Cradily
probably has even more combo potential than the
Sigilyph we looked at
yesterday. The key word here though is ‘potential’. It
is entirely possible (even probable) that it will never
be realized in a competitive setting.
So, what do we get with this card? It’s a Restored Stage
1 Pokémon, but the pain of getting it into play is
somewhat mitigated by the Prehistoric Call Ability of
the Basic (which allows you to put it at the bottom of
your deck if it’s in the discard pile) and the existence
of Caitlin (which is another way to get
Lileep to the bottom of the
deck). Either of these methods makes the use of Root
Fossil Lileep a little
easier.
The reason why you would want to get
Cradily into play in the
first place? Well, it’s not the worse-than-mediocre
Spiral Drain attack, but the far more interesting
Lifesplosion (seriously,
where are they getting these names?). This costs a
single Grass Energy, but then for
each Energy attached, you can take a Stage 2
Pokémon from your deck and put it straight on to your
Bench. This is slightly reminiscent of the old
Garchomp LV X’s Restore
attack and offers the same kind of strategy, aiming to
fill the bench with powerful Stage 2 Pokémon without
going through the hassle of having to evolve them and
devote space to their Basics.
Sounds great in theory (and there has been a
lot of
theory done involving Cradily),
but in practice? To say I have doubts would be severely
underselling my pessimism about this card. For one
thing, even with Lileep and
Caitlin, it’s still a pain to get
Cradily into play and attach
multiple Energy to it. For another, unlike
Garchomp LV X, it offers no
Energy acceleration so you are stuck with finding more
room for that or using only Stage 2s with very cheap
attacks. Finally (and this is the most important thing),
the turns, effort, and resources you devote to getting
Cradily on the Field would
be much better spent on just evolving your Stage 2s the
normal way. Piplup/Rare
Candy/Empoleon (for example)
is still easier to pull off than Caitlin/Ultra Ball plus
Lileep/Root Fossil/Cradily
will ever be.
Cradily
is the perfect example of the fancy play/combotastic
card that promises much but isn’t going to be allowed to
deliver by the many, many fast and powerful decks that
dominate the format right now. You want something fun
and flashy to play casually? Then you may have found
your card. You want something to perform consistently in
a competitive environment? Look elsewhere.
Rating
Modified: 2 (it’s not wrong to like this card, but
please be realistic about its chances)
Limited: 2.5 (you need to pull really well to even get
the combo pieces, but I guess it could work here)
Otaku
Cradily
(BW: Plasma Blast 4/101) is a Grass-Type Stage 1
Pokémon.
The Grass-Type recently got some pseudo-support e.g.
cards that behoove a Grass-Type deck or Grass-Type
attackers but are not restricted to Grass-Type Pokémon,
such as cards that reward (G) Type Energy.Blastoise
(BW: Boundaries Crossed 31/149; BW: Plasma
Storm 137/135) and
Keldeo EX (BW:
Boundaries Crossed 49/149, BW: Boundaries Crossed
142/149; BW Promo BW61) are still popular Grass
Weak Pokémon and Resistance is non-existent.Being an Evolution is a drawback right now, made
extra bad as this Evolves from a Restored Pokémon, a
non-Evolved Pokémon that can only be played with the
effect of another card.
120 HP for a Stage 1 isn’t bad except as I pointed out,
this Evolves from a Restored Pokémon, causing it to
function closer to a Stage 2 in many respects; so
requiring two cards to get out something that is not an
easy OHKO but definitely is an easy 2HKO is much less
appealing than a Stage 1 that just requires Evolving
from a Basic Pokémon.The Fire Weakness is tolerable as Fire-Types
don’t see a huge amount of play right now (though if it
became necessary there are still options to work into
deck) and the Water Resistance is handy but will just
make Cradily
harder to OHKO (as opposed to making it “hard” to OHKO).Finishing off the “bottom stats” is the Retreat
Cost of (CC); too expensive to easily afford for most
decks, too low for
Heavy Ball
to target, but fortunately most decks should be packing
a Retreat alternative or cost reducer.
The first attack on
Cradily is
what catches my eye… so I am going to look at the second
attack, Spiral Drain first; not to be contrary, but the
nature of said first attack means that Spiral Drain
needs to also be “good” as a means of effectively
reducing the cost of the first attack (more on that next
paragraph).For (GCC) Spiral Drain only does 60 points of
damage while healing 20 points of damage from
Cradily.This doesn’t allow
Cradily to
significantly slow down how quickly it is KOed or to
maintain the standard pace of
KOs
against your opponent.It is better than nothing or many “worse”
attacks, but it isn’t a “good” attack in and of itself.
Life Explosion requires (G) to use and allows you to
search your deck for a Stage 2 Pokémon for each Energy
attached to
Cradily and play it to your Bench.This attack is powerful, but you are paying a
hefty price.How so?Even getting out a single Stage 2 Pokémon via
this attack, you are using a total of five cards (Lileep,
the card used to get
Lileep into
play, Cradily
itself, a source of (G) Energy, and the Stage 2 Pokémon
itself) as well as waiting a turn to Evolve
Lileep into
Cradily, an
Energy attachment, and of course an attack.Some of these costs can be partially mitigated,
but as the Energy used for the attack is likely gone:
Spiral Drain isn’t really worth using, moving Energy off
of Cradily
to another Pokémon will be difficult, and
Cradily only
has 120 HP.
Cradily
Evolves from
Lileep which can only be put into play by either
Root Fossil
Lileep or
Twist
Mountain.Only
Lileep (BW: Plasma Blast 3/101), a Restored
Grass-Type Pokémon with 80 HP, an Ability, and an
attack.
The Ability is useful as it allows you to put
Lileep on
the bottom of your deck if it is in your discard pile.It has a weaker Spiral Drain for (GC) that does
20 points of damage while healing 10, which is even
worse than the version
Cradily has.It has the same bottom stats as
Cradily,
with similar results (though I consider the Retreat Cost
even worse for smaller Pokémon).Root
Fossil Lileep is an Item that allows you to look at
the bottom seven cards of your deck and play one
Lileep you
find there (if you find one) to your Bench (it hasn’t
proven very effective). Twist
Mountain
allows you to Bench a Restored Pokémon to your Bench on
a successful coin toss once per turn, and is better but
not by much.
So putting it all together means you have a very
expensive and unreliable “combo” just to get a Stage 2
Pokémon into without using the normal means of
Evolution.
This isn’t a savings of time if you count
Cradily
having to Evolve into
Cradily
itself (though you wouldn’t have to risk lower HP Basic
Pokémon this way, just
Lileep) and
with how much you are investing you have to be getting
multiple Stage 2 Pokémon into play in order to come out
ahead in speed and advantage… and now we run into the
problem that so far, a deck using this combo has no
Basic Pokémon!Unlike many TCGs, Pokémon neither has you start
with your required “creature” in play nor are you
allowed to have no “creatures” in play.
Ratings
Unlimited:
While this would enable some spectacular combos and some
of its drawbacks would be addressed, ultimately it isn’t
worth the hassle when making any serious attempt at
competitive play.
1/5
Modified:
While this would enable some spectacular combos, the
cost is too steep so it isn’t worth the hassle when
making any serious attempt at competitive play.
1/5
Limited:
How bizarre is it that this is the card’s best format?The slower pacing means you just need to get some
decent Stage 2 Pokémon (which are often dead cards but
powerful) and of course successfully get
Lileep and
Cradily out
(if that is even possible).So if you get what you need (and remember, you’ll
still need some Basic Pokémon to buy you time and make
the deck legal), this can give you a powerful but
fragile deck.
2/5
Summary
The good news is that the-powers-that-be within the game
have learned that accelerating Evolution is problematic;
Cradily
isn’t the new
Broken-Time Space.The bad news is that instead of ditching or
fixing the problematic Restored Pokémon mechanic (how
about we stop making this “distinction” at all because
Fossil cards
weren’t really any better?), we got a bad attempt at
“helping” Evolutions.Yes, the idea sounds like crazy fun at first, but
if this had been successful… is there anyway it wouldn’t
have been broken, given the games current power level?
Jason Klaczynski
"Ness" Three-Time World Champion
Had this at #10 on this Top 10 List for Plasma Blast.
Cradily
Instantly putting Stage 2s on to your bench will allow
for some insanely powerful combos!
virusyosh
Happy midweek, Pojo readers! We're reviewing some
good/hyped cards from Plasma Blast that didn't quite
make our Top 10 countdown lists over the next two weeks,
and today's Card is a Pokemon with interesting
abilities, but no real place in the metagame...yet.
Today's Card of the Day is Cradily.
Cradily is a Stage 1 Grass Pokemon. Grass-types got a
major boost in Plasma Blast with the release of Virizion-EX
and Genesect-EX; however, Cradily will often be
operating in its own deck. 120 HP is good on a Stage 1,
though it's important to note that Cradily's lower form,
Lileep, starts off as a Fossil, so there is some degree
of difficulty in getting Cradily out. Fire Weakness
isn't too big of a problem right now (but could be in
the future), Water Resistance is good against Blastoise,
Kyurem, and Keldeo; and a Retreat Cost of two is about
what we'd expect here: not too expensive to pay, but
you'll still probably want something like Switch or
Float Stone.
Cradily has two attacks. Lifesplosion is what makes
Cradily interesting: for the cost of a single Grass
Energy, you may search your deck for a Stage 2 Pokemon
and put it onto your Bench for each Energy attached to
Cradily, shuffling afterward. Note that the Stage 2s are
still considered Stage 2s (not Basics), so effects that
would normally affect Basic Pokemon will not work on
them. However, this is an awesome way to cheat out
multiple Stage 2s at a time, and many people will
undoubtedly try to break this by making a Cradily/Stage
2 toolbox deck. Unfortunately, there aren't many good
Stage 2 attacks right now in Modified, so time will tell
to see if this sort of deck is viable.
The second attack, Spiral Drain, does 60 damage while
healing 20 from Cradily for a Grass and two Colorless.
Nothing impressive by any means, but since you'll be
using Cradily primarily for Lifesplosion, it doesn't
have to be anything too impressive.
Modified: 3/5 This rating is mostly based on potential,
as there are many good utility Pokemon but very few good
attacking Stage 2s in Modified right now. Lifesplosion
is somewhat hard to activate given the difficulty in
getting Cradily out, powering up the attack, and then
filling the Bench, but the potential is definitely
there, especially if we get some better Stage 2s in the
X&Y sets. That being said, given how fast most
Basic-based decks are these days, Cradily may be too
slow in general to set up and compete in a fast,
hard-hitting metagame.
Limited: 3.5/5 Being a Fossil really hurts Cradily in
Limited, as getting them out without dedicated support
is difficult. Additionally, Lifesplosion probably won't
be quite as useful as it would be otherwise, since you
won't have that many Stage 2s in your deck anyway.
Finally, Spiral Drain is definitely usable here, as the
healing definitely gives Cradily a bit of bulk. If
you're running Grass and get a few interesting Stage 2s,
you should probably give Cradily a try.
