Baby Mario
2010 UK
National
Seniors
Champion |
Lileep
(Plasma Blast)
Hello, and welcome to a short week of reviews here on
Pojo’s
CotD. The reason for that is golf. Say no more.
We kick off with a look at Lileep,
which is a Restored Pokémon. It’s fair to say that the
Restored Mechanic, which replaced the old Fossil one,
has not exactly been a runaway success. Although the
designers get points for appropriateness (is that a
word?) by having you dig through the underneath of your
deck to unearth these Pokémon, they get nothing for
creating a method of getting a Pokémon into play which
is extremely clumsy and luck-based.
Lileep
is an attempt to put that right.
With its Prehistoric Call Ability, you can put
this Pokémon on the bottom of your deck if it is in the
discard pile, and from there you can put it on the Bench
if you have the Root Fossil Lileep
Trainer. Getting it into the discard isn’t exactly
difficult either: Professor Juniper, Ultra Ball, Dowsing
Machine, Computer Search . . . they’ll all do the job
while being extremely useful in
themselves. It’s still
slightly
more painful to get out a Stage 1 Restored Pokémon than
a normal Stage 2, but Prehistoric Call definitely eases
that pain.
Unfortunately, we don’t really have a
Cradily worthy of this card
at the moment. The one in Plasma Blast is extremely
gimmicky and ultimately impractical. Because getting out
Cradily is pretty much
Lileep’s only purpose in
life (it has low HP and a poor attack), this means that
it won’t see any play unless or until a better Evolution
comes along. It could be a long wait.
Rating
Modified: 3 (not worth playing right now, but I can’t
give a bad score as it’s a very good Ability for the
Restored Mechanic)
Limited: 1.25 (highly unlikely you would ever have all
the pieces to make Cradily
work in this format)
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virusyosh |
Welcome back, Pojo readers! We're continuing our
Plasma Blast reviews today, so be sure to check back for
updates this week to see if your favorite cards get
reviewed. Today we're going to kick things off with the
lower form of a Pokemon that many people have been
trying to make work recently (and luckily, this one
helps)! Today's Card of the Day is Lileep from Plasma
Blast.
Lileep is a Restored Grass Pokemon. As a Restored
Pokemon, you must use the effect of the Root Fossil
Lileep in order to get Lileep into play, which is
somewhat annoying given the random nature of the Fossils
in the Black and White era. That being said, there are
some other ways to cheat Lileep into play, such as Twist
Mountain, that can come in handy, as well as Lileep's
Ability (but I'll get to that later). 80 HP is about
what we'd expect for a Restored Pokemon, but this value
is still very squishy in a very hard-hitting metagame.
Fire Weakness isn't too bad of a problem right now;
Water Resistance can work wonders against Blastoise,
Kyurem, and Keldeo-EX (though all of these can easily
OHKO anyway), and a Retreat Cost of two isn't too bad -
it's not small enough to pay without an issue, but it's
not too expensive to be prohibitive.
Lileep has an Ability and an attack. Prehistoric Call
really helps with getting Lileeps out with more
regularity, since the Ability allows you to put Lileep
on the bottom of your deck if it's in your discard pile.
The new fossil mechanic looks at the bottom seven cards,
finds the proper Restored Pokemon, and places them onto
the Bench, so this allows for guaranteed activation of
the Root Fossil Lileep card in order to Bench the
Pokemon. This also allows you to discard Lileeps for
cards like Dowsing Machine and Ultra Ball, which is
always useful. Additionally, this Ability is one of the
reasons why a Cradily toolbox deck MAY be viable (we
just need good attacking Stage 2s first), so that's
something to look out for, as well.
Spiral Drain is Lileep's form of offense, dealing 20
damage for a Grass and a Colorless while healing 10
damage from Lileep. You'll almost never use this attack,
but it can be decent in Limited if you end up drafting a
Cradily line.
Modified: 3/5 Lileep is only good in one place: the
Cradily toolbox deck, since Lileep is the lower form of
Cradily. However, getting Restored Pokemon out tends to
be a major pain, and Prehistoric Call mitigates this
problem somewhat. Whether or not Lileep sees play here
will be based on the viability of the Cradily deck, but
even still, I wouldn't be surprised if some people will
try it out, especially when the X&Y sets are released
and we get a whole new crop of Stage 2s.
Limited: 3/5 Lileep isn't bad in Limited, but it's
not amazing, either. Prehistoric Call once again can let
you get Lileep to the bottom of the deck easily if it is
somehow discarded, and Spiral Drain is passable but very
weak here. If you pull a Cradily and multiple Stage 2s
it may be worth running, but aside from that, it's
probably not worth the effort.
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