Baby Mario
2010 UK
National
Seniors
Champion |
Machamp
#49 (Plasma Blast)
Stage 2 Pokémon don’t have an easy time of it in this
format. With so many powerful Basics around, why would
you ever pick the slower, more resource hungry option of
playing them? Only, it seems, if they can offer a
game-breaking Ability (Blastoise
BCR) or an extremely cheap, potentially high damage
attack (Empoleon DEX).
Machamp
gives you neither of these things. Yes it has an
Ability, but Badge of Discipline, which means
your Fighting Pokémon’s
attacks aren’t affected by Resistance, really isn’t very
useful at all: Lugia EX and
Tornadus EX are just about
the only cards you will see played that are hurt by this
and even then it isn’t going to be a major problem for
them. Although Close Combat does give you big damage of
120, that comes at the massive cost of four Energy and
still isn’t enough to OHKO an EX or another Stage 2
without a big boost from Silver Bangle and/or
Hypnotoxic Laser. Oh and it
has a drawback that can make
Machamp take more damage next turn. Like
that was
needed.
The issue here is the sheer amount of resources needed
to do the same damage that you would get from much
better supported Basic attackers like
Kyurem PLF,
Darkrai EX, or
Genesect EX (which also do
120 when you include the snipe damage). All the while
they keep making Stage 2 cards which aren’t as good as
Basics, you can’t expect to see them played at
tournaments.
Rating
Modified: 1.5 (too slow, too expensive, too much effort
to use)
Limited: 1.5 (would take forever to set up)
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