COTD – 15th August 2011 – Tropical Beach

Hey everybody, I must apologise for the lack of COTDs up until now, but my attention has been fully focused on hoarding results from the World Championships for my episode on Saturday. Since I have been following it so closely, I thought I’d pick a card for today which stays on the Worlds theme.

Today’s choice is none other than Tropical Beach, the very card given out to all Worlds competitors in every language you can think of. Not only is this a very expensive card to obtain, but it is actually very playable right now as shown by Ross Cawthon who managed to achieve 2nd this year with a deck including this very card.So what does it do? Well, this card is one of the few Stadium cards we have at our disposal and it simply states that during either player’s turn, that player may draw cards until they have 7 in their hand and if they do, their turn ends. As many of you may be thinking right now, it is VERY similar to the long lost Uxie LA from last format, but with an added effect of the turn ending.

So where is this card going to be best used? Well it’s actually striking me as more of an early game card when you don’t have the best of attacks at your disposal, if any, and just want to get some more cards for the turn after. This is where Cleffa is usually employed to achieve this exact task, but with Tyrogue being really popular, players have decided to shy away from playing it right now. This is where Tropical Beach could fill a hole since it really isn’t that counter-able, gives you one more card and doesn’t effectively give your opponent a prize as soon as it hits the field.

What’s not so great about this is that your opponent also has the use of it when it hits the field which could come back to bite you if you played it early on. Since you want to be playing it early game, it will probably be there for the majority of the match meaning that any player can take full advantage of it at any course of the match. It could be said though, that drawing cards without causing damage could also hurt your own strategy if that is the best you can do by the mid-late game.

However, this card has shown some promise is Ross Cawthon’s epic rogue deck, coming 2nd as stated above so it obviously has some playability attached to it. I don’t know what came over him to put it into his list just a day before the event, but he did and it worked.

Overall, this card is going to be a very interesting one, not only because of its effect, but in how available it’s going to be within the community if it does show well in the competitive environment. I’m going to give it a fairly solid 5/10 for now. It has already proved itself to be useful in highly competitive play, but will it become a fully fledged competitive card? Only time will tell..

Artwork: This card actually has some really nice artwork. There was a strong emphasis on the 3 starters being in most of the artwork at Worlds 2011 and this card art seems to carry the trend. The 3 starters are clearly having a great time at the beach and the presence of surfboards and a skateboard furthers the ‘street style’ of the overall Worlds art. What really makes this image for me is Psyduck in the background clearly just there to be hilarious. This guy has been one of the dopiest Pokemon in the TV series and games since day one and it’s nice to see that they are still continuing this trend up until now with him creeping into the Worlds ’11 promo card. Overall, I’m going to give it a very nice 8/10. It has obviously had some great effort put into it and the way it has been portrayed along with all the small, finishing touches just makes it a great looking card.

I hope you enjoyed this COTD, congrats to all that did well at Worlds and please comment below what you think about this somewhat surprising card.