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Terrakion
98/101 (Noble Victories)
We close out the week with one of the Musketeer Pokémon
from Noble Victories. When they made their TCG debut in
Emerging Powers they were awful, which was sad because I
really like them as Pokémon. Let’s hope for better
things this time around, to go with the
prettyful Full Art versions.
Terrakion
is a Basic with a huge 130 HP that makes him equal to
the Unova dragons (at least
in terms of HP anyway). If a card has to have a
Weakness, then Grass Weakness is pretty much as good as
it gets due to the lack of top quality Grass attackers
in the format. The big downside to the card at first
glance is that mighty Retreat cost of four . . . you
have two choices with an active
Terrakion: leave him out there until he gets KO’d
or use a Switch.
Terrakion’s
first attack is somewhat similar to the Revenge
Bouffalant from the Black
and White set. Retailiate
costs [F][C] and has a base
damage of 30 . . . which is quite honestly poor.
However, if one of your Pokémon was knocked out by
damage on the previous turn, the damage output is 90,
which is more than respectable for the cost. The
downside is that your opponent will see it coming as
(barring Shaymin UL
shenanigans), it’s difficult
to drop Terrakion and use
him in the same turn due to the Energy requirement. This
makes a Benched Terrakion an
obvious candidate for being dragged out with Pokémon
Catcher before it is ready to attack.
If the opponent can’t manage to drag out
Terrakion, or KO him in the
active position though, you could get a chance to use
Land Crush. For [F][F][C]
this attack does an effect-free 90 damage. That’s not a
bad return, especially as there is no drawback, and
especially as Terrakion is a
Basic. In fact, it’s a slightly better
costed version of
Donphan Prime’s Heavy Impact
. . . and that’s a Stage 1.
Now I know what some of you will be thinking:
Terrakion just seems to be
some kind of weird, inferior, cross between
Bouffalant BW and
Donphan Prime, and that’s
actually pretty accurate. He’s not as fast as
Bouffalant (you can’t just
drop him and a Double Colourless for the Revenge KO),
and he lacks the cheap one-for-60 attack of
Donphan. What
Terrrakion does have going
for him though is that he’s a Basic with two very solid
attacks and great
typing in the current metagame.
Popular Fighting-Weak cards like
Zekrom, Magnezone
Prime, and all of their Lightning-Type support (Pachirisu,
Eelektrik), fear
Terrakion with good reason.
Sure, he takes a couple of turns to power up, but with
that massive HP, he’s not the easiest thing to Catcher
up and KO either.
Because of the lack of speed, it’s unlikely that we will
see too many decks based around
Terrakion as a main attacker (he’s also a
terrible Pokémon to open a game with). As a tech card in
a Lightning-heavy format though?
Terrakion is definitely worth a shout.
Rating
Modified: 3.5 (not the quickest, but with high HP and
two good attacks, Terrakion
will see play as a tech)
Limited: 4.5 (Terrakion owns
in this format. This card plus 39 Fighting Energy was a
viable Prerelease deck)
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