Carracosta
26/101 (Noble Victories)
So, you go through all the pain of the
new mechanic to get your Restored
Pokémon into play; you put up with
having a useless
Tirtouga on your Bench for a
turn; and your reward is
. . . today’s card,
Carracosta!
This had better be good . . .
Well, the HP isn’t bad, though to be
honest, 140 is the least I would expect
from a giant armoured turtle. The Grass
Weakness is ok too: only
Virizion NV
is really a threat as things stand in
the format. The massive Retreat cost of
four? Eh, I guess I expected that too,
so I made sure I included a couple of
Switch in my (imaginary)
Carracosta
deck.
Good news here is that
Carracosta
does have an Ability.
Solid Rock gives you a coin flip every
time Carracosta
would take damage from an attack (note:
does not work with damage counter
placement or Status Condition damage).
If the coin flip
ends up being heads, damage to the
prehistoric turtle is reduced by 50.
That’s pretty nice to be honest, but it
should only be seen as a nice
bonus. The coin flip means that it’s
not something you can generally rely
upon to keep
Carracosta in the game so much as
something that might buy you another
turn or two of attacking if you’re
lucky. In short, it’s only worth having
if you were going to be playing the card
anyway.
And is that something you would be
doing? Let’s take a look at the card’s
solitary attack, Crunch. For the massive
cost of [W][W][C][C]
you get to do 80 damage (terrible value
by today’s standards) and discard an
Energy from the Defending Pokémon
(potentially pretty useful). Nope, as a
reason to play
Carracosta, that is nowhere near
to cutting it. The attack cost is so
huge that it practically forces you to
run Energy acceleration (Feraligatr
Prime, I guess . . . great, another
Stage 2!), while the damage output is
subpar. Discarding Energy is nice, but
if this is the kind of attack you want,
then surely
Typhlosion Prime is a much better
bet: easier to get out, provides its own
acceleration, and does 70 + discard for
[R][R][C]. Oh and it goes very nicely
with Reshiram
too.
If you can hit a few heads on Solid
Rock, then
Carracosta can be a bit of a pain
for an opponent to deal with. Apart from
that though, it really doesn’t have much
to offer. Certainly
not enough to make building a deck
around it worthwhile.
Rating
Modified: 1.75 (if you’re lucky it can
wall for a bit. If you’re unlucky, your
Cover Fossils will fail and you will
never get it out)
Limited: 2.5 (the chances of this
hitting the table are remote. If it
does, I guess you have a decent
chance of
winning with it)
