September 11, 2011

Card of the Week Review - Beartic (Emerging Powers 30)


Hey everyone! LuxrayMogul here for another Card of the Week Review! This week, I'll be reviewing another card from Emerging Powers: Beartic. No, not card #31 Beartic, but the one that everyone's been really excited about - Beartic, card #30.

Let's start with some stats. Beartic is a Stage-1 Water-type Pokémon that evolves from Cubchoo (the Pokémon with like the huge snot coming out of its nose...). It has 130 HP, which is incredibly high considering it's a Stage 1 Pokémon. This is also great for Beartic as big attacks like Reshiram's Blue Flare, Zekrom's Bolt Strike, and Typhlosion's Fire Spin will leave it with 10 HP, (as no attack does exactly 130 damage), which forces the opponent to use a Plus Power or two to finish Beartic off, if they wish, in one turn. (I think you would want to; refer to next section for reasons why). It has a x2 Metal weakness which is great; you don't see too many metal-type decks nowadays, and Beartic isn't weak to the usual Electric type for Water-types, so it's a great card to be played now. It has no resistance, which isn't too much of a surprise. However, a drawback would be its three colourless energy retreat cost. In J-Wittz' words, that's FAT! That's really fat! You have to watch out for Pokémon Catcher and other cards that can possibly endanger Beartic before it's set-up and ready to attack.

Now its attacks - it's first attack, Sheer Cold, needs WCC to use; so I think it's safe to say that Beartic is Double Colourless Energy compatible. ;D It does a measly 50 damage, but prevents the defending Pokémon from attacking the next turn. Personally, that's great! They will be forced to retreat, evolve, or devolve in order to even touch Beartic the next turn. Now; evolving and devolving are pretty rare, so that means retreat. If you can combine Beartic with Catcher, you can slaughter a "fat" Benched Pokémon (such as Beartic) before it's ready to attack itself, and it can't retreat. ('Fat' means large retreat cost, not trying to offend anyone with this term.) So, Sheer Cold is a great attack!

Its second attack, Icicle Crash, needs WWCC, so once again, DCE can be used. It does a measly 80 damage (well, measly considering how much energy is required for this attack). However, it isn't affected by Resistance, so no... grass..? Pokémon are safe from this attack either. It provides a OHKO to Donphan Prime which is weak to water-types, therefore, being a great counter to a very, very popular card in the format right now.

The artwork is OK. It pales compared to Beartic (Emerging Powers 31), but I guess it's OK since it's holo. It's a little over-simplistic though.

Overall, I give 4.5/5 to Beartic. I hate Donphan Prime so since it can kill it in one hit it's a great counter. (I know that is biased... but it's true.) It loses 0.5 point because of its "fat-ness" - carefully when Catcher pulls this out when it's not ready. Overall, I think it's a great card in this format and should be considered in many decks. (Its weakness is different, which helps it a lot as well!)

2 comments:

  1. Hello, thanks for the Blog :) But I was wondering, is there a easy way to counter this Pokemon? My friend and I are very competitive against eachother and he just ordered these Beartics to counter my Zekrom/Eeletrik Deck.

    Thanks.

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    Replies
    1. Good day! Thanks for your comment! Beartic is losing presence in the metagame because of its "fatness" (big energy retreat cost) and low damage output. So simply, it's quite slow to begin with, especially with four energy, and the speed of the format right now definitely doesn't allow Beartic users to charge up quickly.

      A really good counter for these kind of decks right now are EX's. Reshiram EX and Zekrom EX hits for 150 with four energy (Reshiram has weakness...) and Mewtwo needs a DEC to hit for 20 times the number of energy attached to both Pokémon. Your deck seems really good right now, so I would just recommend adding some Zekrom-EX from Next Destinies into it (also check out the review for it on this blog!). Also throw in a SkyArrow Bridge (stadium) (Next Destinies) to reduce retreat costs of your basic Pokémon so you can retreat easier if Beartic hits you. Overall, Beartic is pretty slow now so you should be able to out-speed it with ZekEels.

      Good luck! And thanks for reading our blog!

      --LM

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