COTD – 8th August 2011 – Victreebel TM

Hey everybody, my choice for today’s Card of the Day is Victreebel from the HS: Triumphant set.

At first glance, Victreebel is a Stage 2 Grass type with 110HP, a Poke Body and single attack. The fire weakness is going to be a definite issue in this kind of format, but I think the attack and Poke Body definitely need some looking at.

‘Tangling Tendrils’ is not only hard to say, but it can also cause some real trouble for your opponent, sticking them in a form of lock nothing else has outside of an attack. What this Poke Body does is that when Victreebel is active, the opponent’s retreat cost is made 2 more than it originally was. In a format dominated by Yanmega, you can see why this can be such a great asset. It completely takes away their free retreat and hardly any decks run Switch now to get out of it, but for those that do there is another solution that I can get onto later. Not only is this good against free retreaters, but it is also great at giving Reshiram and Zekrom four retreat cost, making it almost impossible for them to retreat and when we go to the extremes, Donphan will carry a hefty SIX retreat cost when facing this Pokemon.

Victreebel’s only attack is pretty good too, for a Grass and a Colourless, you are doing 30 damage, which is pretty bad compared to the likes of Tyrogue, but the small print makes up for that cost. When you initiate this attack, the defending Pokemon is also Burned and Poisoned on top of the 30 damage it took. To make things even better, you then get to heal 30 damage from Victreebel each time you use the attack. So not only are you making the game tough for your opponent, but you are making their chances of KOing Victreebel even harder too.

A very viable use for this Pokemon is with Vileplume. I’ve actually tried this out and it is a great rogue concept that some of you could try out at your league or something. It focuses on making the opponent’s retreat cost much higher and then locking their only feasible means of retreat, Switch, from being played. While doing this, you are also locking them from using their set up trainers while you are attacking and healing with Victreebel’s Acidic Drain. This will be a very fun deck to try and isn’t actually that bad.

Overall, Victreebel is a very interesting Pokemon that could see some play in the competitive world without it being completely trampled on. The attacks and Poke Body are decent, but does the Fire weakness hurt its playability just that little too much? I’m going to give it a solid 6/10. Great league card.

Artwork: The artwork on this one isn’t too great to be honest. We are bombarded with a merge of different greens filling the entire image and the Pokemon itself is in a very sketchy kind of style. The leaf stone in the bottom left hand corner is a very nice touch and links the TCG to the Video Game, but the way Victreebel is positioned just looks a little awkward to me. I’m going to give it a 4/10. Not the best to look at, but one that has some nice little touches here and there. The overall cabbage-esque colour scheme for this one is just a little too overpowering.

I hope you enjoyed today’s Card of the Day and please comment below what you think