Cinccino
(Emerging Powers)
Hello and welcome to a new week of
reviews here on
Pojo’s CotD.
We’ll be continuing to round up some of
the cards we haven’t got round to
reviewing yet. Maybe there will be some
undiscovered gems in there? Who knows?
(Well, hopefully I do, or I wouldn’t be
much use as a reviewer).
We kick off the week with
Cinccino,
one of the most adorable Pokémon ever
created. Unfortunately, there isn’t very
much that is adorable about being a 90
HP Stage 1 with Fighting Weakness.
Eelektrik NV gets away with it thanks to
its amazing Energy acceleration Ability.
Cinccino is
going to need something similarly good
to make it a viable competitive card.
Sadly, it has no Ability, but it does
get two attacks. The first, Captivate,
costs a single Energy of any Colour. It
doesn’t do any damage, but what it does
do is let you switch one of your
opponent’s Benched Pokémon with their
Active. Sounds familiar? Yep, it’s
Pokémon Catcher in the form of an
attack. The trouble with this is that
effects which are amazing when you do
them with a Trainer or
Ability, are
much less amazing when they take up your
attack for the turn. Yes, Captivate can
still be disruptive and annoying for an
opponent that has a high Retreat
non-attacking Pokémon on the Bench (like
Vileplume
UD, Emboar
BW, or Eelektrik NV), but they still
have the chance to Retreat on their turn
and carry on with their game plan.
Besides, if this is the kind of attack
you are looking for, you don’t need a
Stage 1 to get it:
Carnivine TM and
Bellsprout
TM do the same job for the same cost,
and they are Basics.
However, if
Cinccino boasted a good second
attack, Captivate would be a useful way
of setting up a KO, or messing with your
opponent while you waited for the Energy
to use it. What
Cinccino has instead of a good
attack is Fluffy Tail. You know what? I
really wish Fluffy Tail
was good. In a game filled with
tough-sounding attacks like Land Crush
and Disaster Volt, it would be awesome
to go and take some Prizes with
something as cute as ‘Fluffy Tail’.
Sadly, that’s not going to happen. For
two Energy (any Colour will do), you get
a pathetic 30 damage and a Sleep
Condition which only has a 50/50 chance
of sticking. With a damage output like
that, your opponent would need to flip a
lot of consecutive tails for
Cinccino to
actually manage a KO on a Dragon or an
EX.
So, if you want to play
Cinccino
(and he is adorable enough to make this
tempting, even though you won’t win
anything), stick with the BW version, or
even the one from Next Destinies. This
one is by far the weakest of the three,
even if he does have the best attack
name.
Rating
Modified: 1.5 (too weak to compete)
Limited: 4 (like it a lot here –
disruption and Status Conditions can be
amazing, and the low damage output isn’t
so much of a problem)
