COTD – 9th September 2011 – Jumpluff HS

Today’s Card of the Day is Jumpluff from Heart Gold Soul Silver. This card used to be a top tier contender back in the day, supported by the speed and consistency of the Uxie/Claydol draw engine, Jumpluff decks were fast, efficient and deadly. However, this season so far it has seen absolutely zero play with the majority of players passing off the card without testing based upon its low HP and its rather unfavourable Fire type weakness. I’m probably one of the few players that considers this card to still have potential in our current format and for this reason I chose this card for my Card of the Day article.

The card itself was released within our HGSS set so it has seen a good seasons worth of play already and should be recognisable by all of you for its role in one of the past top tier decks.

To begin with I will elaborate on the finer points of this card. It has two very versatile and accessible attacks that only require a mere single Grass energy to use. The fact that the energy requirement is the same for both attacks allows for choice between the two straight away dependant upon the game situation which is itself very useful. ‘Leaf Guard’ does a respectable 30 damage for one energy with the bonus of reducing 30 damage done to Jumpluff during your opponents next turn. While 30 HP is not going to OHKO anything except from the odd Cleffa, it can allow in a range of situations to bring the 2HKO within range while protecting your Jumpluff from being OHKO’ed itself. ‘Mass Attack’ is the true attraction of this card however. Similarly to Cinccino’s ‘Do The Wave’ attack, it does 10 damage for every pokemon in play (both yours and your opponent’s) and therefore has the potential to do anywhere between 20-120 damage. 120 damage can OHKO a lot of things in this format, but for those pesky Pokemon that have 130 or more, the card can be paired with PlusPowers or Black Belts and it may even have the option to Leaf Guard first. Mass Attack is simply an evil attack. It puts your opponent in the situation where they either have to sacrifice their own set-up to a certain extent to reduce the damage, or set up fully but endure the consistent high damage output as a result. When paired with Pichu and its ‘Playground’ attack, you can sometimes encourage your opponent to fill their bench before they realise that you are playing Jumpluff <insert evil face>

Other finer points of the card include its -20 resistance to Fighting types, meaning a Donphan has to 3HKO a Jumpluff when using Earthquake. Furthermore, free retreat is extremely valuable within this format and I cannot stress this enough. Pokemon Catcher becomes slightly less of a threat with free retreat, status conditions become irrelevant and Beartic players weep when you retreat constantly to exploit their main weakness.

Obviously though, this card is far from perfect and it does have its downfalls. Originating from a pathetic 30HP Hoppip, professing to a 60HP Skiploom and then to only ever peak at a 90HP Jumpluff is quite a fragile Pokemon line to run.  Low HP for a stage 2 is a slight problem within this format where there are basic Pokemon that have 130HP. Actually low HP is a problem full stop these days because there is far too much sniping ability, type weakness advantages and hard hitting Pokemon in this format  for the weaklings to be safe.

Jumpluff used to be good for its swarming ability to consistently spawn out Jumpluffs so that your opponent had a hard time keeping up. It doesn’t have that level of speed anymore but there are very few cards that actually do these days. Stage 2s have been successful so far but there is no doubt that running Stage 2s are going to demand the kind of build that consistently allows you to set up within a reasonable time frame.

Despite this there are certain ways around this that could make Jumpluff viable. Pokemon Catcher is a constant threat to anything that you bench and the only way to consistently avoid this is to run a trainer lock based deck or a Vileplume tech. Not only does this protect your bench, it also slows down your opponent considerably meaning that this formats slower version of Jumpluff can set up just as fast as your opponent can. Consider running cards along the lines of Sunflora , Twins, Black Belts and Rescue energy to improve your set up and recovery. Slowing your opponent down is key to success with Jumpluff as is building your deck around the cards weaknesses. That 30 HP Hoppip might not be missed too much when it allows you to OHKO with Black Belt next turn or get those key cards that you desperately need with Twins.

Jumpluff also has its place within Mew based decks for exploitation of its ‘Mass Attack’ but I also think that it could have some potential when paired with cards like Vileplume, Yanmega and Sunflora. Perhaps it won’t be tier one, but it could be right up within tier two and depending upon your metagame it could be a fairly good play.

As for the art work, it’s nothing special. Jumpluff does look like a rogue piece of pollen with a face so it would be hard to make this look good in any kind of card art work. I would give this card probably 6/10 for its artwork.

Overall I would give this card:

8/10 as a card, but 6.5/10 in HGSS-on.

Remember to vote below on how you feel this card fits into the competitive environment with the star rating system