COTD – 1st August 2011 – Smoochum HS

Today’s Card of the Day is Smoochum from the HeartGold SoulSilver Base Set.

This card is another addition to the collection of Baby Pokemon we were given even though it hasn’t been the most popular. It’s of Psychic typing, has the traditional 30HP for a baby, a single attack and a PokeBody.

Of course, the PokeBody we have here is ‘Sweet Sleeping Face’ which prevents all damage done to Smoochum when it’s asleep, but we all know that already. What we want to know is what it’s attack does.

Keeping with the tradition of Baby Pokemon, Smoochum’s attack ‘Energy Antics’ doesn’t cost any energy. This makes them fairly useful since you don’t need to commit energy to them, but is the attack worth using?

Energy Antics allows you to move any energy attached to any of your opponent’s Pokemon and place it onto another. This instantly reminds me and probably other players that played SP, of Ambipom G, however this attack is free and can move ANY energy, not just ones attached to the opponent’s active.

Moving energy around is really rare in this format and ways of moving it from any other Pokemon is also rare in competitive decks at the moment, apart from ZPS featuring Shaymin from Unleashed. This can make Smoochum a very fun card to use on decks that run low counts of energy or burn through it fairly quickly.

Using this card against decks like MagneBoar means that you can move energy kept on Magnezone for ‘Lost Burn’ and put it onto an unsuspecting Baby Pokemon on the bench, rendering it useless for the rest of the game. This can work especially well if they run Rescue Energy too.

Speaking of special energy, the COTD from yesterday, Double Colourless could be a fun target of this attack too. Being able to void one of your opponent’s double energy cost means that they are going to have to use another DCE, or power up manually, taking two turns longer. Just another use for Smoochum.

However, with this card being a Baby Pokemon, it isn’t seeing a lot of love at the moment. It is susceptible to ‘Spray Splash’ KOs over multiple turns and more importantly, Yanmega’s ‘Linear Attack’. The worry of being donked by a fellow Baby, Tyrogue, without even being allowed to take a turn has also lowered Baby playablility at the moment.

Overall, this card can be extremely fun to play against an unsuspecting opponent since it denies them of the energy attachment they used last turn and puts them back a turn. However, being a Baby Pokemon is going to hurt this guy’s rating since it will without a doubt turn into a free prize later on in the game that you wish you didn’t give away. Taking all this into account, I’m going to give Smoochum a 6/10. A very fun card to try out at league, but won’t be a massive hit in the competitive world unfortunately.

Thanks for reading today’s Card of the Day and comment below what you think..