Thundurus-GX – Pokemon Promo Card Review

aroramage

Man, promos are fun to look at. I mean they’re basically free merchandise that come with these neat packages and boosters and all that stuff, and you can get them entirely in Full Art form by default! Don’t have to dig your way through twelve hundred booster packs to try and salvage one of those out. But they’re not always that good as a result…

Thundurus-GX is a Basic Lightning Pokemon, 180 HP, with a Fighting Weakness, a Metal Resistance, and a Retreat Cost of 2. Charge is his first attack, a 1-cost move that lets you grab a Lightning Energy from your deck and attach it directly to him. This feeds into Electric Ball, a 3-for-140 vanilla move, and into Thundering Hurricane-GX, which for 3 Energy lets you flip 4 coins and deal 100 damage for each Heads that comes up.

Charge into a move that can 2HKO anything unboosted is pretty good all on its own, though its GX Attack is…too chancy to actually be used. I think ultimately you’ll want to run Thundurus-GX as an attacker with its other moves, and even so, he’s gonna be pretty self-sufficient on his own. No need for a Magnezone bro here! That all being said, is he ready to come into the game swinging?

Well…that ultimately will depend on the biggest deck of the format, Buzzwole-GX. Unfortunately for Thundurus-GX, he suffers from that Fighting Weakness, which Buzzwole-GX will gladly take advantage of. If after some of the key cards in the deck rotate Buzzwole ends up seeing less play overall, we could see some players experimenting with Thundurus-GX as part of Lightning decks. But until that time, Lightning is a very dangerous Type to play, and it’s not likely going to change too soon.

Rating

Standard: 3/5 (Thundurus-GX isn’t a bad card, all things considered)

Expanded: 3/5 (it’s just the timing of his entrance into the game isn’t that great)

Limited: N/A (and as a promo card, there’s no use for him in a Limited environment)

Arora Notealus: Thundurus-GX got dealt a somewhat weak opening, what with Buzzwole-GX being around. Hopefully things will turn around for him in the meantime, as he is a very effective Pokemon to use. It’s not often you can say there’s a Pokemon ready to 2HKO anything with up to 280 HP!

Side Review: Regigigas – probably one of the most costly Pokemon in the game; not only does his attack cost 5 Energy by itself, but it also requires you to have the 3 Regis in play in order to attack. It’s a good thing there are some Ability-cancelling Pokemon around to remove that part of the restriction, but at that point you’re trying to play around a Pokemon that only deals 160 damage for a total of 5 Energy. At least he sets the bar for a Basic non-EX/GX with the highest HP, so he’s got that much going for him.

Next Time: A flashback to one of the earliest cards to get banned!

Vince

Today on Wielding Wednesdays is the mighty Thundurus-GX who sports three attacks: a self acceleration attack for L, a solid 140 damage for LLL, and an overkill GX attack for LLL which can do 400 damage or none at all depending on unreliable coin flips. Not a good GX attack that’s worth using, but supported by Magnezone from Forbidden Light whose ability let’s you attach as many Lightning energies from your hand as you like. Electric Ball seems nice as it is already reaching 2HKO potential, but maybe you want to do more. Choice Band bumps it to 170 for EX/GX Pokemon, and with the pending release of Electric Power, you can potentially OHKO any Pokemon!

This Pokémon is an example of one that isn’t good on its own, but with type based support, it helps Thundurus-GX become viable. Expanded hurts a bit due to some Fighting type support.

Standard: 3.5/5

Expanded: 3/5

Limited: N/A