Audino
83/98 (Emerging Powers)
We end the week with the
Unova
Region’s version of
Chansey . . . the
Pokemon that
can always be seen in the anime hanging
around with Nurse Joy (nice work if you
can get it). This card has been getting
a little bit of attention recently,
though I’m not sure how serious this is
(yet).
Audino
is a non-evolving Basic with a
reasonable 90 HP. It’s a Colourless
Type, which means it isn’t hitting much
for Weakness right now, and is somewhat
vulnerable to
Donphan Prime (it may be the only
Fighting Pokémon that sees much play,
but it sees
a
lot of play). The Retreat cost of
two isn’t great, but then
Audino isn’t
the kind of Pokémon you want to be
switching in and out anyway: the card
really only has one purpose and that is
to try and hit for as much damage as
possible, as fast as possible.
Because of that, I choose to ignore
Audino’s
almost-useless second attack (heal 50
damage from one of your Pokémon for [C][C][C])
and instead move on to the main
‘attraction’ of the card: Powerful Slap.
This attack has an apparent cost
of one Energy,
but that doesn’t begin to tell the
story, as what Powerful Slap does is
give you a coin flip for each Energy
attached to Audino,
and it does 40 damage for each heads.
40 damage per Energy
is very substantial for that attack. Ok,
it’s less than
Exeggutor LA (50), and only half
of what Infernape
PL could do but remember that
Audino is a
Basic, and it doesn’t have to discard.
One obvious way of using
Audino is to
slap a Double Colourless on it first
turn, and hope you get lucky enough with
the flips to pick up a
donk win.
Another is to combine it with an Energy
accelerator like Ability
Emboar,
attach as much Energy as possible, and
hope you have
enough that any tails flips won’t
matter.
Of course this strategy is pretty easy
to pick apart: you need to set up a
Stage 2, and run a ton of Energy, which
you lose when
Audino gets KO’d (and that will
happen a lot). You could wait for
Victory Star
Victini to come out in the next
set (it has an Ability which lets you
re-flip for an attack), but that isn’t
really an answer to the problems of
playing Audino:
essentially you are investing a lot of
resources and trusting to luck to do big
damage.
Yes, it can donk,
yes it can completely ruin another
player’s day, but the luck factor means
that serious players won’t run it and as
for those who play for fun . . . well,
is donking
really any fun?
Rating
Modified: 2.25 (it
can do big damage. Emphasis on the
can)
Limited: 4.5 (an absolute game-winning
monster. Splashable
and quick)
