COTD – 25th August 2011 – Beartic EP

Another look into the not so distant future with today’s choice and I’m going to be analysing one of the most hyped Pokemon from Emerging Powers, Beartic.

At first glance, this is a Stage 1 Water type with a rather large 130HP, two attacks, a relatively unheard of weakness to Metal and a pretty heavy three retreat cost. So things don’t sound too interesting yet. Each attack has a fairly high cost and it has a pretty high retreat cost for a Pokemon being introduced at the same time as Pokemon Catcher.

Beartic’s second attack is called ‘Icicle Crash’ and costs two Water Energy plus a Double Colourless to do 80 damage with the added effect that the damage isn’t affected by resistance. Now this attack really isn’t anything special since it has a huge attack cost taking at least 3 turns to set up (with something like Feraligatr Prime) and only does 80 damage. This does OHKO a Donphan, but I’m pretty sure a Donphan will have dealt with Beartic before it has the chance to even have the option to KO it. So what is all this hype about then? Let’s have a look at the first attack on the card.

‘Sheer Cold’ is the attack that’s getting a whole load of attention right now, costing a Water and a Double Colourless to deal 50 damage. The small print is what this attack is all about since it adds the effect that the defending Pokemon cannot attack next turn. This doesn’t actually sound too strong by itself, as cards like Switch can easily help the opponent to break this small lock as well as powerful cards like Yanmega having free retreat anyway. So a Pokemon to add to this lock is Vileplume.

Vileplume from HS: Undaunted blocks any player from playing trainers, as I’m sure you all know, which is going to bring the amount of options to break this lock right down to one, having free/manual retreat. Since Beartic will be stopping the active from attacking and there being no way out apart from retreating, we could be looking at a fairly decent lock here, but I’m going to have to stop the hype train here.

I actually feel that Beartic isn’t going to have a huge impact on the format. First off, you need the cost for it’s attack which is clearly outsped by the likes of Yanmega, Kingdra and Donphan to name a few and the first on that list, Yanemga, has free retreat anyway so it can just skip out of the lock when it pleases. Where the Vileplume variant is going wrong is that they are blocking themselves from choosing which Pokemon to lock with cards like Catcher and instead giving the opponent a free choice of what they want in the active spot.

I personally feel that Beartic would be best paired without trainer lock and with a more Catcher based engine. This way, you could bring up fresh Magnezones with no energy attached and lock them in place. Now I can already here you saying ‘What about Switch?!’, but there really isn’t a lot of Switch around at the moment. Most Yanmega/Magnezone players will only run one with max Junk Arm meaning that they are going to have to burn a lot of resources to keep dragging that Magnezone from the active spot. However, this style of Beartic is also going to have issues, simply because the damage output isn’t that great.

Another effective counter to Beartic is Zoroark, since it can copy Sheer Cold with its ‘Foul Play’ attack and lock the player actually playing the lock deck. I’m not sure how the player could get out of this other than manually retreating a massive 3 retreat cost Pokemon since they won’t have access to Switch and that really isn’t going to be ideal.

Overall, this Pokemon has been hyped way too much and people just aren’t looking at the downsides of the card. I’m almost certain that it will see some form of play in the competitive world, but the most popular card at the moment, Yanmega Prime, really is this deck’s downfall. I’m going to give it an average 5/10. Has potential, but is it just too easy to get around?

Artwork: This huge, icy bear is looking fairly aggressive in this card art, but I’m sure I’ve seen this picture somewhere before. I’m not a huge fan of when the creators of the cards just pull a stock image of a Pokemon into the box and place a holo background behind it. Where’s the creativity?! Other than this small gripe, I guess I can’t really complain. He’s looking aggressive and those ice particles in the background really do make him look that bit more menacing, other than that, it’s just a simple artwork. I’m going to give it a rather boring 4/10. Move along, nothing new to see here..

Thanks for reading today’s card and please comment below what you think