Eldegoss – Evolving Skies
Date Reviewed: September 28, 2021
Ratings Summary:
Standard: 3.00
Expanded: 1.00
Ratings are based on a 1 to 5 scale. 1 is horrible. 3 is average. 5 is great.
Reviews Below:
Otaku
Eldegoss (SW – Evolving Skies 006/203) is another baseline Pokémon, no Rule Box, no naming variant, no Battle Style, etc. Just a regular Eldegoss worth a single Prize when KO’d. Eldegoss is a Grass type, and that might actually help this card due to Turffield Stadium. After all, this is a Stage 1 Pokémon, and Turffield Stadium can fetch a [G] Evolution from your deck. Eldegoss has 80 HP, low enough you could also fetch it with Level Ball, and also all but guaranteed to be a OHKO while Active. Even on the Bench, you’re small enough that you might be OHKO’d by a bonus Bench hit. At least this low of HP means Weakness and lack of Resistance are nearly irrelevant; Fire attackers doing 40 to 70 damage score a OHKO, while anything less still whiffs and anything hitting harder already had a OHKO. A Retreat Cost of [C] is nice and low; not as good as “free”, but good enough.
Eldegoss has one Ability and one attack. The Ability, “Cotton Lift”, may be used once per instance you have of it, during your turn. You get to search your deck for up to two basic Energy cards, show them to your opponent, then add them to your hand. A free (other than having to run this Evolution line) Professor’s Letter turn after turn could be very worth it, at least in the right deck(s). If you only need a little help, you’re better off just running Energy Search to snag one basic Energy from your deck, or Energy Retrieval to reclaim two basic Energy cards from your discard pile. While not bad, especially for long time players who have known both Professor’s Letter and Energy Spinner, Cotton Lift ain’t great but it is better than nothing for decks that need either a lot of basic Energy, or a decent amount of multiple different basic Energy cards.
For [G], Eldegoss can attack using “Cotton Guard”. This attack does 30 damage, while also soaking 30 damage from attacks done to this Pokémon until the end of your opponent’s next turn. The card text even reminds us that this -30 to damage taken applies after Weakness and Resistance. So a [R] attacker that does 30 base damage will do
30 x 2 (Weakness) – 30 (effect of Cotton Guard) = 30
An [R] attacker doing 50 base damage would do
50 x 2 (Weakness) – 30 (effect Cotton Guard) = 70
Against non-Fire attackers, this means Eldegoss can survive an attack doing up to 100 damage. Against a [R] type, you can only survive something doing up to 60 damage (before Weakness). Which is a long way of showing that this attack isn’t useless, but it is only for desperate situations.
In Expanded, I doubt you’ll need Eldegoss: you still have Energy Spinner, Professor’s Letter, or even Lady if you can spare a Supporter to get lots of basic Energy cards. Oh, yes, and raw draw power. Especially if you don’t need to use all the Energy at once, but can use it whenever it makes its way to your hand, then raw draw power is probably a better investment. In Standard, though, we don’t have any of those cards, just Energy Search. I found at least one functional deck already running Eldegoss in tournaments. You can look for yourself, but it seems Regidrago/Cherrim (SW – Battle Styles 008/163; SW – Black Star Promos SWSH088) decks. The deck isn’t tearing up the metagame, but it has done well enough that Eldegoss still managed a three-out-of-five here.
Ratings
- Standard: 3/5
- Expanded: 1/5
Vince
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