistance, A retreat cost of 1, a Poke-body and an attack. The 40 HP is a death sentence and the resistance can't make up for that, so evolve Cubone immediately after you play it. The retreat cost is payable but Cubone should never be Active to retreat in the first place.   The attack, Bone Rush, is nearly uselss as it costs [c][c] and requires very lucky flips, as well as being a victim of the somewhat common resistance to Fighting. Since it is a "flip until you get Tails" attack with 20 damage per Heads, you may just get lucky enough to take a surprise KO but you will almost never be that lucky. Investing the energy to attack with Cubone is just a waste (due to the ease of taking Cubone out) so don't ever put Cubone Active. I mean it, don't ever put the little mumma's boy out front.   The Poke-body is only (relatively) good thing about this card. For each Marowak in your discard pile, Lonely Bone will reduce incoming damage to Cubone by 20 (other effects are still applied as normal). While this might seem great as a tanking ability and discarding a few Marowak cards from your hand is easy in the current format, we are also in a format dominated by cards that drop damage counters which will go right through Lonely Bone and shred that terrible 40 HP. Also, plenty of Water decks will easily deal enough damage to bulldoze right through the damage reduction with the help of weakness, and plenty of decks can snipe around Cubone while you are stuck with using the mostly ineffective attack.   No, despite what some people have tried, running Cubone as a tank is a terrible idea. lonely Bone is good for coping with the low HP and keeping Cubone alive a little longer, but only if you run a swarm of Marowak cards in your deck. Then, whenever you lose one of your Marowak cards your remaining Cubone cards get a boost. The lack of a playable Marowak is what makes this card unplayable, though the 40 HP is enough to make me want to use the Legends Awakened version anyway. If only the Poke-body could be applied to the evolved Marowak, we might have a workable tank. Until and unless we get a playable Marowak however, this is just an interesting failure. Even with a Marowak worth using that may still prove true.   Modified: 1.5 (No playable evolutions and terrible HP make this card interesting but unusable) Limited: 2 (Marowak is decent in this format but Cubone is still limited in it's effectivenness. At least the attack is Colourless)   Combos with: an overhaul and rerelease.
conical	4/8/11: Cubone(Triumphant)   Cubone is one of the few evolving basics in the format who could become archetypes on their own. Others would include Shuppet PL and Combee UD.   So what makes card potentially playable is its Body, which reduces damage dealt to Cubone for each discarded Marowak. Certainly, there are enough cards that let you discard cards, in order to get Marowak into the discard pile. Gyarados generally uses like, 3-4 of them alone. There are a few problems, though, which is why it is not as good as Gyarados.   The first of which is that unlike Gyarados, who relies on discarding Magikarp, a basic, Cubone has to discard Marowak, an evolution. This doesn't immediately sound like a problem, but keep in mind that Pokemon Collector, one of the best cards in the game, and a card Gyarados decks rely on heavily to search out Magikarps, only targets basics. The only comparable card for evolutions would be Professor Elm's Training Method, which only searches out one evolution at a time.   The more obvious problem, though, is the HP. While reducing damage is nice and all, it might not matter much, since Cubone only has 40 HP. It can be boosted with Expert Belt and Snowpoint Temple, but trying to set up all that, along with discarding Marowaks, and the fact that the attack is rather mediocre, means that this isn't very playable. Cool concept, though.   Modified:2.5/5 Limited: 2.25/5
virusyosh	Good day, Pojo viewers! Today we end our week of useful evolving Basics by reviewing a card that doesn't see a whole lot of play, but has some very interesting abilities and could make a very fun League deck. Today's Card of the Day is Cubone from HS - Triumphant. Cubone is a Basic Fighting Pokemon. Fighting Pokemon are commonly seen in Modified, usually in the form of Machamp, Promo Toxicroak G, and Donphan Prime. 40 HP is pretty low for any Basic, but luckily, Cubone's Poke-Body makes up for its shortcomings there. Double Water Weakness means that you are at the mercy of Gyarados and Kingdra, but Lightning Resistance is great against Luxray and Magnezone. Finally, a Retreat Cost of one is affordable. Cubone has a very interesting Poke-Body, Lonely Bone, and one attack, Bone Rush. Lonely Bone reduces damage to Cubone by 20 for each Marowak in your discard pile. This means that if you have a full 4 Marowaks in the discard pile, Cubone can have up to 80 damage reduced! Combine this with Expert Belt and Snowpoint Temple, and you can have a rather hilarious tanking deck going that might be fun for league. It's not really viable in Modified as Cubone's attack is unreliable, Gyarados destroys it regardless of damage reduction, and Gengar can easily just place damage counters, but if you want a change of pace for a fun league deck, give it a shot. Speaking of Cubone's attack, Bone Rush allows you to flip a coin until you get tails, doing 20 damage for each heads you flip for two Colorless Energy. Again, this attack is very unreliable, but I suppose if you are very lucky, you may be able to score some KOs. Modified: 2/5 The Cubone deck idea won't really work here, but if there is eventually a Marowak that is Modified viable, this will be the Cubone of choice, because damage reduction is always great. Limited: 2.5/5 If you draft multiple Marowaks, Cubone can be useful here. Lonely Bone probably won't trigger very often unless you draft Marowaks, as well as having the willingness to get rid of those cards. Even still, Cubone's attack is Colorless, so it could be a passable but unreliable Fighting tech if, for example, your deck has a big Fighting weakness. Combos With: Marowak (any), Junk Arm, Regice LA, cards that discard (for the silly deck idea)