Welcome readers, as we begin another
week of reviews. No official theme, but
I know some of these cards made my own
“long list” for our Top 10 countdown.
Since I am both indecisive and nitpicky
enough to worry about tie breakers, I
sometimes (but not always) submit a list
in excess of a “Top 10”. Victreebel
(XY: Furious Fists 3/111) did
not make even my Top 20, but at
least it was one of the dozens of cards
that did manage to catch my eye in the
first place. Let us examine it to try
and determine if it is a victim of
circumstance, crowded out of our Top 10
list by there simply being sufficient
(actual or perceived) “better” cards, if
its merely another hopeful that is
actually hopeless, or somewhere in
between.
Victreebel
is a Grass-Type; while they actually
have some Type support, like the
Fairy-Type Floette (XY:
Flashfire 64/106) and its Ability
that boosts the maximum HP of Grass-Type
Pokémon by +20 (and it even stacks),
that doesn’t see much play. There is
the new Herbal Energy, but I
honestly am not completely sold on that
(the healing is nice, but is it worth
being incompatible with Basic Energy
support?). What is well established is
the Grass-Type Energy support in the
form of Virizion-EX, providing a
source of Grass Energy
acceleration as well as allowing Pokémon
with a source of [G] Energy attached to
ignore Special Conditions. The other
benefit is hitting Weakness on targets
like Keldeo-EX, Seismitoad-EX
and Terrakion (latest printing
BW: Legendary Treasures 94/113). In
the video games, Victreebel are
Grass/Poison dual-type Pokémon; I would
have enjoyed getting a Psychic-Type
Victreebel for the TCG. As of yet,
I don’t believe this has ever happened;
all past Victreebel have been
Grass-Types.
Being a Stage 2 is still one of the
worst legal options for Stage (Megas and
possible Restored Pokémon have it
worse). Compared to the dominant Stage
- Basic Pokémon - they are slow and eat
up space. They also can be slowed down
significantly by Seismitoad-EX
and its Item blocking Quaking Punch
attack or by certain Abilities, because
the most efficient way to get them into
play is Rare Candy plus search
cards (because drawing into both Rare
Candy and Stage 2 at the same time
can be difficult with the current main
draw cards of N and Professor
Juniper/Professor Sycamore).
Unless you’re playing in Expanded, it
also isn’t as easy to get those Evolving
Basic Pokémon into play now that
Standard lacks Level Ball. All
in all, this does not bode well for the
card; only exceptional Stage 2 Pokémon
(even if only exceptional as part of a
combo or entire deck) see competitive
play.
130 HP is the low end of “average” for a
Stage 2; note that I do not mean the
mathematical mean but just what appears
to be most common. It is just big
enough to not be a probable OHKO, but
most decks only need to push a little
above their normal output to seal the
deal. Fire Weakness is not good; XY:
Flashfire is no longer the new set,
but there are still players
experimenting with those cards, in
addition to what emerged from the sets
as competent or even strong plays. The
lack of Resistance is a bit
disappointing, but likely negligible as
reducing damage taken by 20 only matters
on occasion. Based on its video game
Typing, only Fairy or Lightning
Resistance would avoid conflicts with
the TCG Type differences. In the past
we have seen Water Resistance (in the
video games the Grass-Type takes half
damage from Water-Type attacks), but
that has been less common lately,
perhaps because the video game Ice-Type
does double damage to the video game
Grass-Type (creating an example of Type
conflicts).
Victreebel
has a Retreat Cost of [CC]; this isn’t
bad but neither is it good. It will be
enough that you won’t want to have to
pay it and even when you can, it will
often set you back far enough you may
not wish to anyway. The “good” news is
that this format demands you be skilled
at getting the correct Pokémon into the
Active slot, so most decks have reason
to run Retreat Cost lowering cards, or
cards that bypass manually retreating at
all even with better Retreat Cost
scores.
Victreebel
has an Ability and an attack. The
Ability is what really catches the eye;
Wafting Scent allows you to discard a
[G] Energy attached to Victreebel,
and if you do the opponent’s Active
Pokémon is both Poisoned and Confused.
Building up a decent amount of [G]
providing Energy can be tricky, and due
to all the attacks that hit hard (in
general) or hit harder based on the
Energy you have in play or attached to a
particular Pokémon, stockpiling some on
Victreebel ends up feeling quite
risky, but scoring the two Special
Conditions automatically is indeed
useful. Spiral Drain requires [GCC] to
use and scores 60 points of damage while
healing 30 points of damage from
Victreebel. Although it is nice
that it is Double Colorless Energy
compliant, and that Victreebel is
just big enough it might actually
survive a hit so that it can then heal
by attacking the next turn, the damage
output isn’t worth it and against most
decks you won’t heal enough damage to
matter. The attack is underpowered for
the investment, at least if you want a
competitive attacker, and as you must
discard a [G] Energy for the Ability,
that doesn’t save the low damage output
(it would make Spiral Drain effectively
a four Energy attack after all).
Victreebel
Evolves from Weepinbell which in
turn Evolves from Bellsprout,
unless you use the correct cards to
bypass Evolving normally. The only
currently Standard (and Expanded) legal
option for Bellsprout is XY:
Furious Fists 1/111, a Basic
Grass-Type with 50 HP, Fire Weakness, no
Resistance and a single Energy Retreat
Cost. Its first attack does 10 for [G]
while its second discards a random card
from the opponent’s hand for [GC]: both
overpriced and unlikely to buy time to
Evolve or get it back to the Bench and
out of the Active slot (where it is most
vulnerable). The only Standard/Expanded
legal Weepinbell is XY:
Furious Fists 2/111, a Stage 1
Grass-Type Pokémon with 80 HP, Fire
Weakness, no Resistance and a Retreat
Cost of [CC]. For [GC] it hits for 20
and for [GCC] it can do 40 and
automatically Poison. Both are again
overpriced or under-powered. Use
Rare Candy when you can get away
with it.
Victreebel
finally provides a means of scoring two
Special Conditions at once on the
opponent’s Active Pokémon via a
re-usable Ability instead of a one and
done Item. Unfortunately Confusion is
no where near as good as it used to be:
originally there was a coin flip to
Retreat out of it, plus you paid the
Energy required before flipping and if
you failed, you couldn’t try to Retreat
again that turn (which sounds obvious
now, but this was also when you could
retreat as many times as you could
afford to pay per turn). It isn’t
hopeless, but building up the Energy on
Victreebel to enjoy those Special
Conditions will be a challenge; plus
unless you are making a big combo out of
it, you are most often better off with
running four Hypnotoxic Laser.
Pokémon that do more damage based on
the more Special Conditions the
Defending Pokémon is afflicted will
might be the main draw for this card;
even tricks like using Gourgeist
and its Spirit Scream on something
Poisoned for an automatic OHKO are
better off working with Hypnotoxic
Laser as the point of such decks are
to use that trick on Pokémon-EX or high
resource targets (and pack something
else entirely for decks that contain
neither).
Virizion-EX
can help by accelerating Energy to
whatever attackers you are using or
to Victreebel to begin
“stockpiling”, though again I wouldn’t
risk putting too much on any one
Victreebel (and as multiple copies
of Victreebel are redundant).
Especially with a Virbank City Gym
in play, the additional three damage
counters from Poison and the potential
three from Confusion can really boost
damage output. Of course an opponent
running Virizion-EX can be immune
to Special Conditions, plus Sparkling
Robe blocks them as well. As such,
I can’t really recommend this card; it
is just the wrong format for it. It
doesn’t help that the two Special
Conditions that Victreebel can
supply overlap with Hypnotoxic Laser
(Confusion isn’t Sleep, but each
replaces the other so they can’t
coexist); that means no layering the two
for insane OHKO combos with Ninetales
(BW: Dragons Exalted 19/124;
BW Promo BW66). Throw in the fact
that Abilities themselves are easily
shut down by Garbodor (BW:
Dragons Exalted
54/124; BW: Plasma Freeze
119/116; BW: Legendary Treasures
68/113). Expanded makes it a bit easier
to get into play, but not really any
stronger and it likely will face steeper
competition. Victreebel really
only has a serious chance to shine in
Limited, where to be fair any relatively
easy to splash Stage 2 line you pull a
complete copy of is tempting… just
remember to still include a decent
amount of Grass Energy or
Herbal Energy unless you’re focusing
on the attack (which is much better
here).
Ratings
Standard:
1.75/5 - Hypnotoxic Laser just
does the job of “Special Conditions
without attacking” so much better. No,
I don’t think Hypnotoxic Laser is
a “balanced” cards (its overpowered),
but I am scoring for competitive play,
and unless I missed something
Victreebel just isn’t competitive.
Expanded:
1.75/5 - I may even be too generous
here, assuming the added support of
cards like Level Ball offset the
possibility of facing whatever decks can
claw their way to the top of the entire
BW-era blocks plus the latest XY sets.
Limited:
3.75/5 - A good pull if you can run it,
but remember that you will need to gear
your deck for it more than is normal.
The reward is pretty high, but getting
a Stage 2 into play is still hard work
in this format.
Summary:
Victreebel is either waiting for
cards not-yet-released, severely
underpowered or else I have completely
missed a combo or deck that would make
this functional. I was really excited
upon seeing it, likely because of fond
memories of “Liability” decks, built
around Weezing (EX: Deoxys
51/107) and (among other partners)
Victreebel (EX: Fire Red/Leaf
Green 17/112). It was my favorite
deck that was legal for multiple
formats, was established and known but
never quite seen as “mainstream” and…
ended up naturally working as a bit of a
James (even though it didn’t use Dark
or Rocket cards) “themed” deck.
