COTD – 17th September 2011 – Gothitelle EP

I’m back from my weeks break and I’m back to writing COTDs for you. Thanks a ton to all of you that wrote article for me and sent me them, they were all great and hard to choose from. For those of you that did write and got published, I will have something prepared for you later on in the week for your efforts ;) In the meantime, here is today’s COTD, Gothitelle from the BW: Emerging Powers set.

At first glance we have a Stage 2, Psychic type Pokemon with 130HP, a single Ability and a lone attack. Now these stats sound quite average at first, but with Battle Roads starting as we speak, this Pokemon has been featured in a deck that has been getting a lot of hype at the moment and let’s find out why.

Let’s start with the Ability named ‘Magic Room’. This Ability states that while Gothitelle is in your active spot, your opponent cannot play any Trainer cards from his or her hand, which means that this is the second Pokemon to be able to provide Trainer-lock in the form of an Ability/Poke Body. What separates this Pokemon from the likes of Vileplume is that it blocks the opponent from playing trainers, but you are free to play as many trainers as you like including all the big ones right now like Rare Candy, Pokemon Communication and Pokemon Catcher. This means that you are able to carry on setting up your entire field as quickly or as slowly as you like while your opponent sits there not being able to use their resources.

This kind of lock is obviously going to hurt the opponent a ton while you can freely play your game as normal, which is a definite upside from Vileplume, but the difference is that Vileplume can happily sit there on the bench whilst Gothitelle must be active. This means we need Gothitelle to stay alive as long as possible to be effective and that is where Reuniclus paired with this card in a deck comes in.

The basic idea of the deck is that Gothitelle stays active, sits there locking the opponent and since it has the magic HP of 130, not much is going to be able to OHKO it effectively under the lock. That means that Reuniclus can play a part in moving the damage the opponent is trying to pile onto Gothitelle and remove it from play by using cards such as Max Potion, Seeker and even through Blissey Prime’s Poke Power. This deck has been getting a lot of hype and does make quite the effective lock deck in this format, but it does have its weak points. Why not try it out for yourself?

Back to the card and we have an attack to look at called ‘Madkinesis’. This attack costs 3 Colourless energy, which is obviously compatible with Double Colourless, and does 30 base damage. The small print tells us that for each Psychic energy attached to Gothitelle, the attack does an extra 20 damage to the opponent. Now this attack isn’t actually that great, since it does a small amount of damage for the amount of energy required and is laughed at by passing Yanmegas. However, with the Trainer lock aspect included, the attack actually isn’t that slow. If you manage to get a Gothitelle into the active spot in the early game, your opponent should be locked down enough to have a pretty slow set up which means you can take advantage of your own attack being slow and power it up while they scrape together some form of field. With 3 Psychic energy attached, you will be doing a pretty nice 90 damage and with each one you attach, you should be taking down beefier Pokemon that get in your way. With Gothitelle locking and Reuniclus moving the damage away so your opponent can’t get KOs, you have a pretty solid attack that didn’t look too good at first.

So overall, this card looks pretty average when put by itself, but when paired with other cards in the format, you can generate quite an intricate strategy. I’m going to give it a very nice 8/10. A solid card that will be a big part of the Autumn Battle Roads tournaments starting this week.

Artwork: This card is another one where they have taken a stock image from the generic Pokemon artwork and stuck it onto a solid colour background with a holographic effect, so there won’t be too much to say about this one. I must admit, the Gothitelle is looking pretty pleased with itself that its blocking all your trainers, if going against it and makes you feel even more frustrated than you already will be when playing against the deck. However, as mentioned above, they didn’t put a whole load of effort into this one and I feel they could have done a lot with the background to fit in with the ‘gothic’ theme of this dark Pokemon. I’m going to give it a fairly average 5/10 the pose is pretty good, but the artist could have done so much more with this Pokemon.

Thanks for reading today’s COTD and as always, comment below and rate using the star system below!

Posted by at September 17, 2011
Filed in category: Card of the Day,