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!)

Card of the Week Review - Gothitelle (Emerging Powers 47)

Hey everyone! It is Volcachu back for a card review; but since school has started, we will be doing card reviews weekly instead of daily. For the time being, we will try to focus our reviews on Pokémon from the new set. This week's Pokémon will be Gothitelle and it has been getting a lot of hype since the release of the set.

This Pokémon is a Stage 2 Psychic-Type with 130 HP which is average. It has an ability called Magic Room which I will get more in depth later. Gothitelle has only one attack and it is called Madkinesis. This attack costs 3 energy of any type and it does 30 base damage. This attack does 20 extra damage on top of the 30 base damage for each Psychic Energy attached to Gothitelle. This means that the more Psychic Energies, the more powerful the attack is. Like most Psychic-Types, Gothitelle has a weakness to other Psychic-Types. It has a retreat cost of two which is not very good.

The reason why this Pokémon is liked is because of the ability, Magic Room. This ability is only activated when Gothitelle is the active Pokémon. The ability locks most of the important trainer cards of the opponent as they are not allowed to play any item cards. This will shut down key cards like Pokémon Catcher, Switch, Pokémon Communications and others. Gothitelle is usually teamed up with a Reuniclus to continually lock the opponent while keeping Gothitelle alive as long as possible. This may be a very combo soon as many people are starting to pick this up.

All these factors allow me to give Gothitelle a 4.5/5. Even with all the potential to lock your opponent, she is very slow to set up. This slowness calls for more Twins in your deck since you will probably fall behind early with this deck. Gothitelle will become an alternate Vileplume and it will be a hot card in the market. Grab them all before others do!