Greedent – Darkness Ablaze Pokemon Review

Otaku

Greedent (SW – Darkness Ablaze 153/189) is a Colorless Pokémon.  We’re not worried about releases that predate what you can run in Expanded, so nothing is naturally Colorless Weak or Resistant.  In Standard, Colorless Pokémon can take advantage of Powerful Energy to do extra damage.  There’s additional [C] Pokémon support, as well as some counters, to consider in Expanded, but nothing mind-blowing.  Greedent is a single-Prize Pokémon with no specialty mechanics.  It is easy to forget how important that can be in a metagame of multi-Prize Pokémon, or if you have not played in a metagame where things like Ultra Beasts were prominent.

Greedent is a Stage 1 Pokémon, which is going to prove very important, but overall its easier to run than the other Stages but not as good as a Basic.  Paradoxical though it may sound, this is near the high end of a low HP score; more likely to be OHKO’d than not, though not by much.  [F] Weakness isn’t good, but neither is it a bad thing right now; that may change after our next expansion.  No Resistance is the worst, but Resistance rarely matters.  A Retreat Cost of [C] is easy to pay most of the time.  However, there’s something we’ll see in a bit that makes it so these the HP and bottom stats don’t matter much.

Greedent knows two attacks.  For [C] it can use “Scrape Off” to discard all Tools attached to your opponent’s Active, then do 20 damage to your opponent’s Active.  Not stellar, but it can do a little damage while getting rid of troubling Tools.  Next is “Smack and Run” for [CC], which does 100 damage while bouncing Greedent (or anything copying the attack) and all cards attached to it to your hand.  For an attack that can easily be fueled by Twin Energy, this is a solid deal in terms of damage.  The bad news is you’ll have to constantly build and rebuild your Greedent attackers, but the good news is you can send up something expendable, or with a handy “only while Active” Ability between your attacks.  It also means Tools and Special Energy attached to Greedent are (relatively) safe in your hand… you can even avoid Triple Acceleration Energy’s self-discarding clause!

If Greedent was a Basic, this would definitely have real potential.  In Expanded, when not facing down anti-Item effects, you could use cards like Lillie’s Poké Doll and Robo Substitute so your opponent would struggle to ever take a Prize.  Greedent is not a Basic, but a Stage 1; I can recall zero legal shortcuts for getting a Colorless Stage 1 Pokémon into play, at least, that won’t leave a target worth Prizes on your Bench.  This isn’t the end of the story, however.  There are Pokémon that are hard to KO or – against – with disruptive Abilities that only work while they are Active, you could promote in between.  You just have to hope your opponent cannot attack around them.

Neither Skwovet is anything more than evolving filler, so your opponent can sabotage the above strategy by using Boss’s Orders, Pokémon Catcher, etc. to force whatever Skwovet you’re running into the Active position for an easy KO.  Not only will you give up a Prize because of this, but your attack for that turn is halted, or must come from something else.  This can be avoided by having multiple Skwovet in play… but even two Skwovet aren’t a guarantee against some decks. I was also thinking of constantly slapping a Life Dew on Skwovet in Unlimited, so that an opponent KOing it still takes no Prize, but that doesn’t work when you need to field multiples.

Still, there’s something here for a hit-and-run variant, for Standard or Expanded, and I think it is worth noting.  In the Limited Format, Greedent is a solid pull.  If you can get enough Skwovet and Greedent, you can keep cycling them.  You need two Energy to attack, so you probably also want something like Hydreigon (SW – Darkness Ablaze 110/189; SW – Black Star Promos SWSH037).

Ratings

• Standard: 2/5
• Expanded: 2/5
• Limited: 3/5

Greedent has some decent tricks, but I don’t think it is quite the time to use them yet.  I could easily be wrong; if you fancy a hit-and-run style attacker, this could be your squirrel-monster!

Vince

Coming Soon