Time to edit in a full review for
Cinccino. First, it is so cute and absolutely adorable that it kind of hurts. I haven't figured out if that is a pro or a con yet; that is how sickeningly sweet it looks!
A Stage 1 Pokemon,
Cinccino benefits from the new text for
Rare Candy: being a Stage 1 finally falls into a happy medium between Basics and Stage 2 Pokemon, a compromise between speed and power that can sometimes give you both in the right card. To be blunt I am uncertain as to how good or bad being a Colorless Type will be next format, but this format it looks to be useful for hitting the Weakness on
Garchomp C Lv.X. The 90 HP is less ambiguous: for a Stage 1 Pokemon that can't further Evolve, I find 100 HP closer to average in terms of playability. It doesn't ruin the card, but it certainly doesn't help it.
Fighting Weakness, especially on top of that 90 HP almost ruins the card. Promo
Toxicroak G can Revenge Poison for an easy OHKO, and its going to be in OHKO range for pretty much any competitive Fighting Pokemon, even if they aren't the main attacker. Although its all speculation now, I fully expect Fighting Pokemon to be popular next format, largely because
Donphan Prime is such a natural counter for
Zekrom. Again, this is speculation since I am trying to anticipate a future metagame and it does fall apart if something else is released that renders one of the above two decks unpalatable or if player's simply choose not to utilize one or both of those two cards. The lack of Resistance is a bit annoying: TPC, is it really too much to bring back Psychic Resistance for Colorless Pokemon? Perhaps it is. The single Energy Retreat Cost is very nice, making it relatively easy to Retreat.
Tail Slap is definitely the lesser attack, requiring one of any Energy to flip two coins and inflicting 20 points of damage per heads. I don't mind coin tosses, though I prefer the minimum damage not be zero. For a single Energy, a 0/20/40 split is decent, with 20 being twice as likely as either extreme. What has a lot of players excited is Do The Wave, an attack that debuted way back in the Jungle Expansion on
Wigglytuff. The newest iteration of the attack is definitely improved, requiring only two of any Energy (instead of three like on most past versions) and doing 20 damage times the number of Benched Pokemon instead of base damage of 10 to 30 points plus 10 per Benched Pokemon you have in play. Some similar attacks might be/have been faster, but for actual versions of "Do The Wave", this is the only one a
Double Colorless Energy can power on its own, plus it can hit 100 damage without added effects.
Before going further, let us take a peek at the only legal
Minccino which is... a fairly standard Colorless Basic Pokemon with 60 HP and the same bottom stats as
Cinccino and Tail Slap for only 10 per "heads". Pretty much a standard Basic that Evolves in recent sets, but not so good when you consider it only Evolves once and not twice like many of its similarly powered contemporaries. Perhaps a better version will come along to aid at a later date.
I can see why a lot of people are excited about this card: it's a better Jungle
Wigglytuff.
Wigglytuff was notable for being one of the good Stage 1 Pokemon cards back in the days of Unlimited being the Standard Format for Organized Play, when the game was still pretty new and run by WotC outside of Japan. No Resistance, but a first attack that can do damage and more importantly, probably never needs to be used since Do The Wave now just needs that one
Double Colorless Energy. Even 10 more HP and one less Retreat Cost.
Wigglytuff was even rolling when Base Set
Hitmonchan was a huge part of the metagame as the cornerstone of Haymaker decks, so shouldn't it be great now, or at least good?
MD-On, the current Modified Format, should eat this pretty fast. Many cards people like to play down and bounce would have to either remain in play during your opponent's turn, leaving them vulnerable. This still isn't a deathblow, but with the caliber of what is already being played, it comes up as a "why bother"? In this format, you will
have to fill your Bench the first turn you are able to attack and keep it full in order to deliver enough damage. Okay, against Weakness or some of the smaller, played Pokemon you could get by with less (especially in the case of a lucky Weakness hit), but for the most part you'll be trading your Stage 1 with a
Double Colorless Energy for 100 points of damage
only those turns when Minccino doesn't get KO'd beforehand. I find it dubious a good Pokemon SP deck isn't managing to at least seriously wound your Defending Pokemon and Benched
Minccino, let alone KOing one or both. They might be easy enough to recycle, but by the time you get swinging with
Cinccino for OHKOs against your small foes, I would expect you would be down a Prize or two. If you are facing a deck with a Stage 2 Pokemon, things get bad. Serious, competitive builds will have their Stage 2 Pokemon out on that player's second turn, giving you one turn of Do The Wave before you're staring down Pokemon that can survive it and probably OHKO
Cinccino in return.
What about HGSS-On? The good news is that the crazy tricks Pokemon SP can do, in fact the Pokemon SP themselves, are history. The bad news is that average HP scores tend to be higher and as I commented on when I mentioned Weakness, I expect at least one or two good Fighting decks to be floating around. While the format will be slower and it would make
Cinccino more stable (allowing for a good Bench set-up), it also means more Pokemon it can't OHKO that might be able to OHKO it. Even if it is 2HKO vs 2HKO, it looks to be so close as to be a toss-up. This is a Stage 1, though, so a
Cinccino deck should work. I'd resist playing it as a speedy beatdown and pair it with useful Bench-sitters.
Vileplume springs to mind: disrupt your opponent's Trainers, hopefully also short-circuiting their Pokemon set-up as well, and smack them for a good 100 points of damage a turn! The reason I don't consider this incredibly exciting is that most partners I can think of for
Cinccino are just good dance partners in general: I recommend trying cards with
Vileplume quite often after all.
There is a Fighting presence in the actual
Black & White expansion, but even with two Big Basic Pokemon that are good for Limited play, it isn't so overwhelming you'd want to skip
Cinccino. Being able to use any Energy means it fits into any deck, and the attack that was already impressive in Constructed Formats is flat out amazing here. If you have good enough pulls that you just can't make room for it (even if it is just a 1-1 line), you probably have to worry about accusations of cheating.
Ratings
Modified (MD-On): 6/10 - Yes, a point higher than I initially scored it. Upon further consideration a sound deck could be built with it, or it fit into a good deck. There are just so many better options currently available.
Modified (HGSS-On): 7/10 - I didn't score this in my initial review, and I think that might have mislead people. I don't expect this to be the top deck, but it could be a good supporting line for something else.
Limited: 9.5/10 - Docked half a point because you might not have enough of a Bench to follow through on promises of good damage.
Unlimited: 8/10 - Purely hypothetical, but this easily replaces
Wigglytuff in the deck formerly known as TurboWigglySneasel. I've seen some variants of that deck run Neo Genesis
Slowking, and some rely entirely on
Chaos Gym, though I'd expect an opening
Chaos Gym to block Trainers first turn and possibly ditching it so your own Trainers function correctly later turns after
Slowking is set-up. Just make sure opposing Neo Discovery
Tyrogue are countered with
Sneasel or your own
Tyrogue.
Summary
Without the HP to back its great attack,
Cinccino needs a deck behind it. Now that deck can be tailored to supporting it, or
Cinccino itself could be a back-up hitter. It should work in either case, but I don't believe it will work as well or better than many of the other current or anticipated major decks.
