Oh noes! I missed reviewing
Pikachu 115/114. Guess I'd better hurry and discuss this
Tepig.
There are four possible
Tepig you can play. All are Basic, Fire-Type Pokemon with Water Weakness and no Resistance. This version has 60 HP, which is inferior to the 70 HP two of the other versions offer. It has a single Energy Retreat Cost. It is possible your metagame will make this an important feature, but I do not believe it to be: unless
Tepig is good enough to run without its Evolutions, it won't remain "
Tepig" long enough to worry about manually Retreating. Running its Evolutions means Energy acceleration or an intentional attacker... or your deck failing to run smoothly enough to Evolve, that latter of which is a defective deck build. All other things are equal, it'd be a tie-breaker, but it won't elevate of having an extra 10 HP as you need to survive to be able to Retreat. Additionally, you really should have a
Switch or three in the deck anyway, given how beefy the
Emboar are for Retreat Costs.
So what about the effects of the card? No Abilities, but none of the others have them as well. What about attacks? Singe requires
colorless
to use and gives you a chance to inflict Burn on the Defending Pokemon, but requires a successful coin toss to do it. Even before power creep gave us the last two or three formats, this was too weak. In fact, this was too weak when Burn was introduced, and before Burn was introduced this level of pay out was too weak for
any Special Condition. The going conversion rate for a Special Condition is such that unless it actually "breaks" that Special Condition, 10 points worth of damage should be worth an automatic, successful inflicting of said Special Condition. A :colorless: Energy requirement is worth 10 points of damage, ergo this is just too expensive. Yes, Paralysis is an exception because even with how easy it is for most decks to shake Special Conditions, automatic Paralysis in and of itself is more potent than the other Special Conditions.
Fire Breathing is also overpriced:
fire::colorless
on a Basic Pokemon capable of Evolving twice should yield 25 points of damage on average. Obviously the game goes in 10 point intervals, so that "5" points of damage needs to be converted to another effect, a drawback can be used to add to the damage to round it out, or it can be "wagered" on a coin toss to "earn" more damage.
Tepig does 10 damage plus 20 if you get heads. 20-15=5. That means you are "wagering" 15 points on an action with an equal chance of you "winning" or "losing" (getting the extra damage or no extra damage) for a reward of just 5 points.
Tepig is not a savvy gambler.
So just to emphasize this, because some seemed confused, when dealing with a Special Condition you really shouldn't count on it lasting longer than your opponent's turn. Getting rid of Special Conditions is quite easy: Retreat, Evolve, or even play a card that cures it.
Tepig is mostly likely attacking early (if at all), so you should really only allow it to use one of its attacks once. On average, half the time Singe does nothing all of its own accord; Tails fails. On average, half the remaining time your opponent will make the Burn check, three fourths of the time, nothing. Roughly one fourth the time, you'll actually get two damage counters. Expecting your opponent to remain Burned an additional turn is unrealistic because this should be early game and they'll either Retreat an opener or Evolve something into a later form. Most players would rather take a static 10 points of damage over a flippy placement of two damage counters, but in the end neither are especially important: the well designed deck will speedily Evolve and probably run a separate Pokemon to open with.
Let me say it again:
Tepig should rarely need to attack, because no version has an effect that justify including it in your deck. In Constructed play, it is being run to Evolve, and in Limited play it is either being run for the same reason, or as filler. The only attacks that really matter on this kind of Pokemon are those that aid in set-up or offer protection. This
Tepig is on par with
Tepig (
Black & White, 15/114), because they have identical stats and more or less equally overpriced attacks. I'd of course go with the 70 HP version: even though its attack is still bad, I've outlined this entire time how I just want it to live long enough to Evolve. I am pressed for time, so all I see is
Black & White 16/114 for those, but I thought there was another.
This is a promo card so it really shouldn't see Limited play. If it is re-released in a set, it'd be used as a filler Pokemon or only to Evolve into a
Pignite.
Ratings
Unlimited: 1.5/10 - Slight bonus in case inflicting a Special Condition can come in handy, like disabling Mind Games on an Active Neo Genesis
Slowking.
Modified: 1.5/10 - As above, but it isn't quite as outperformed by general played Pokemon but also isn't as likely to cripple a keep Poke-Power. Applies for both MD-On and HGSS-On because you have weaker average strength but fewer Poke-Powers in the next format.
Limited: N/A - If reprinted in a set, 3/10 if completely on its own, possibly higher if there is support (like Evolutions) available.
Summary
This
Tepig is outperformed by the others and lacks anything especially useful about it. While not completely vanilla the two things it can do (Burn, flip for damage) aren't done well enough to beat out having 10 more HP or make it worth playing outside of wanting to run its Evolutions.
