Stats
Suicune is a Basic Water Pokémon. Being a Basic makes it the easiest Pokémon class to fit into a deck, to get into play, search from the deck (and either add to hand or Bench), to revive from the discard, and to recycle from the discard. Being a Water Pokémon allows to hit a great deal of Weakness (as Fire-Type Pokémon are so popular) and to tap into Rain Dance for support. The 90 HP is good for a Basic Pokémon that can’t Evolve, though given how large the most recent Legendary Pokémon have been it doesn’t seem quite as impressive as it once did.
This card suffers from Lightning Weakness. The good news is that it is small enough that something like Zekrom would OHKO it even without the Weakness, unless relying on its back-up attack of Outrage (which requires Zekrom have three damage counters instead of seven to score a OHKO). The real threat comes from supporting attacks and Pokémon being able to take Suicune down in a single shot. The lack of Resistance is annoying but as it is so common it doesn’t really detract from Suicune. Lastly there is a Retreat Cost of two, which is low enough you can pay but high enough you won’t want to. A single Energy Retreat Cost is more common for Basic Pokémon, but as we’ll see the Poké-Body affects this.
Effects
Suicune has a Poké-Body and an attack. The Poké-Body, Extreme Speed, lowers the Retreat Cost of this card by (C) for each (W) Energy attached to Suicune. This is one of those Poké-Bodies you look at and go “Why not just give it a better stat?” With one (W) attached to Suicune it will have a single Energy Retreat Cost. With two or more Energy it has a free Retreat Cost. It isn’t large enough to need to Retreat often, nor is a relevant effect included in its attack that would make you prone to retreating it. So why not just save space and give the card a single Energy Retreat Cost. Unless you’re running Suicune off-type then powering it up will almost always start with a single Water Energy and that drops the Retreat Cost down to “one” anyway. This Poké-Body just takes up space and needlessly complicates the card while making it vulnerable to certain anti-Poké-Body effects.
The attack on this card is Tsunami, and it’s a definite improvement over Kyogre’s Destructive Tsunami, but not by a lot. It requires (WWC) making it still slow without Energy acceleration and it simply does a flat 20 points of damage to each of your opponent’s Pokémon. The Active still applies Weakness and Resistance but the Bench does not. This isn’t a useless attack, but the slowness of it makes it hard to get it off repeatedly, since by the time you’re powered up you’re nearly KOed… unless you use Rain Dance, and I’ll explain the problems with that approach.
Usage
Rain Dance uses Feraligatr Prime. In HeartGold/SoulSilver there is a different Feraligatr, one besides Feraligatr Prime, and even reprinted in Call of Legends. This version is a Stage 2 Water-Type Pokémon with 10 less HP than Feraligatr Prime (so 130), the same Weakness and lack of Resistance, and a two Energy Retreat Cost instead of a single Energy Retreat Cost. It has a slightly poor “big” attack for (WWCC) that hits for a flat 80, but it also has Spinning Tail for (WCC). Simply put if you need to do spread, this seems like the better choice.
Either way, abuse Max Potion as best you can. In Unlimited… well Unlimited is pretty messed up right now. Even in casual play against friends, find something else to do the spread. In Limited this can be a great card, though. You’ll need to run mostly Water Energy for Energy but doing so will allow you to build this on the Bench and unless your opponent has a good heavy hitter ready, probably build enough damage to either win or all but win the game.
Ratings
Unlimited: 1/10
Modified: 4/10
Limited: 7/10
Art: 8/10
Summary
Very close to being a real contender, but spread attacks need to be fast or be on a bigger (or at least more durable) body. The art is gorgeous though so if you’ve got one, it’s got a place of honor in the binder and not shame in the shoebox.
body:, ExtremeSpeed, makes Suicune's Retreat Cost :colorless: less for each :water: energy attached to it. Maybe this card would've been good if it just had 0 Retreat Cost in the first place, and another attack in place of ExtremeSpeed (of course, it would have to be a good attack).