I am very fond of Victreebel I must confess. Why? In part because I am (or perhaps was given how rarely I watch anymore) a James fan, and because in the next to last format I was really active in, I enjoyed playing Acid Liability so very, very much. It was a deck built around a quite intentional Weezing/Victreebel combo that could OHKO anything without highly specialized protection at the cost of Weezing, andin a format where Pokemon ex (and their two Prize penalty) were common place.
Victreebel is unsurprisingly a Grass-Type Pokemon. Sadly, the HP drops 10 from where it was in the last version, and that is bad since it is a Stage 2 with only 110 HP, while 120 seems to be the threshold for being "playable" without game breaking effects. It gets Fire Weakness x2 which isn't the worst it could have right now, but it gets no Resistance and that is always the worst a card can get. It has a manageable two Energy Retreat Cost, and you can pay it if you need two but you're better off packing a few Trainers or some other trick to avoid burning the Energy.
Victreebel doesn't do a whole lot, but what it does seems like a coherent theme. It jacks up your opponent's Retreat Cost by :colorless::colorless: as long as it is Active, and for :grass::colorless: has an attack that does 30 damage, inflicts automatic Poison and Burn, plus removes three damage counters from Victreebel. This is some solid synergy, but with both the speed of most decks and the relative ease of shedding Special Conditions without retreating, Victreebel will struggle. It really needs another attack, probably something big but not requiring a lot more Energy. The first attack would be better if you didn't need to attach any Grass Energy for it, so that a single Double Colorless Energy could do the job. Not a whole lot better since this seems like an attack you want to use after your opponent is fully Evolved: with retreating extra expensive and Evolution already finished, they'll have to turn to Trainers. This leads us to the theoretical deck portion of my review.
I haven't had a chance to build it yet, let alone try it out, but I am thinking Victreebel partnered with Vileplume with Allergy Pollen to shut down Trainers. If there is room, maybe even include the hustle Step Bellossom for re-usable, small healing and Vileplume with Energy Reaction so you can use any Grass Energy attachments you can spare to put the Defending Pokemon to sleep. The Defending Pokemon can be Asleep, Burned, and Poisoned all at once. That will give you roughly a 25% chance of them being unable to attack you on their turn and starting the turn with an extra three damage counters on them. You might not have room for those two, because the other thing I'd love to have sitting on my Bench while Victreebel is active is Heatran Lv.X. I realize I've now used a minimum of four Bench slots, but the end result is well worth it: your opponent is paying at least two Energy to Retreat, can't use Trainers, and can't Evolve out of Burned, plus they automatically fail the Burn check. In short, you are now all but guaranteed to hit for 30 base damage and get another 3 damage counters between turns, then another three before you attack again. 9 damage counters while healing three from yourself isn't bad at all.
In Limited play, it looks pretty good so long as you can spare room for the Grass Energy. Special Conditions are much nastier here, healing more effective, and retreating an important, frequent occurrence. Even the average HP and damage scores go down, too. All are great news for Victreebel.
Ratings
Modified: 7/10
Limited: 8/10
