COTD – 1st September 2011 – Blissey Prime

Happy first day of the new month everyone! Today’s first Card of the Day for September is Blissey Prime from the HeartGold SoulSilver Base Set.

At first glance, Blissey is a Stage 1 Colourless Pokemon with 130HP, weakness to Fighting along with a single PokePower and attack. The stats are actually sounding quite good at the moment. 130HP is very nice for a Stage 1 and matches the likes of Beartic and the 2 retreat cost is manageable with cards like Double Colourless if it ever reaches the active spot.

Let’s look at Blissey’s attack first. ‘Strength’, a HM from the video game if I remember correctly, does a straight 60 damage for a cost of 3 Colourless Energy. This is actually pretty bad considering it has no after effect and rival cards such as Donphan and Kingdra can do the same damage for just a single energy, making it even worse of an attack. I suppose it could have been good if we still saw some predominant Colourless weakness around, but we really don’t have much of that at all at the moment so it can’t even be used effectively in that department.

So what makes this card worthy of being included in a deck that went to 2nd at Worlds this year? The answer is in the PokePower.

‘Blissful Nurse’ activates when you play Blissey from your hand and onto your bench, via evolving of course, and it allows you to remove all damage counters from all Pokemon on your side of the field in exchange for discarding the energy attached to those Pokemon that you healed. Now this is actually a pretty nice power to have and can reset your opponent’s efforts to KO your Pokemon and force them to start again, which is going to be frustrating, let’s be honest here. Where this card worked so well in Ross’ deck is that it could choose which Pokemon to remove the damage from, saving that crucial energy that people run very little of at the moment. By using ‘Damage Swap’ via Reuniclus, the player can move damage onto big attackers like Zekrom and other bench sitters that don’t have energy, use Blissful Nurse to heal all damage, but keep the energy. It’s kind of like dodging a bullet that is the downside of Blissey’s PokePower.

Unfortunately, it looks like the power of Blissey’s Poke Power has been short-lived since a trainer that has just come out in the newest set, Emerging Powers, mimics this Power to some extent. Max Potion allows you to do exactly the same as Blissey’s Poke Power, but only on a single Pokemon at a time, giving you a little bit more control over who you want to heal as well as saving Pokemon space in your deck. Blissey’s advantage is that it can be used when under trainer lock, which is becoming a lot more apparent in the format right now, but Max Potion is going to outshine it in every other way.

Overall, Blissey has a very nice PokePower which can still be used post-Emerging Powers, but it will see a further decrease in play since Max Potion has wrecked the party. Max Potion can be reused in a sinch with the likes of Junk Arm whereas Blissey needs to be picked up with Seeker or Super Scoop Up and then placed back down again the turn after to heal, not really the best situation to put yourself in. Pair that with Blissey’s 2 retreat cost with Catcher around now and you may be putting yourself at more of a disadvantage than you think you were by playing it in the first place. I’m going to give Blissey a fair 4/10. It does have VERY limited use right now, but I think Blissey’s days are numbered in the competitive world.

Artwork: As for artwork, the Primes always look pretty nice with their close up to the face and that feature enhancing glimmer on their face to make them look even more aggressive. Now before this image, Blissey always came across as a peace-loving kind of guy, but this image portrays her in a completely different light. The frown is on and Blissey is showing some intense anger here, showing us a little bit of her dark side which I actually really like. Pair that with the gloomy, black background and you have a Pokemon that looks nice, but can turn on the nasty when called upon. I’m going to give it a very nice 7/10. The artist has taken a traditionally ‘nice’ Pokemon and put a very interesting spin on it for the competitive Pokemon TCG players out there which I happen to find makes it a great piece of art for the card.

Thanks for reading today’s Card of the Day and please rate the card yourself by using the NEW star system below! Thanks to all of you that vote and I’ll see you tomorrow!