COTD – 7th August 2011 – Floatzel UL

My choice for today is going to be Floatzel from the HS: Unleashed set.

Floatzel is presented to us in Stage 1 form, comes in Water typing, has a Poke Power and 80HP. Now these credentials themselves look pretty impressive so far, but what does it do?

Well, let’s look at its attack first since it isn’t the most impressive out of the two. ‘Waterfall’ gives us a damage output of 60 for the cost of two Water energy and a Colourless. This can easily be seen as a ‘bad attack’ considering it isn’t compatible with Double Colourless, which means three turns of manually attaching those energy just for 60 damage, Yanmega will laugh at this attack. However, it will be powerful enough to KO a Reshiram with a PlusPower if the attack is ever needed, and can hit a Donphan pretty hard too and its Poke Power is where it can power up faster.

‘Water Acceleration’ does exactly what it says on the tin and provides you with the ability to attach a Water energy from your hand and onto Floatzel, not taking up your attachment for the turn. This Power is actually really useful in a lot of decks and will most likely be seen paired with the old school favourite Blastoise.

Pairing Water Acceleration with Blastoise’s ‘Wash Out’ means that you can get it’s big attack going a turn earlier thanks to the attaching and moving of energies these two provide when acting together and it really isn’t an amazingly bad deck. You could also see Floatzel paired with Magnezone Prime, it sounds crazy I know, but that extra energy attachment per turn means that you can use the energy you attached with Water Acceleration as fuel for the burn, giving you an extra 50 damage. I haven’t tested this out properly myself, but have heard that it isn’t as bad as first thought.

Overall, Floatzel is a more than viable form of energy acceleration in this format, especially if you are dealing with Water types. Its free retreat is also a massive bonus and gives you a little more versatility when choosing what to put active, or just helps by getting a Buizel out of the active spot by evolving it. I’m going to give Floatzel a very nice 6.5/10. It has great potential in this format, but could the Lightning weakness bring it down too much right now? Only time will tell.

Artwork: Floatzel is looking incredibly fierce from the top of his orange head to the tips of his lemon coloured floats. The water surrounding him is spiraling out of control creating a sense of awesomness and the background of this one is very impressive. The image gives you a feel of a Water type gym with that Water-proud banner hanging in the background and gives the impression that Floatzel is just owning whatever attack just hit him with his watery aura. I really like this artwork and it looks even better in reverse holo, so I’m going to give it a very nice 8/10.

Thanks for reading today’s COTD and remember to comment below what you think!