Baby Mario
2010 UK
National
Seniors
Champion |
Chesnaught
(Kalos Starter Set)
Hello and welcome to the first week of XY Pokémon
reviews here on Pojo’s
CotD. On the whole, I think
they did a great job with the new generation of Pokémon:
they didn’t go mad and give us 100+ new Pokémon of
varying quality. What we got instead was around 70 well
designed new creatures and today we get to review the
first of them. But
if that sounds exciting, then maybe you should hold back
on that excitement a little bit. This week’s cards
aren’t from the proper XY set, but from the starter
decks. They have their origin in the Japanese Beginning
Set and, as people who follow these things know, that
isn’t often a good sign when it comes to playability.
Chesnaught
is pretty typical of what you might expect. This Stage 2
evolution of the new XY Grass starter isn’t giving you
anything special or even interesting to play with. True,
the 150 HP is nice, but the attacks (the important bit)
are just overpriced and underwhelming. There isn’t
really much I can say about Needle Arm, which offers 50
points of vanilla damage for three Energy, and
Tumbling attack doesn’t leave
much more scope for discussion either. For four Energy,
all you get is an effect-free
80 damage, plus a coin flip for an extra 40. Even with
the flip, you still fall short of a
OHKO on an EX or a playable Stage 2, and that is
obviously not good enough.
He may be a brand new Pokémon, but
Chesnaught’s debut card follows a depressingly
familiar pattern. A standard Stage 2 which is neither
fast nor hard-hitting enough to be considered for
competitive play, it’s also far too dull for a
casual/fun deck.
Rating
Modified: 1.5 (plus
ça change, plus
c'est la
męme chose, as the French
would say)
Limited: 2 (too much effort for too little reward)
|
HEZ
Intro to
Unlimited 150 |
Chesnaught.
Modified.
This week we’ll be reviewing several cards from the
Kalos starter deck sets. As you probably already know
though, starter sets rarely contain good cards except
maybe some Trainer cards. So, without setting
expectations too high, here’s Chesnaught!
So 150 HP is pretty good, there’s still no regular Basic
Pokémon that reaches this HP so it has that going for
it. Otherwise though, it’s pretty poor. Its attacks are
either weak for the cost or are weak for the cost AND
require a coin flip. The huge retreat seals its fate as
unplayable.
The Chesnaught from the XY set probably won’t see any
competitive play and that’s several times better so not
much hope for this guy.
Unlimited 150.
Slightly better here I guess. You can set up a Stage 2 a
lot easier but again you’re better off using the one
from the XY set. That one is actually pretty good in
this format as an unstoppable tank, hitting the max HP
for a Stage 2 at 160! Add on a move that heals and you
should be able to keep it on board for several turns if
it avoids Fire types. We’ll have to wait and see
if future Chesnaughts provide better support than the
starter set version. Acceleration, energy moving or
healing would all help Chesnaught be a playable Pokémon.
Ratings:
Modified: 1
Unlimited 150: 1.5
|
