COTD – 10th July 2011 – Manaphy UL

My Card of the Day today is Manaphy from HS: Unleashed. This basic Water Pokemon has an average 60HP along with two attacks.

The second attack for a single Water energy does 20 damage, which is okay, but Manaphy is all about its first attack.

‘Deep Sea Swirl’ costs just a single Colourless energy and allows you to shuffle your hand into your deck and draw 5 cards. This immediately puts it into the starter category which means it’s going to have to rival the ever-popular Baby Pokemon to see some decent play.

Deep Sea Swirly does resemble ‘Eeeek’ fairly well but it draws one less card, costs one energy and you don’t get the possible immunity next turn. Regardless of this, Manaphy could still be a solid choice of a starter if you aren’t a fan of the 30HP babies. What Manaphy seems to lack in drawing cards, it gains by having almost no chance of being donked (apart from Pachirisu) which is turning out to be a really important factor of the game right now. Manaphy also features free retreat which makes it a fairly decent rival.

Overall, you can see this card being played as a starter for those of you that really don’t want to start with a lone Baby going second or you just don’t like using Cleffa. I personally like Cleffa better still, but this one is definitely one to give a go. I’ll give Manaphy a decent 6/10. A decent contender for ‘starter’ status, but is just below Cleffa in terms of useability.

Thanks for reading and just a a note, I have some really exciting stuff in the works for this site so watch this space!