I must confess, now that the secret is out, I don't see why we really needed these comparisons, just because only one card actually fits its proposed deck.
Dratini is a Colorless Basic that can Evolve into
Dragonair, which can in turn Evolve into
Dragonite. While not the worst examples of this line, neither
Dragonair nor
Dragonite strike me as good to play due to their own merit, which means we really are reviewing
Dratini on its own merits. Being a Basic makes it easy to run and being Colorless doesn't really add or detract from it. 50 HP is tiny and most decks will be able to OHKO it with all but their lowest level attacks/attackers. Colorless Weakness can be bad because Colorless Pokemon just tend to make for good openers/splashes for decks. So while it is as vulnerable as any other 50 HP Pokemon against everything else, perhaps the Pokemon Type most likely to be fueled by a single
Double Colorless Energy first/second turn hits
Dratini for double damage, all but guaranteeing a OHKO. No Resistance is lame but probably doesn't hurt it. It might rob it of a potential auto-win against certain unprepared decks had it possessed a Resistance, but I somehow doubt that was intentional. The single Energy Retreat Cost is easy to pay but doesn't earn any extra points for the card since that is rather standard on Basic Pokemon.
So if you've been paying attention, you'll know that Ram is almost superfluous to the card. Still the option of doing 20 for
colorless::colorless
is good to have. It is Gentle Wrap that could get it to see play, but the problem is that it defeats its own purpose. You see Gentle Wrap, for the low cost of
colorless
does 10 damage and blocks the Defending Pokemon from Retreating. When combined with a Benched
Vileplume and a
Cleffa (or similar non-damaging Pokemon) you create a lock. If you already took a Prize or want to be boring and yet daring at the same time by seeing if you can wait out your opponent for the win. Otherwise the deck needs something like
Kingdra Prime (not sure if that is the best choice, just the only one I know) to place damage counters while you hold the
Cleffa in place with your attacks.
So like I said, there is a problem:
Dratini KOs
Cleffa in three turns (less if the
Cleffa player has a damage counter placement trick). Your lock is then broken. I understand you might use this as merely an early trick to buy time for a fuller, more rich set-up but that seems like a waste. The metagame is shifting: people were sick of hiding behind Sweet Sleeping Face at the Canadian and US Nationals, and it seems like many are looking for different opening Pokemon. For certain once we get
Pokemon Catcher as soon as
BW: Emerging Powers is legal, you won't be able to hide behind Sweet Sleeping Face and suddenly
Cleffa looses a lot of what made it a good opener. You might as well use something with a little more HP even if it doesn't have quite as useful an opening attack, than have a 30 HP meatball your opponent will send to the Bench in place of what they really want to OHKO... and then take
Cleffa out at a later, even more inconvenient time unless you get it out of play yourself.
In Unlimited there are a lot of really vicious decks that have appeared since the last time I could really play it, one or two created by the ruling changes. I can tell you that this lock deck has a superior counterpart (that had long since fallen out of favor since there are cards like
Warp Energy to break said lock) and I'd prefer to use a
Dratini with Resistance (or double Resistance) over one with the Colorless Weakness, even if some only have 40 HP. Not that it'd really matter since such a deck's hope would be going first and dropping
Broken Time Space anyway.
In Limited play this isn't the worst filler, and
Dragonair actually is a great pull due to its attacks, since both its stats and attacks are better in a format where a player is lucky to have any Evolutions at all!
Dragonite likewise is loads better here, and as long as you're running Energy cards in your deck (and of course you should be), then you should be able to run this line.
Ratings
Unlimited: 1/10 - The specialty deck doesn't even exist here, and there are better
Dratini if you do run a
Dragonite (or variant) deck.
Modified: 2/10 - It doesn't even work that well for the specialty deck and the rest of the line can't cut it either. One bonus point in case the lock deck needs to max out on all three to ensure one is present at first.
Limited: 2/10 on its own, but if you get at least
Dragonair it becomes a 10/10 until you reach two more
Dratini than
Dragonair.
Summary
Dratini ironically has a better "hold while hurting" attack than the others, but since the point is not to KO the
Cleffa and its HP is lower than that of
Tentacool it actually ends up being the worst for the job.
