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Another week, another card in the
set, and so we have Meganium!
Meganium is a pretty interesting
combination of good things. Grass-type and Evolution
means he can run off of Forest of Giant Plants for days,
and of course he's got the bulky 150 HP and what-not,
but aside from all of that, what else does Meganium
bring to the table? Well aside from amazing artwork,
obviously, there's also an Ability and an attack that
synergize with each other.
Unlike some particular
rainbow-colored EX we know of.
First off, let's take a look at
Meganium's attack. Green Force is a paltry 3-for-50 hit
that heals back whatever damage Meganium does to his
opponent. Now the immediate thought is to dismiss it,
like I did at first. An attack that does 50 and heals 50
for 3 Energy isn't worth it! But this differs from
various moves we've seen that have this type of effect
by not limiting the HP gained back - it actually changes
the value based on what's dealt. It starts out 50 and
50, but add on Fighting Fury Belt, and it's 60 and 60.
Tack on Muscle Band, it's 70 and 70, and so on and so
forth.
And that's where Meganium's Ability
comes in: Overgrow! With it, Meganium can actually deal
a tremendously larger amount of damage to the opponent
at the tune of 70 extra damage. The only requirement:
Meganium's gotta be under 50 HP. You would think this
would be problematic in an environment aimed to
one-shot, but given the different damage outputs of even
the stronger Pokemon, unless you're dealing with the
likes of M Mewtwo-EX, M Gyarados-EX, any Fire Pokemon
out there, or even just Primal Kyogre-EX, Meganium has a
strong chance of surviving most attacks and living in
2HKO range.
Which is what Meganium's biggest
strength and weakness is. He's designed to live through
that first attack, have Overgrow go off, and then use
Green Force to heal off the entire amount. Given the
numbers, he'd have to have either 10 or 20 HP left to
not immediately recover all of his health back from
Green Force with Overgrow active, and that's easily
circumvented with something like Muscle Band. The
problem though is that the opponent is bound to catch on
to Meganium's Ability and either one-shot it or shut off
its Ability with Garbodor or Wobbuffet so they won't
have to deal with it. On top of that, even considering
an additional boost, Meganium isn't going to be OHKO-ing
the biggest Pokemon in the format, which means your
opponent will still have at least one turn to turn
things against him.
Course, he's also a Stage 2, but
again, Grass types don't care about that.
Rating
Standard: 2.5/5 (at the end of the
day, he's not a bad card by any stretch of the
imagination, just simply outclassed)
Expanded: 2/5 (the stronger Pokemon
will triumph over him, and the weaker ones will...well,
if anything, it's possible to play around his Ability
too)
Limited: 3.5/5 (just think of
hitting 60 HP with the first strike THEN going in for
the KO)
Arora Notealus: Meganium does his
best for sure, but there's not much he can do. Just like
the games, he seems to be fated to take a backseat while
others take the lead. It just so happens that this time,
it's EX Pokemon.
Next Time: GEEZ THIS GUY IS POINTY
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