COTD – 4th September 2011 – Emboar BW

I was actually surprised that I hadn’t featured this card as a Card of the Day yet since it was a highly hyped card back when Black and White came out and it has recently won Worlds so today will be its day. Emboar with the ability from the Black and White Base Set is today’s Card of the Day.

At first glance, we have a Fire type Stage 2 with 150HP, an okay Water weakness, a single Ability and an attack. One thing you may notice is the massive 4 retreat cost, which isn’t going to hold well since Catcher has now been released in the format, but let’s see why else you should be thinking about this card in a competitive way.

First off, there’s Emboar’s attack ‘Heat Crash’ does 80 damage for an energy cost of two Fire and a Double Colourless. No you may be thinking that this is awful considering the likes of Yanmega can do this with a PlusPower for zero energy, but we’ll get to why it isn’t so bad next. There really isn’t anything else you can say about this attack since it has no small print and is just a mediocre attack. You don’t really want Emboar sitting there in the active spot attacking for that kind of damage with that huge retreat cost, but if the situation arises, it could be worse.

Let’s move onto why Emboar sits in our competitive world and we’ll be looking at its Ability. ‘Inferno Fandango’ allows you to attach as many Fire energy you like to any of your Pokemon on the field as long as Emboar is in play. Now this is actually incredible since it breaks the boundaries of Powers like Feraligatr Prime’s which only allows you to attach to Water Pokemon. This Ability can be used to attach to ANY Pokemon meaning that you can power up the most energy hungry of attacks in a single turn, as long as you’re using Fire energy of course.

What this means, is that attacks such as Heat Crash, mentioned above, Rayquaza/Deoxys Legend’s ‘Ozone Buster’ and Magnezone’s ‘Lost Burn’ can be powered up in a single turn to do some pretty incredible damage. However, Emboar does have some issues right now.

The first is that it is a Stage 2, not the easiest of Pokemon to get out efficiently unless, like the World Champion, you’re running a Twins engine. You really need to get this Pokemon going as soon as possible to get the most out of it and outspeed your opponent in terms of energy attachment while you can. What makes this harder is that most of the effective partners for Emboar appear to be Stage 2s as well or Legend cards which are both difficult to get out at the same time as Emboar. Getting yourself two Stage 2s out game after game is going to be difficult, even with a Twins engine and the next point makes it even harder.

Pokemon Catcher is now going to give Emboar a whole world of trouble. Not only can it drag up your unevolved Tepigs and Pignites to damage them of KO them early on, but it can even drag up your fully evolved Emboar into the active spot and keep it there with a maximum retreat cost. This means you either have to attach 4 energy to it to retreat, meaning a huge waste of resources, or have access to a card like Switch which is hard to have in hand at the right time. Catcher is also going to give your Emboar partners some issues since they need to be evolved before getting ‘catchered’ and then KO’d by any of those faster attackers such as Donphan and Yanmega.

So overall, Emboar has been hit pretty hard by the release of Pokemon Catcher. No longer can it sit there safely on the bench just allowing you to attach energy as freely as you like since it now becomes a sitting duck, just waiting to be stuck into the active spot. Nevertheless, Emboar’s Ability can’t go unnoticed since it does bring those heavy attackers into the competitive world. We haven’t seen the last of Emboar, but it will see a drop in tournament play. I’m going to give it a fairly average 5/10. The advantages are slowly getting outweighed by the disadvantages of this card.

Artwork: Yet again, we are faced with another stock image pasted onto a generic colour background with a few little details thrown in to make it look vaguely interesting. Here we have Emboar as we’ve all seen him before, but looking fairly relaxed, like he’s waiting for a train or something, not like he’s ready to rip apart the field. The colours work well and the fireballs are a fairly nice touch, but I’m not too big a fan of these ‘stock image cards’. I’m giving it a rather low 4/10. Let’s get more creative Pokemon

Thanks for reading today’s COTD and please use the star system below to vote for how well you think this card fits into competitive play!