Baby Mario
2010 UK
National
Seniors
Champion |
Jolteon
(Plasma Freeze)
And so we come to our final review of the
Eeveelutions in the Plasma
Freeze set. Don’t worry though, there are a couple of
pretty interesting cards still to come this week. In the
meantime, let’s take a look at
Jolteon.
Like the other Eeveelutions,
Jolteon is a well-supported
card, thanks to the fact that he is a Team Plasma
Pokémon and has a pretty good Eevee
to work with (the one with the Signs of Evolution
attack). On the other hand, the 90 HP does this Stage 1
card no favours at all, and means that
Jolteon won’t be hanging
around for more than a turn in most cases. Lightning
doesn’t hit a whole lot of playable cards for Weakness (Lugia-EX,
Tornadus-EX), and while
Fighting Weakness isn’t quite as bad as it has been
recently (Landorus-EX seems
to be on a slight decline), it isn’t ideal. To be honest
I would have liked a super fast Pokémon like this to
have free retreat, but I
guess I can live with the cost of one Energy.
Jolteon
has no Abilities unfortunately, so it all comes down to
the attacks. The first, Pin Missile costs just one
Colourless Energy and gives you four coin flips
with 20 damage for each heads.
Yep, with some extremely good luck you could be hitting
80 for one Energy . . . which is good, but not brilliant
for a Stage 1, and not even enough to two-shot an EX
without some help. Without that extremely good luck Pin
Missile becomes less and less effective: in fact you are
just as likely to waste your attack for the turn as you
are to do 80.
If you add a Lightning Energy,
Jolteon will give you a more reliable attack: the
oddly-named Electri-Defuse.
Unfortunately this only does 40 damage, but it does come
with an effect: if the Defending Pokémon is an EX, it
can’t attack during the next turn. EX Pokémon are very
widely played, so this probably sounds a lot more useful
than it is. The effect is easily worked around by simply
switching out for another attacker, while the 40 damage
struggles to put a dent in most playable EX Pokémon. If
you want Safeguard-style immunity from EX’s, you are a
lot better off with Sigilyph
DRX.
I’m inclined to think that Jolteon
is the worst and the least interesting of the Team
Plasma Eeveelutions. It
doesn’t even have a place in a dedicated
Eeveelutions deck really,
thanks to its sub-par attacks and low HP. Oh well.
Rating
Modified: 1.5 (doesn’t offer anything much)
Limited: 2.25 (Pin Missile is worth a punt if you have
nothing better)
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