Baby Mario
2010 UK
National
Seniors
Champion |
Hitmonlee
(Furious Fists)
Yesterday’s Glaceon had a
great cheap attack, but was let down by a mediocre
second effort. Today’s Hitmonlee
is a bit like that, only much worse.
Stretch Kick is ok for a single Fighting Energy, doing
30 damage to a Benched
Pokémon of your choice means you can finish off
something that’s damaged or set up a future KO. Sadly,
Bench damage cannot be enhanced by Muscle Band and
Strong Energy. The less said about Spiral Kick the
better. Two Fighting for a vanilla 30 is Base Set levels
of damage and in today’s format of inflated
numbers, it’s a little
embarrassing to see it on a card.
So yeah, grossly underpowered and not a good user of all
the Type support.
Rating
Modified: 1.25 (I feel bad for him)
Expanded: 1.25 (the original 151 deserve better)
Limited: 2.75 (eh, give Stretch Kick a try)
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aroramage |
Where Hitmonchan succeeds in the boxing ring,
Hitmonlee succeeds in the...kickboxing ring, I guess.
Hitmonchan's all fists, and Hitmonlee's all feet -
though between you and me, I always preferred Hitmonchan,
at least he resembles something. Seriously, what's
Hitmonlee supposed to be? Welcome back guys, today we
take a look at another Hitmon-mon, Lee!
In the video game world, Hitmonlee's a bit better off
than Hitmonchan, having more Atk and Speed than the
latter at the cost of a little Defense. He also has a
really good Hidden Ability, Unburden, which doubles his
speed once his held item is lost; this can make him a
very quick and powerful heavy-hitter against anyone not
expecting it, but he can also use Hi Jump Kick in
combination with the Reckless ability to really bring
the pain down on opponents! Unfortunately, the Hitmons'
Special Defense is their greatest weakness, and Psychic
and Flying moves can decimate them and their low HP
easily.
Meanwhile here in the TCG, Hitmonlee has always been in
the shadow of Hitmonchan. In fact, looking at the
history of Hitmonlee, his strongest attack has done
around 60 damage; that used to be a lot, but nowadays
it's borderline negligible, and sadly this Hitmonlee is
no better than some of the others. His first attack,
Stretch Kick, is a classic sniping move that Hitmonlee
tends to have, dealing 30 damage to a Benched Pokemon
for 1. Compared to some of his earlier forms, this is a
pretty good boost, but even then it's still only a mere
30, and you don't even damage the Active Pokemon with
it.
Spiral Kick adds on another energy to deal a vanilla 30
to the Active Pokemon, but that's such a waste on
Hitmonlee! Hitmonchan at least got Mach Punch, and even
if it was for 3, it still did 60 damage. Even his Mach
Punch at least can potential hit 60 on its own if you're
lucky! Hitmonlee lacks this, and because of that he ends
up being worse than his Gen I brother.
You could argue that damage-boosters and all the
Fighting Support could make Hitmonlee viable, but why
would you waste time boosting this weaker guy when you
could boost Hitmonchan instead? There's just no getting
around it: Hitmonlee is a bad card, and unless you've
got a foil, it's not worth having.
Rating
Standard: 1/5 (just can't cut it around these parts)
Expanded: 1/5 (AH HA HA HA HA HA HA HA)
Limited: 2/5 (slightly better if only for the Fighting
support, but honestly you better be scrapping bottom of
the barrel here)
Arora Notealus: Looking into it, apparently Hitmonlee is
the embodiment of taekwondo, as well as having
influences from the mythical headless men, Japanese
kickboxer Tadashi Sawamura, and even the Hindu demon
Kabandha! That's pretty cool, better than Hitmonchan's,
although I guess I still like Hitmonchan better.
Next Time: Deep in the forests arises-
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Otaku |
Is it a bad sign that as I begin this review Hitmonlee (XY:
Furious Fists 47/111), my main thought is “I should
have had us review it Monday so I could have said
something like “We kickstart the week…”? I am uncertain
if we have ever had a particular “good” Hitmonlee
card in the TCG; I remember a few that came closer than
others, none that actually hit the mark… leading to the
second question; does that lower expectations for this
card (making it easier to seem “good” by comparison) or
increase the pressure to finally be a “good”
Hitmonlee (and thus make it harder to seem “good”
because it will be more deeply scrutinized)?
Hitmonlee is a
Fighting-Type Pokémon, enjoying how Fighting-Types are
still riding high until XY: Phantom Forces is
legal for Organized Play tournaments (November 26th I
believe). Many Colorless-Type, most Darkness-Type and
most Lightning-Type Pokémon are Fighting Weak (even in
competitive play) and so you’ll often enjoy double
damage when attacking the Defending Pokémon. Fighting
Resistance is one of the more common forms of Resistance
encountered, but “No Resistance” is still by far the
most common, and as it just reduces damage by -20 it is
usually an annoyance. I don’t know if it is a little
more or less important than Weakness, but Fighting-Type
support (both that which is explicitly for
Fighting-Types and that which is more indirect) is great
right now, most of it fresh from XY: Furious Fists.
Two great things versus one slight annoyance means in
terms of Type, Hitmonlee is a winner.
Hitmonlee is also a Basic
Pokémon, another simple but obvious triumph for the
card; while it is a critique of mine that the Stages of
Evolution are not balanced even when dealing with fully
Evolved specimens, it does mean by virtue of it being
(relatively) difficult and costly to play Stage 1 and
Stage 2 Pokémon, being a Basic Pokémon is best. That
being said, I do with that the-powers-that-be would
hurry up and just standardize Tyrogue as a
regular Basic Pokémon and Hitmonlee as a Stage 1;
while in the video game as well as the TCG, Hitmonlee
were introduced as Basic Pokémon, in the second
generation of games they were given a “pre-Evolution” or
“Baby” pseudo-Stage. What resulted was years of
complicated “patches” for game mechanics… and by now I’d
just like it to become the simple, usual thing because
its no longer novel, its annoying and since its just a
game it can be changed for convenience.
We finally get to a less impressive Attribute for Hitmonlee;
90 HP is low enough that Hitmonlee is a probable
OHKO. Against an incomplete set-up or less aggressive
strategy, Hitmonlee can survive a turn, but being
just out of range of a Muscle Band and
Hypnotoxic Laser/Virbank City Gym boosted
Quaking Punch (courtesy of Seismitoad-EX) is
better than not, but hardly bragging rights.
Psychic-Types love lower HP due to Psychic Weakness;
again at least Hitmonlee is just outside of the
range for a minimal, completely unboosted (outside of
Weakness) X-Ball by Mewtwo-EX, but only by 10 HP.
So anything that can add to that, like a Muscle Band
or Hypnotoxic Laser (no Virbank City Gym
required) or a third Energy (on Mewtwo-EX or
Hitmonlee itself) and its a OHKO. The lack of
Resistance isn’t a surprise and isn’t a huge loss, but
it would have been appreciated for the few instances
where -20 damage comes in handy. Finishing off the
Attributes, the single Energy Retreat Cost is good; easy
to pay and recover from paying, and anything that lowers
your Retreat Cost turns it into a free Retreat.
Hitmonlee has two attacks,
and they are familiar ones. Stretch Kick requires [F]
and allows you to do 30 points of damage to an
opponent’s Benched Pokémon: as is almost always the case
you don’t apply Weakness or Resistance to that damage.
For [FF] it can use Spiral Kick to hit for… 30 points
of damage. These attacks are very underwhelming. I
have no idea why, save tradition (more on that later)
Stretch Kick can’t hit the Active Pokémon at all, nor do
I know why Spiral Kick is priced like an attack from the
earliest era of the game. Both attacks desperately need
to hit harder, or alternatively Stretch Kick needed to
have applied Weakness and Resistance; while the latter
would have been worse, scoring an effective 60 for one
(in this hypothetical) would have had some merit.
Spiral Kick needed to do at least 10 more points of
damage, just so one Strong Energy and a Silver
Bangle hit 90 so it could OHKO a 180 HP, Fighting
Weak Pokémon-EX. I guess if you add in Fighting
Stadium to the previous two, it still can but but
that much effort isn’t really worth it.
Still, the best way to get an idea of what this card is doing right
and wrong is to take a look back at Hitmonlee (Fossil
7/62, 22/62; Legendary Collection 13/110). You
can even see a review for it
here.
This version is still a Basic, Fighting-Type with
Psychic Weakness, no Resistance, a single Energy Retreat
Cost and two attacks. Its HP was only 60 when 70 was
the going rate… but big Basic Pokémon ruled the roost
back then (and there was no mechanic equivalent to
Pokémon-EX), and average damage was about 30 to 50
points per turn so the HP is about in scale. Its first
attack is also Stretch Kick! That isn’t much of a
surprise I suppose; not including reprints there are
four different Hitmonlee with an attack called
Stretch Kick. The original required [FF] to do 20 to
something on the Bench, so at least that is better.
It’s second attack was called High Jump Kick but it was
a vanilla damage attack, doing 50 for [FFF]: so Spiral
Kick is just it doing 20 less damage for one less Energy
and under a new name. I would have hoped that the
designers had realized why the older version hadn’t
worked too well but I guess not; the damage is a bit
better for Stretch Kick and on part for Spiral Kick vs
High Jump Kick, but it just isn’t enough. In Standard
and Expanded, ignore Hitmonlee. Enjoy it in
Limited, though, where Bench hits are often quite potent
due to the Bench (usually) being safer.
Ratings
Standard: 1.25/5 - Solid
stats with almost worthless attacks.
Expanded: 1.5/5 - It does
get access to Level Ball and Skyarrow Bridge,
but that can only do so much.
Limited: 3.5/5 - As long as you can work in the Fighting Energy, run
at least one; prepping and hiding on the Bench are key
strategies here… unless you’re facing a +39 deck, which
won’t really care about Hitmonlee and also is
where you shouldn’t bother running it.
Theme Deck: 3/5 - Normally
being in a theme deck like Dark Hammer would improve a
card, but Hitmonlee is so niche it gets lost in
the crowd; still handy for hitting the Bench but that’s
about it.
Summary: I think Hitmonlee exists to tempt me to turn this review
into a Create-A-Card exercise; its got a solid
foundation but the attacks are familiar failures of the
past that didn’t get tweaked enough to garner better
results. With just a few tweaks it could have been at
least an interesting - if not balanced but effective -
card.
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