COTD – 16th September 2011 – Basculin EP

Today’s Card of the Day was released in one of the theme decks from the BW: Emerging Powers set. A rather moody looking fish named Basculin.

Here we have a Basic, Water type with 80HP, a handy 1 retreat cost and he comes with 2 attacks. The Lightning weakness isn’t the most helpful seeing as though Zekrom and Magnezone are floating about. Not much to cry about if your opponent plays it to be honest, but let’s see what we can make of him.

Its first attack, ‘Flail’, which costs just one of any energy to use, is pretty bad in all aspects I can think of. The attack states: 10 damage times the number of damage counters on Basculin. So the maximum flat damage it can deal with this attack would be 70. Yanmega, this guy needs some lessons. However, if someone has hit your Basculin for just 70 damage, they either have a sneaky plan, or they are playing the game wrong. Also, seeing as this attack is a copy of ‘Outrage’, without the extra 20 boost, this means if Basculin is untouched, then the attack does 0 damage… Lovely.

However, Basculin’s second attack got me thinking. ‘Final Gambit’ costs a Water energy and two colourless energy, which immediately shouts to me that it can abuse Double Colourless energy. The base damage of this attack is 80, however when attacking a Donphan or Reshiram with a weakness, it racks up to a rather whopping 160 damage. For this reason, I decided to use it in a deck list as a Donphan counter, as Donphan is largely played at the moment. But, as to any happy idea that I come across, there is a downside. When you use this attack, you must flip 2 coins and if they are both tails then Basculin is knocked out, giving away a prize, but I thought 25% chance was low enough to get away with.

Overall, this Pokémon is a great way to counter Donphan, the best Donphan counter? I’m not so sure, but definitely worth giving a try, however using it in any other way would probably end in failure. I think I will give this card a 5.5/10 for being a good tech against a dominant Pokémon, but it lacks a few things for it to be wholly playable.

Artwork: The artwork of this card somewhat disappoints me due to the fact they didn’t include both versions of Basculin. However, the style of the card is really nice. This macho guy isn’t just some fishcake, this guy is just ready to scream “Bring it!”. The sea bed is a nice touch although it almost blends in to the rest of the card. I would give this artwork a 7/10, the style and pose is quite appealing but I just feel that it is missing something…

Remember to rate how you feel this card fits into competitive play with the star rating system below