COTD – 16th August 2011 – Magnezone Prime

Hey everyone, PokemanDan here to bring you another Card of the Day and carrying on with the ‘Worlds’ theme, I thought I’d tackle a Pokemon included in the winning deck, Magnezone Prime.

At first glance, this guy is pretty beefy at 140HP, has a Poke Power and single attack along with a Fighting weakness. Now this really doesn’t sound great to start off with. Fighting weakness isn’t too good with Donphan out and about and having 3 retreat cost isn’t going to be healthy either, but when reading into both the attack and Poke Power, you have a consistent power house!

Magnezone’s Poke Power ‘Magnetic Draw’ allows you to draw cards up until you have 6 in your hand, once per turn. Now this power is amazing in this format since we only really have Supporters that can help us to draw cards, so any deck that can utilise this Pokemon is going to have an immediate consistency boost. Where it gets better is that you can use more than one per turn if you have multiple Magnezone in play. This means that you could be drawing a crazy amount of cards in your turn to give you the resources that you need to pull of what you want to do in your turn. It’s so consistent that you are usually near the end of your deck at the end of an average game, so you do need to be wary of how often you do it.

It’s attack ‘Lost Burn’ is where Magnezone just gets even better. For a Lightning and a Colourless energy you have the option of putting as many energy cards as you like into the Lost Zone and for each one you place there, it does 50 damage. Did I also mention that it can be from ANY of your Pokemon? This means that you can be Lost Zoning energy from any other source, while keeping the energy required for the attack on Magnezone so that you are able to use it every single turn.

This attack works well with any form of energy acceleration be it Emboar, Pachirisu or even Floatzel and can rack up some serious damage when deployed correctly. Even if you don’t have a specific form of energy acceleration, this attack shouldn’t be taken lightly. As seen in Yanmega/Magnzone, you will only need to use Magnezone to clear up the field when you’ve gone aggro Yanmega in the early stages. This means that the focus isn’t really on getting Lost Burn every turn, but having placed your energy wisely and be able to use it later on in the game.

Overall, this Pokemon is a huge asset in any deck that can fit it in with its extremely useful Poke Power and really powerful attack. It isn’t for every deck though, so make sure it fits before making it a mandatory inclusion. I’m going to give Magnezone an extremely nice 9/10. It just has all the credentials to make a top tier Pokemon and it has proved itself in not only the US National Championships, but the 2011 World Championships as well.

Artwork: I’m going to be honest with you, Magnezone is not a good looking Pokemon and there’s only so much you can do as an artist to make a giant ball of metal look menacing. However, I do think that the artist has done a fairly good job here. The angle of the Pokemon is different, but in a good way and has made Magnezone look like it’s ready to tear up anything in its way, which is further enhanced by the great holographic highlights of Prime cards. Also, the background actually really suits the card since it looks as though the Lost Zone is following him, just waiting for him to throw those energy into the darkness for some huge damage. I’m going to give the artwork a nice 7/10. Not much you can do with a Magnezone, but they really did pull it off nicely.

Thanks for reading today’s Card of the Day and tomorrow’s Pokemon is going to be the first of the cards from Emerging Powers! Comment