Baby Mario
2010 UK
National
Seniors
Champion |
Rotom
(Plasma Storm)
Today we take a look at one of the strangest and most
interesting Pokémon out there:
Rotom. It’s not a Legendary, but the Legendary
music plays when you catch it. It has more
formes than any other
Pokémon except Arceus (don’t
really count Unown or
Spinda), and it’s basically
some kind of goofy ghost that likes to haunt . . .
domestic appliances. The world of Pokémon gets a bit
weird sometimes, doesn’t it?
Anyhoo,
as a TCG card, this Rotom is
also pretty strange and interesting. It’s an
unevolving Basic with just
60 HP and Fighting Weakness (which is absolutely
horrible, as we shall see). The retreat cost of one is
very manageable, but overall, the stats on this card do
a pretty good job of putting you off running it.
Rotom
has two attacks, the first of which is the somewhat
awkwardly-named Electribonus.
For one Energy of any Type
you can discard a Lightning Energy from your hand to
draw three cards. That seems as if it would be very good
as a starter in an Eelektrik NVI-based deck as it gives
you some nice early game draw
and loads up
the discard pile for future Dynamotor acceleration.
However, there are a number of reasons why playing
Rotom in an Eelektrik deck
would be a bit mad. For a start, there’s the
donk factor. You are already
running four Tynamo, all of
which are OHKO’d by
Landorus-EX (among other
things), so adding another Pokémon that can easily
suffer the same fate doesn’t seem like a great idea.
Secondly, in order to use
Electribonus on the first turn, you would need
an Energy to attach
and a spare
Lightning to discard, which isn’t always going to happen
in a deck that only runs 8-9 Lightning. Finally, the
focus in an Eelektrik deck should be on getting
Eelektriks set up as fast as
possible, and that is best achieved through
Emolga DRX’s Call for Family
than the random draw that Rotom
offers. That, and the fact that it is a lot tougher to
OHKO, means that anyone wanting to use a starter in an
Eelektrik deck should choose Emolga
over Rotom every time.
Just in case we forget that Rotom
is part Ghost-Type, it comes with a Poltergeist attack
(just like Gengar SF). For
one Lightining and one
Colourless Energy, you get to look at your opponent’s
hand (never a bad thing) and do 20 damage for each
Trainer card they have there (note: this now includes
Supporters and Stadiums as well as Items). Obviously the
damage output from this attack is variable and can be
controlled by the opponent (by playing/discarding most
of their Trainers). With hand sizes averaging out at
around 5-6 cards at the moment, I wouldn’t anticipate
Poltergeist being able to hit for more than 40-60: it’s
not like the days of Gengar
when we had Vileplume UD to
lock a hand full of Trainers. Nevertheless, Poltergeist
is a better offensive attack than we usually see on
starter Pokémon.
Even so, it’s not enough to persuade me that
Rotom is playable in
Modified. His low HP and Weakness make him a real
liability, and the only decks that run Lightning Energy
have a much better starter option. Limited is a
different story though. Here, Rotom
can be used as a great early game draw engine in a
format where any draw at all is more than welcome.
Rating
Modified: 2 (this isn’t really a format that favours
starter Pokémon – especially not ones as frail as
Rotom)
Limited: 4 (Poltergeist is unlikely to do much damage,
but Elelctribonus is
probably the best first turn
attack this set has to offer)
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