Stunfisk – Unbroken Bonds Pokemon Review

Vince

Ratings:

• Standard: 3/5 (2.5/5 Ultra Prism on)
• Expanded: 3/5
• Limited: 3/5

Otaku

Stunfisk (SM – Unbroken Bonds 56/214) is our second card this week, as hinted at yesterday.  Almost all of this card is relevant to how it and Spiritomb (SM – Unbroken Bonds 112/214) work together to create a very competitive deck, but let’s start with the main thing, its “Electric Trap” attack.

For [CC], Electrip Trap lets Stunfisk do 30 damage for each of your Pokémon with any damage counters on it; how many total damage counters doesn’t matter, just how many Pokémon have at least one on them.  That means a range of zero damage (nothing of yours is injured) to 180 (full Bench of five, everything has at least 10 damage on it).  In Expanded, you could use Sky Field to up this to 270 (full Bench of eight with everything having at least one damage counter) but I wouldn’t recommend that because I think there are better Stadium options (more on that in a bit).

Being a Basic makes Stunfisk easy to run.  Being a [L] Type lets it tap Electropower for even more damage.  110 HP means it is a probable OHKO, but less-offense-minded decks might actually whiff, especially [M] decks due to the card’s [M] Resistance.  [F] Weakness means a simple 60 damage from them becomes a OHKO; the one clearly bad thing about this card.  The Retreat Cost of [CCC] is mostly negative, but theoretically could come in handy if something like Heavy Ball proved worthwhile. “Raging Thunder”, the card’s first attack, requires [C] to do 30 to your opponent’s Active and 10 to one of your own benched Pokémon; better than nothing if your other combos don’t work.

Put it all together with Spiritomb; each Spiritomb makes for an easy +30 damage for Electric Trap.  That’s not enough alone, but remember that Spiritomb itself becomes a strong attacker the longer it allows its damage counters to build, and that Electropower can enable stronger swings from Stunfisk.  Hunter Butler’s deck – the one linked to earlier – finished 8th place at NAIC, even risks a few select Pokémon-GX while running Shrine of Punishment.  The other Stadium included is Black Market {*}, somewhat obvious given Spiritomb.  If I were building an Expanded version of the deck, Team Magma’s Secret Base might be a better option.

Speaking of Expanded, it once again contains more combo partners for Stunfisk… but the combination of anti-Ability decks, anti-Item decks, and damage spread decks (sometimes mixing two of the three) leads me to expect this to be a risky deck.  Other smaller attackers are a mixed blessing; they prove such decks can work but are likely to also enjoy being single Prize, single-attachment attackers.  This is all pure Theorymon on my part, as I have no data on the deck for Expanded Format play.

I haven’t gotten to use Stunfisk in any Limited Format events but I have tried it out in the Theme Format, as it is part of the “Lightning Loop” Theme Deck.  This leads me to believe it would be valuable in a Limited Format deck just to add an [L] attacker that works with any Energy, and if you have the time to use Raging Thunder a few times, Electric Trap can become quite strong.  Stunfisk isn’t off-Type for Lightning Loop, but it is a very good opener… unless your opponent is also fast.  Late game, it is pretty poor in that Theme Deck.

Ratings

• Standard: 3.5/5
• Expanded: 3/5
• Limited: 3/5
• Theme: 3/5

Note: I’d try to enjoy this card now, because I don’t expect it to do well post-rotation; it won’t like losing Double Colorless Energy.