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Pojo's Pokemon Card of the Day

Baby Mario 2010 UK National Seniors Champion	Houndoom (Call of Legends)   Hello and welcome to a new week of Pojo’s CotD. It’s a bit of a good new/bad news week to be honest . . . the good news is, there is a new set to review! The bad news is that most of it is made up of translations of unplayable (but cool and collectible) JPN promos, and a lot of reprints from the most recent sets.   Take today’s card, for example. This is an alternative art reprint of Houndoom Undaunted which we reviewed as recently as last September. Looking back on my previous effort, I was massively over-generous due to my blatant love of the Pokémon.   After all, it’s a low HP Stage 1 that only gets an attack boost (a very nice one, mind you) against the type of Pokémon (Fighting) that will obliterate it next turn. The second attack does decent damage with a bonus discard from your opponent’s hand, which could be enough to make a semi-competitive hardcore disruption deck with cards like Cyrus’s Initiative and Weavile UD but . . . to be honest; I would put it in the fun/League/casual deck category rather than the tournament viable one.   Never mind Houndoom . . . I still love you. Maybe next time I’ll be rewarded with a competitive card that features you. In the meantime, I can enjoy seeing this in my binder.   Rating   Modified: 2.5 (I refuse to score a Houndoom lower) Limited: 3.5 (properly good . . . cheap attacks and Special Dark Energy is in the set)
virusyosh	Welcome back, Pojo readers! I hope that those of you that went to a Call of Legends prerelease this weekend enjoyed yourselves. We are beginning to review certain cards from the new set this week, and our first is going to be Houndoom. Houndoom is a Stage 1 Darkness-type Pokemon, and is a reprint of Houndoom from Undaunted. Darkness Pokemon haven't seen much play lately except for setup Pokemon like Sableye SF and Spiritomb AR, but that may change given Gengar Prime's new-found popularity with the release of the Lost World Stadium card. Houndoom has 90 HP, which is just about average for a non-evolving Stage 1, and should be just enough for it to be able to take more than one hit, unless it is being attacked for Weakness. Weakness to Fighting means that Machamp and Promo Toxicroak G will probably OHKO. Resistance to Psychic is excellent against Gengar and Uxie Lv. X. Finally, a Retreat Cost of 1 is totally payable, Houndoom has two attacks: Fire Counterattack and Dark Roar. Fire Counterattack starts off at 20 damage for [D], but does 60 more damage if your opponent has a Fighting type Pokemon in play. While 80 damage for a single Energy is fairly good, most of the time your opponent will simply switch into their Machamp and Take Out/Champ Buster for the return KO. However, this attack is excellent in Limited, as there are many Fighting types in Call of Legends, and most of them have around 80 HP. Additionally, 80 damage will take out most of the Pokemon in Call of Legends, barring the set's namesake legendaries and Stage 2s. The second attack, Dark Roar, does 50 damage for [DD] and your opponent must discard a card from their hand. With two Special Darkness Energy you're up to 70 damage with hand disruption, which is pretty decent, especially in Limited. However, the damage output is still a little low, so you may still need an Expert Belt, PlusPower, or Crobat G to secure the KO. Modified: 2/5 I wouldn't say that Houndoom is good right now, but I think that this card may eventually be useful next format if Lost World/Lostgar really takes off as a Tier 1 deck. The ability to deal decent damage to Gengar Prime with Dark Roar (it's OHKO'd with two Special Darkness Energy) may make this a relatively useful tech against that deck, especially with the hand disruption. However, as it stands right now, Houndoom's low HP somewhat lets it down right now, so you may want to hold off before using it. Limited: 3.75/5 Both attacks are really good here, although they are a bit Energy-intensive. However, with all of the various Fighting types running about (Hitmonlee, Tyrogue, and Hitmonchan come to mind), Fire Counterattack is very viable, and Dark Roar's hand disruption is great.
Mad Mattezhion  Professor Bathurst League Australia	Houndoom (Call of Legends)   Hello Pojo readers! Welcome to a brand new week of Pojo CotD reviews! We are now getting some cards from the Call of Legends expansion, so we can stop flogging the bottom end of the Triumphant release.   However, the first card for the week is a bit of a letdown: reprints are all well and good, but reprinting a card that was released only 2 sets ago doesn’t make much sense and it stops the card being fun to review because nothing has changed since last time.   Houndoom has the rare distinction of being better than the Prime release, as it actually has useful attacks with comparable HP (though the HP count is still too low to justify use as a main attacker, especially with the Fighting weakness). It has some use in decks that like to play Dark energy and have serious problems against decks that like to run cards such as Donphan Prime, the Machamp twins and Relicanth SV.   Houndoom is an evolving Stage 1 of the Dark element with 90 HP, Fighting weakness, Psychic resistance, a retreat cost of 1 and 2 attacks. Obviously, the attacks have to be great to warrant a slot because Houndoom, despite being awesome in every respect, is not going to survive a serious hit. On the plus side, the Psychic resistance means that the pixie trio, Gengar SF and any Unowns will have trouble dealing any considerable damage (there are plenty of other Psychic techs and attackers I could add to the list but they are either rarely played nowadays [Gardevoir PL] or deal indirect damage [Craobat G, etc]).   Fortunately, the attacks are both worth using in a support role to the main attacker. Fire Revenge is the first offering and deals 20 damage for [d]. This isn’t a great return for your investment even with Special Dark energy but there is a bonus: if your opponent has a Fighting element Pokemon in play (not necessarily in the Active slot) then the attack deals an extra 60 damage. With Special Dark energy, Expert Belt, Pluspower and/or some Crobat G drops you can reach the necessary level of damage to take out Donphan Prime and Machamp SF in one hit (Machamp Prime is harder to take out unless you get really lucky draws, and you can forget about an OHKO if you target has Expert Belt themselves).   This is a huge advantage to a Fighting-weak deck, but you will need a lot of draw power to get the extra resources for the OHKO, or you are going to have to accept that Houndoom will be wiped out by the return hit ad hope to finish the job with your next Pokemon.   Dark Roar is the second attack, and while it is nowhere near as hyped as the first attack it is what makes Houndoom a viable combo with Weavile UD. For the investment of [d][d] you get 50 damage and your opponent has to choose one of the cards form their hand to discard. Normally this wouldn’t be all that big a deal (it would even help a Gyarados deck or one of the energy-attached-from-the-discard decks out there) but with the widespread popularity of Judge and the help of Weavile UD’s Poke-power, you can severely reduce your opponent’s hand size to the point where forcing another discard or any sort from the hand really hurts.   Houndoom is good card that performs its role admirably, and it has received a slight boost from the release of Seeker (which made Weavile more playable) but the fact remains that Houdoom has been released into a format with a number of brilliant Fighting attackers that will make mincemeat out of the demon dog. Again I say that the return of Claydol (or other brilliant, must-have Fighting element tech) and a strong mono Dark deck would make this Houndoom into a beast, but until then it will have to sit in the binder 90% of the time.   Just a though on the reprint, maybe Call of Legends will still be legal after the HGSS cards rotate out? The future game may be much kinder to Houndoom.   Modified: 3.5 (it’s good, but the metagame is not kind to this card. At least the stats allow this card to be easily manoeuvrable or it would definitely never see play) Limited: 3 (cheap attacks but it isn’t splashable, and I don’t know how well it will do against an opposing Active Fighting Pokemon)   Combos with: Judge, Weavile UD, Cyrus’ Initiative
conical	1/30/11: Houndoom(Call of Legends)   Time to start reviewing Call of Legends cards.   ...Yup.   Today is Houndoom, which might look similar to a Houndoom released in a set 5 months ago. This is because it is that same card, and yeah, there's a lot of reprints this set, and some or most of them make little or no sense. But anyway, Houndoom still has that Fire Counterattack...attack, which is pretty good against fighting decks. Honestly, while some of the reprinted cards merit some new discussion, Houndoom does not. Nothing in the metagame has changed enough that it sheds new light on Houndoom.   So let's talk about the art instead. One common theme with many of the reprinted cards is that much of the new art is still by the same artist, and Houndoom is no exception. In the original Undaunted print, Houndoom is inside a cave, possibly barking or threatening an intruder in some way. In the CL print, Houndoom is charging into what is likely the same cave. The two pictures could possibly tell a story of a Houndoom defending its turf against an unknown foe, but it's far more likely that I'm over-analyzing this.   Modified: 2.75/5 Limited: 4/5(Fighting is very popular this set)