Cherrim – Pokemon Card Review – COTD

aroramage

Every now and again, it’s great to see a card that brings a smile to your face. Kinda like a little reminder to smile every day! Brightens your mood up, brightens other people’s moods up, and really just makes the world a brighter place.

Cherrim is a Stage 1 Grass Pokemon, 80 HP, with a Fire Weakness, no Resistance, and a Retreat Cost of 1. It has a cheap vanilla attack with Seed Bomb, which does 1-for-30, and it has the Weather Guard Ability, which removes the Weakness from Grass Pokemon. We’ve seen these kinds of abilities before on other Pokemon like Leavanny (NVI), although that was a Stage 2, and her Ability worked on any Pokemon with any kind of Energy. I could’ve sworn there were others that specified Grass Energy, but I digress.

Cherrim offers to remove a bad match-up from Grass decks at the cost of two cards. Not too bad for Grass decks, but it’s also nothing I’d write home about either. You’d have to be able to maintain a consistent way of getting to Cherrim in the few match-ups you have against Fire decks – which let’s face it, you’re running this because you’re having a problem with the number of Fire decks you’re playing against – or more than likely you’re taking Cherrim out to fit in a couple of cards to make your deck’s strategy flow better. Not saying Cherrim is bad, but it’s also not necessary either.

If there were some sort of side deck option like there is in games like Yugioh, then you would probably end up putting Cherrim into that deck, popping it in during your second game of the match to counteract the Fire deck you’re facing, but since that’s not a thing, it’s all-or-nothing…hmmm…a Pokemon side deck…

Rating

Standard: 2/5 (helps counter one match-up…and that’s it)

Expanded: 2/5 (essentially useful for one thing only, and that’s on an iffy basis)

Limited: 2.5/5 (on its own, nothing too special)

Arora Notealus: I do like the optimism that Cherrim brings. I wouldn’t blame anyone for just running a copy in their deck or even keeping in a sleeve inside the deck box outside of your deck, just to have a smiling face cheering you on! I’m sure somebody out there’s sentimental like that, right? I know I would be!

Side Review: Empoleon – Total Command is the attack that draws everyone’s attention, with the potential to hit upwards of 200 damage assuming both players fill up their Bench. Combined with Whirlpool which discards Energy, Empoleon definitely seems like a threat. But because of the dependency on your opponent to also have Benched Pokemon in play, this card on average is hitting for about 100-120 or so. That’s still really good for 2 Energy, but it’s a lot more dependent on what your opponent is playing to be viable enough competitively. 

Next Time: Taking a look back at something to wear…