2011-7-26 UD Tropius 022

[waynegg]

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[gal= 50612]2011-7-26 UD Tropius 022[/gal]
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Posts in CotD will no longer allowed to begin with modifiers such as "First!". It has been added to the FAQ, please read it. Posts of this nature will henceforth be considered off topic, and handled as such.

 

[sdrawkcab]

Anyways, this card is simply bad....

I think we've maybe had one playable tropius ever? And that was only slightly playable

2/10

 

[dragonfire]

Maybe a tech for a deck with lots of switches for removing damage counters. Potions will help to!

 

[super ditto]

it has a decent hp, the weakness can hurt it, and its resistance is decent .
The first attack is good for healing. But on the other hand although the second attacck can abuse DCE its a bit pricy for the damage output.

Woot, my second 1st post?

there is now a rule that prohibits this behavior

Posts in CotD will no longer allowed to begin with modifiers such as "First!". It has been added to the FAQ, please read it. Posts of this nature will henceforth be considered off topic, and handled as such.

 

[StormFront]

If the card had 1 or free retreat cost it could be classed as barely playable. The only reason to ever use this card is for his first attack.

2/10

 

[ArceusRules]

Woot, my second 1st post?

Anyways, this card is simply bad....

I think we've maybe had one playable tropius ever? And that was only slightly playable

2/10

If you're referring to the Tropius that knows Fly, that card is pretty bad too. Flip a coin, if heads prevent all damage but if tails, the attack does nothing.

We have NOT had any playable Tropius cards.

This one is very weak. It's first attack only heals and deals no damage. The 2nd takes 3 Energies (2 if you use DCE) for only 4 measly damage.

Only 90 low HP, -20 Resistance is good if your up against Champ and weak to :lightning: rather than Fire is a good thing. Especially when up against Reshirboar. But Reshiram can still OHKO this thing easily. 2 retreat cost is a little too heavy. I give this one a 1/10.

 

[Qwachansey]

This isn't a 1/10 card. The 1st attack is not that bad considering it's a basic. While I can't see Tropius fitting into any top tier deck, I'm sure there is somewhere a place for it. 4/10

 

[sdrawkcab]

@ super dito:
If you look, I never edited my post and I actually gave a cotd raiting

@arceusrules:
I supose you're right....for some reason i thought there was one that might have seen play as a tech, or even with a CFF attack. Oh well.....poor little guy

 

[trumon]

Woot, my second 1st post?

Anyways, this card is simply bad....

I think we've maybe had one playable tropius ever? And that was only slightly playable

2/10

hey, dont forget this one:http://pokegym.net/gallery/displayimage.php?imageid=50202

this one is almost useful... i used it and its a good starter, it needs luck but you have 2 coins...
its a T1 sunflora xD

 

[jjkkl]

Somebody at PokemonTCG localization has a sense of humor, if 'Cutting Wind' is any indicator.

9/10

 

[Miamisportsfan45]

2/10

Resistance is nice, but most rock/fighting types bypass resistance anyway. It's a nice switch healer, but for the most part, it won't even see gameplay because of rare candy. Weakness can hurt it obviously as well as retreat.

 

[pnoodle5]

Ok so the card of the day is Tropius... It has an appropriate retreat cost for a 90 hp basic. The healing attack is useful in pulling damage off you bench, but there are better ways to do that, and 3 energy for 40 damage is unusable. If this card evolved into something better, such as Wailmer into Wailord, then I would be willing to test it as a tank or something. Any Pokemon with "tropical snacks" hanging off of it's neck probably isn't going to be all that wonderful. It seems that most of the popular characters (Zekrom/Reshiram, Servine/Emboar, etc) are useful enough in the game.

Limited: 5/10 This card could play fairly well at a prerelease.
Unlimited: 3/10 Not usable in serious decks.

 

[Regis_Neo]

Yesterday's CotD was Tropius from UD...nah...I didn't even know this existed, does anyone? Statwise 90 HP is nice for a Basic, x2 Weakness to :lightning: is meh (though not as bad as :fire: I guess), -20 Resistance to :fighting: can help, and :colorless::colorless: to Retreat is a bit pricey. Fresh-Picked Fruit is good enough for :grass:, removing 6 damage counters off one of your Benched Pokemon with no ill side effects. Cutting Wind is bad and underpowered at :colorless::colorless::colorless: for 40.

Modified - 1/10 (No reason to play him, if you're going healing you use Serperior period pretty much)
Limited - 6/10 (Depends, on its own its a big Basic that can at least do an attack, and if you run at least some :grass: Energy you gain access to a nice healing attack as well)
Unlimited - 1/10 (No use here)

 

[dark wobbuffet]

this card doesnt really fit into any decks. removing 6 damage counters would be possibly O.K if it had free retreat and there weren't so many better options for healing. I dissagree that there aren't any playable tropius though, I think the unleased one can be useful.

 

[Dragon Strife]

This one is very weak. It's first attack only heals and deals no damage. The 2nd takes 3 Energies (2 if you use DCE) for only 4 measly damage.

Yeah, but who would ever waste a dce on this tropius? This tropius is just bad, and I think i mightve played it once only because I needed another grass pokemon as a filler in my PRE-RELEASE deck. 1/10.

 

[Otaku]

Overview of Tropius

Catching up after having been either busy or away from a computer for the last week or so (was out of state for a funeral), I’ll take a look at Tropius, card 22/90 from HS: Undaunted. Tropius historically do not see serious competitive play, though several have been just shy of it, usually seeing serious play at Pokémon League levels but usually failing to make the jump to the tournament scene. Looking back at them, all seem to almost be worthwhile, and might have actually seen play had the right decks been around:

• EX: Hidden Legends 27/101 is a :grass: Basic Pokémon that had a still solid 80 HP, okay :fire:x2 Weakness, annoying lack of Resistance, and also solid single Energy Retreat Cost. For grass you could move an Energy card attached to it to another of your Pokémon and remove four damage counters from it. At least you can drop a Rainbow Energy on it then shift it elsewhere. It also has a vanilla 20-for-colorless::colorless move just so it can attempt to attack.

• EX: Deoxys 27/107 had the same stats as above and a Poké-Body to wipe out your opponent’s Resistance, but only while Tropius was Active. For grass and a successful coin toss, you could pick which Special Condition you wanted to afflict the Defending Pokémon with, and at the time Stomp was actually a decent attack for a Basic Pokémon. I seem to recall the failed Energy Trans decks of the day trying to use it to open.

• EX: Dragon Frontiers28/101 lost 10 HP but was a Pokémon δ, so it was a Metal-Type. When Benched from your hand, it removed all Special Conditions, Imprison, and Shock-wave markers from your Pokémon. Grind for metal did 10 damage per Energy, and wasn’t bad for something you could load with Special Energy Metal Energy.

• Mysterious Treasures 64/123 is back to being an 80 HP Grass Basic Pokémon, still has a single Energy Retreat Cost, but also enjoys :fire:+20 Weakness and :fighting:-20 Resistance. For grass its Bonus Leaf attack removes 3 damage counters from each of your Benched Pokémon with any grass Energy attached to them. For grass::colorless it hits for 30 and the effect of Pokémon Circulator.

• Rising Rivals 52/111 has the same stats as the previous version except with a worse, two Energy Retreat Cost. It does enjoy having three attacks: Fly, Blessed Fruit, and Solar Beam. Fly does nothing on “tails”, but on heads blocks all effects of attacks (including damage) done to Tropius while hitting for 30 points of damage. Not bad for a single Energy requirement. For grass::grass Blessed Fruit removed all damage counters from one of your Benched :grass: Pokémon. Solar Beam was pricey at grass::colorless::colorless::colorless but at least gave it the option to do a flat 60 points of damage.

• HS: Unleashed 66/95 is a Basic Grass-Type Pokémon with 80 HP, :fire::fire:x2 Weakness, :fighting:-20 Resistance, and single Energy Retreat Cost. For grass, its Green Call attack gives you two coin flips, and each “heads” lets you search your deck for a :grass: Pokémon and add it to your hand. Gust only does 20 points of damage for grass::colorless though.

The different Tropius actually have some useful effects, but almost always in the wrong place to be viable for a competitive deck build. EX: Hidden Legends 27/101, Mysterious Treasures 64/123, and Rising Rivals 52/111 all provided healing (damage counter removal) through attacks. The most expensive required grass::grass but also removed all damage counters from one of your Pokémon. The less expensive only needed a single Energy and as stated in the case of EX: Hidden Legends 27/101 as long as you attached something providing :grass: Energy to that Tropius and then bounced it to something else that could use it, you weren’t even out an Energy attachment. The obvious problem is that you are using an attack, so to be competitive you have to heal more than what your opponent is currently doing and/or trade Tropius to extend the life of a more important Pokémon for two more turns. Mysterious Treasures 64/123 really suffered: it was clear they wanted Tropius to favor :grass: decks without completely hamstringing it by having it only heal :grass: Pokémon, but by requiring targeted Pokémon also need a :grass: Energy attached they effectively inflated the cost of the attack by that Energy. That is, healing a single Pokémon ultimately cost grass::grass, two would cost grass::grass::grass, etc. Late game you might have enough Energy already in play for Tropius to remove three damage counters from each of five Pokémon, but its going to cost you Tropius and the Energy on it. Pretty wasteful for a single Pokémon and rarely useful for multiple Pokémon: how likely are you to have a Bench full of Pokémon that are injured enough to be worth the cost of healing, but not so badly injured the healing can still make a difference?

Most of the effects (healing or otherwise) are just too expensive for what they do or the Tropius they are on lacks enough substance to follow through. Which is why when they were legal they just didn’t see play. There is another aspect, though: while :grass: Pokémon have given us some strong decks, most have been very Pokémon specific. That is to say, it was less a strong :grass: deck and more a strong deck that happens to be oriented around a :grass: Pokémon; if that Pokémon had been printed as another type, it would be just as wrong a deck and use no :grass: Pokémon or Energy. I don’t recall Tropius δ actually seeing much play, but I think that was because Special Conditions were even easier to cure with Trainers at the time than they are now, and those other effects never became quite as strong as TPC expected.

So what about today’s CotD, HS: Undaunted 22/90? It is still a Basic, :grass: Pokémon. The good news is that being a Basic Pokémon has all the standard benefits: minimal deck space required, easy to Bench, easy to search, and easy to recycle. Being a :grass: Pokémon doesn’t add a whole lot right now, even though it actually has some specific Type support available. 90 HP is probably about right: Tropius has one of the higher HP scores in the video games, though now that we have 649 different Pokémon (some of which have multiple forms, making the number effectively higher) that means it clocks in towards the bottom of the top 100 HP scores. Using the common rankings of standardized testing, I believe it would be about the 86th percentile. In terms of the actual TCG, this is high enough that it will usually take a deck’s main attacker (sometimes with a small boost like PlusPower) to OHKO Tropius. Most serious attackers (even if they aren’t the deck’s focus) will take it down in two hits, though.

This Tropius has :lightning:x2 Weakness, and it hurts. Tropius is a Grass/Flying-Type hybrid in the video games which means it actually should take normal damage from :lightning: attacks: Flying is Weak, Grass is Resistance, and so it cancels out. For video game Pokémon-Types, Tropius takes double damage from Flying, Poison, Rock, and Fire Type attacks. It takes quadruple damage from Ice-Type attacks! Tropius in the video games take no damage from Ground-Type and half damage from Fighting-Type or Water-Type attacks. Interestingly enough, damage from Grass-Type attacks is quartered. This makes Fire the logical Weakness choice, though that is also a bit predictable and not much better this format. Colorless (for Flying) or Psychic (for Poison) would probably have been better and still reasonably appropriate. This leads nicely to discussing Resistance: Tropius still has it! Specifically :fighting:-20 and this mostly makes sense: the video game Rock-Type falls under the TCG-Type :fighting:, but the other two types are Resisted by both this way. Water doesn’t work very will given that TCG :water: Pokémon can be video game Water- or Ice-Types. :grass:-20 (or higher if they actually would do that) would have been most appropriate but also almost useless in the current metagame. A Retreat Cost of two is actually reasonable for a larger Basic Pokémon like Tropius, but it is also common to lower the Retreat Cost of Flying-Type or extremely fast Pokémon. Tropius isn’t a fast Pokémon, but as I’ve repeatedly mentioned it is part Flying-Type in the video games. Plus looking at all those earlier Tropius made me realize that if they all needed one less Energy to Retreat, the best of them might have seen some play.

So the stats on HS: Undaunted 22/90, while not perfect, will do. So what about the rest of the card? For grass, Fresh-Picked Fruit will remove six damage counters from one of your Benched Pokémon. Like the recent errata of Potion, this is a 50% increase over the damage healed by the original Tropius (EX: Hidden Legends 27/101) and for better or worse, without needing to move Energy around. Still it is hard to find a reason to approach damage removal in this manner because you come to the same problem as earlier versions of Tropius: early game there isn’t enough damage to heal, and mid-to-late game Tropius is getting OHKO’d so you’ve just given up an Energy attachment, an attack, and a Prize for a double Potion you can only use on your Bench. The second attack gives a weak-but-functional return: had the first attack been worthwhile so too would Cutting Wind. The reason is you could have a Tropius upfront to heal, and if something didn’t finish it off it is better to have the option of dropping a Double Colorless Energy and hitting for 40 than nothing at all. Given that the first attack already required grass Energy, Cutting Wind would have been better had it required grass::colorless::colorless and rewarded you with 50-to-70 points of damage.

Version HS: Undaunted 22/90 of Tropius just isn’t worth using in Modified. The closest fit I could find for it would have been in Damage Swap decks, but you lose your offense and have to run Grass Energy. If for some reason you have to run a Tropius, HS: Unleashed 66/95 is clearly better: early game when such a Pokémon is useful, it helps set up instead of healing damage you haven’t already taken. For Unlimited usage, none are especially good and this might even be the least useful version: the HP and Resistance can come in handy, but the effects of the others are (barely) better suited for Unlimited. In Limited play this card is actually a must run! Hard to believe, but the stats second attack make it a good (but not great) beatstick for any deck. The only drawback is that it would be three turns before it could attack, so if you opened with it you would probably be best off just sacrificing it. If you can afford to run at least a few Grass Energy, Tropius can finally serve as the healer it was meant to be. In Limited play it is quite common to retreat an attacker just to avoid giving up a Prize. It is likely you’ll have at least one Pokémon for Tropius to heal once, and due to the lower damage output Tropius might get to use Fresh-Picked Fruit two, three, even four times before it is KO’d.

Ratings

Unlimited: 1/10 – There isn’t much use for any Tropius, and this might actually be the least useful for this format.

Modified: 2/10 – It isn’t useless, but it doesn’t do what it is meant to very well, no deck really needs it, and there’s another Tropius that a Grass deck might reasonably use!

Limited: 10/10 – Seriously, it’s a big basic with a decent attack that can use any Energy, that gets better when you can Grass Energy. Must run unless you’re cheating!

Summary

Wonderfully designed for Limited play but extremely disappointing for Modified, I think TPC has to accept that healing attacks have to be borderline broken to be useful and probably should just make them into Abilities instead. In fact, every Tropius with a healing attack would have been more useful (possibly a lot more useful) had it had a once-per-turn healing Ability (or similar effect) instead, so that they could be used from the Bench. Even if Tropius had to be Active, at least two Switch and retreating would let you heal enough damage to matter while getting your attacker out of the way, then back to the Active position.