[FONT="]Stats[/FONT]
[FONT="]Ho-Oh [/FONT][FONT="]is a Basic, Fire-Type Pokémon. Fire doesn’t help or hurt much with Type-matching, and it doesn’t have any true support. I know what you’re thinking, but the support that is out there is for Fire Energy as a Type, not Fire-Pokémon. Fortunately they are usually one and the same, but not always.[/FONT]
[FONT="]Ho-oh[/FONT][FONT="] has 100 HP, which is currently the fourth highest possible score. This is good, even on a Legendary though it can be easy to forget in light of the behemoths from the last few sets. The Water Weakness is appropriate but a pain and better to have (at least for now) than the other appropriate Weakness, Lightning: Ho-oh is a Fire/Flying Pokémon in the video games, after all. The Fighting Resistance -20 does come from that video-game Flying-Type half, and is much appreciated. Unless they want to actually power-up Earthquake, Donphan Prime is going to need three hits, and even PlusPower only makes it a two-hit KO. We end the stats with something disappointing, a three Energy Retreat Cost. This is bad, and paying it will be expensive even if you’ve got Energy acceleration. One should just plan on letting Ho-oh go down swinging or pack some Switch. Again this is a half-Flying-Type for the video games, and I don’t like seeing them saddled with this high a Retreat Cost as it feels counter-intuitive.[/FONT]
[FONT="]Effects[/FONT]
[FONT="]Ho-oh[/FONT][FONT="] has two attacks. The first is Combustion for (RCC). This isn’t brilliant but it is solid for a Basic Pokémon. First turn will be wasted if you open with it, even if you drop an Energy, but second turn you can deliver a solid 50 points of damage if you follow up with a Double Colorless Energy. The second attack isn’t quite as good, but isn’t worthless either: Scorching Wind requires a massive (RRRCC) to use, and requires a coin flip. If it comes up “tails”, you have to discard all your Fire Energy from Ho-oh! Still, heads or tails, you hit for 100 points of damage! Honestly the discard feels like overkill (or that the attack should have hit about another 20 to 50 points harder), but it’s still marginally functional.[/FONT]
[FONT="]Both attacks can make use of Double Colorless Energy, and as long as you do use two non-Fire Energy, the worst case scenario is that you’d only be able to use Scorching Wind every third turn and use Combustion on the two “off” turns. Again, this isn’t great but it’s on a fairly beefy Basic Pokémon. Best case scenario of course is that you never hit tails and thus can keep using Scorching Wind. Since you have to factor in hitting "tails" right away at least some of the time, the short term results actually aren't going to be much better than the worst case scenario, but you will have some times when you'd get two or three shots off without any discards, and without a good deck supporting it, I don't think the card would survive much longer than that.[/FONT] For the kind of deck that could maximize it, keep reading.
[FONT="]Usage[/FONT]
[FONT="]Sadly, there isn't much of a use for Ho-oh and it's all because of one card: Reshiram. Reshiram does everything this card does, save for having Resistance and making full use of Double Colorless Energy, and does it at least a little bit better. For the sake of argument, if Reshiram didn’t exist, how would this be used?[/FONT]
[FONT="]Emboar[/FONT][FONT="] decks would pack it as the main or back-up attacker. Said decks would have to pack Double Colorless Energy because even in an Emboar deck, you can’t afford to discard five Fire Energy cards on a single attack. The good news is that solid builds would have Ho-oh hitting by their second turn reliably, even if Emboar was a no show thanks to a single normally attached Fire Energy and Double Colorless Energy (attached first and second turn). Players of this deck would either be running the normal openers or trying to snag a Tropical Beach, since a Ho-oh with a single Fire Energy would be excellent bait: does your opponent use Tropical Beach to try and help their own set-up, take out the big bird, or worry you’ve got Emboar ready to drop on your second turn already?[/FONT]
[FONT="]Typhlosion[/FONT][FONT="] Prime decks would be in a similar state: having to run Double Colorless Energy to keep the “tails” result from being crippling. In both cases, the decks would be noticeably weaker, though the difference doesn’t become noticeable until BW: Emerging Power since Typhlosion Prime decks couldn’t really afford to use Max Potion at all, while Emboar decks would use it only as a last resort. Like I said, you wouldn’t want to drop five Fire Energy on a card with a 50% chance of shedding them. Typhlosion Prime would suffer the worst and might even just have to use a Stage 1 attacker instead: powering it up in a single turn would require three Typhlosion Prime on the Bench, a Double Colorless Energy in hand, and place three damage counters on our big red bird! Otherwise the slightly lower damage output and HP of Ho-oh would be impressive yet still feel fair in this hypothetical world, and it’d definitely have a place in some if not most Emboar builds. In reality though, we have Reshiram and it easily pushes this card out of the running.[/FONT]
[FONT="]In Unlimited, there is sadly no place for this card. Any Unlimited deck I can think of that would consider it (and those would still be casual play only) have too many superior choices (including Reshiram). In Limited play, though it pains me to use such a gorgeous rare this way, it would be a great pull. Don’t worry about using Scorching Wind unless it’s incredibly convenient. Just having 100 HP with Fighting Resistance and a solid 50-points-of-damage-a-turn attack is fantastic here. If your deck doesn’t run much Fire Energy (and Combustion means you just need a Fire Energy minority build) you don’t want to leave Ho-oh unable to attack, and if you’re using a lot, you really don’t want to use it and discard five Fire Energy: you’ll need it to survive long enough to get two non-Fire Energy and three Fire Energy. In a pure Fire deck, just use it as a finisher when you’re either going to win or its going to be KOed anyway![/FONT]
[FONT="]Ratings[/FONT]
[FONT="]Unlimited:[/FONT][FONT="] 1/10[/FONT]
[FONT="]Modified:[/FONT][FONT="] 6.5/10[/FONT]
[FONT="]Limited:[/FONT][FONT="] 8/10[/FONT]
[FONT="]Art:[/FONT][FONT="] 8/10[/FONT]
[FONT="]Summary[/FONT]
[FONT="]Another gorgeous, great collector’s card that would have been a strong force if not for Reshiram so badly outclassing it, you should still be thrilled to pull one, even at a Pre-Release. Why yes, yes I am trying to remain positive.[/FONT]
