Raichu
(Next Destinies)
We finish the week with another card
that has absolutely adorable artwork.
Just look at Raichu
strutting down the street with his
balloons: he could well be the happiest
Pokémon I have ever seen. The question
is, would
putting him in a deck bring a smile to
the face of TCG players?
Raichu
is a Stage 1 Lightning Pokémon with
Fighting Weakness (which makes him an
easy KO for Donphan
and Terrakion)
and just 90 HP (which makes him an easy
KO for everything else). The Retreat
cost of one is decent enough, but
doesn’t really give you a reason to use
him.
At least Raichu
has a cheap attack to start with.
Thundershock
costs just one Lightning Energy and for
that you get 20
damage and the chance for
Paralysis. That’s pretty good value, and
can be disruptive if the coin comes up
heads, but it’s really little more than
a low-damage inconvenience for an
opponent. You could use it with Victory
Star Victini
I guess, but even then it’s outclassed
by the options offered by
Lilligant
EP’s Bemusing Aroma which is similar,
only better.
Actually, you may as well keep
Victini
around to use with
Raichu’s second attack. Slam is
more expensive at [L][C][C]
but it does offer the possibility of big
damage: you get to flip two coins and do
80 for each heads. Sadly,
flippy
attacks like this are almost never
worthwhile unless the either have a low
failure rate (like
Vanilluxe NV) or offer at least
something when they fail (such as that
Lilligant I
mentioned earlier). Even then, you don’t
exactly see flippy
decks dominating the tournament scene
because players (understandably) prefer
consistency and reliability over the
chance of complete failure. Slam is a
great attack if you flip two heads, but
if you don’t? You are going to wish you
had used something else.
As usual with
Raichu (and he does get printed a
lot in the TCG), the designers seem
to be going for a ‘glass cannon’ type of
Pokémon: something that can do huge
damage but at the same time is very
vulnerable. That isn’t really a very
good thing to be in a format where we
already have a lot of very durable
cannons, and when you factor in the
flippy
nature of the card . . . well, you don’t
have anything that will ever be a part
of the competitive scene.
Rating
Modified: 1.75 (Raichu
doesn’t care about my bad review – he
has balloons!)
Limited: 3 (taking a gamble on flips
isn’t such a bad option here)
