Simisear
#16 (Next Destinies)
The card designers at Pokémon really
love to keep pushing out these Monkey
Trio cards don’t they? So far, the
Simisear
ones tend to be the best (see the BW
version for details), but even those
fall way short of being competitive. I
don’t have huge hopes here, but let’s
see what they’ve given us this time.
And right away, we see the problem.
Simisear is
a Stage 1 with just 90 HP. This means it
will need a fantastic Ability (like
Eelektrik NV) or some very good attacks
(like Zebstrika
ND) to persuade anyone to put it in a
deck. Oh well, at least the Typing and
Weakness are
ok, and the Retreat cost of one is
pretty good.
Simisear
comes with two attacks. The first,
Collect, costs a single Fire Energy and
allows you to draw three cards. That it
itself is ok. After all, people have
played Stage 1s and draw
Pokemon as a
set up card in the past (I’m thinking of
Furret SW in
the days before
Claydol) and more recently
Virizion
NV’s Double Draw attack has been put to
good use. The problem here is that
Simisear is
neither as quick as
Virizion, nor as good as
Furret and,
besides, the format is so fast now that
waiting until turn two for your set up
attack is simply not something you want
to do: it’s not
that unusual for your opponent to
have taken two Prizes by then, with
Simisear
destined to become the third thanks to
its low HP.
Not to worry,
Simisear also has a fairly cheap
offensive attack too. For [R][C],
Stadium Burn does 30 damage (which is
poor), but with a Stadium in play, then
gets bumped up to 60. Now I’m not really
sure what current Stadium you would want
to play with
Simisear: it’s not a Basic, so it
doesn’t benefit from
Skyarrow
Bridge, and it isn’t enough of a tank to
want Pokémon Centre. None of the other
available Stadiums fit the bill either,
so you are forced to either
rely on your
opponent or waste
deckspace just to get a Stage 1
hitting for 60 on turn two. Even then,
the card is clearly underpowered
compared to Basic big-hitters like
Tornadus and
Thundurus
which can manage 80 by then.
I don’t really want to say that
Simisear is
an outright bad card. It seems to be
pretty well designed to be effective in
the slower format of Limited, where a
second turn Collect would be great, and
there are enough Stadiums in the set to
make Stadium Burn a decent, cheap
attack. In Modified though, there’s no
reason whatsoever to be playing this
over the many, many superior cards that
exist there.
Rating
Modified: 1.5 (too slow and too weak)
Limited: 3.75 ( a
nice little draw engine and a reasonably
fast attack)
