Cubone (Triumphant TM 60) – Card of the Day

pokebeach.comHey guys, Captain here with another Card of the Day (sure has been a while since I’ve written one of these)! So anyway, today’s card is Cubone from HS: Triumphant. This card came to my attention recently when I found out about a fun deck called “Cubone Rush”.

It’s actually a common card, and if you’ve opened any Triumphant packs then you’ve quite possibly gotten at least 1 but simply ignored it. Marowak is mostly known for being a cheap Lightning type counter if you can’t afford Donphan Prime. Oddly enough, Cubone probably has a lot more potential than Marowak.

Its stats are nothing special. 40 HP is low, water weakness isn’t too big of a deal, the lightning resistance is actually very nice, and 1 Retreat Cost is pretty standard and not too bad.

Its only attack, Bone Rush, costs 2 C energy (a bit unfortunate, though it can utilize Double Colorless Energy) and is one of those attacks that basically says “keep flipping coins until you flip tails”. In this case, you deal 20 damage for every heads.

Naturally, this makes it difficult to deal large amounts of damage, though you could supplement this with PlusPowers and the upcoming “flippy” Victini.

Right, but what’s the seller for this card? The attack is bad and so are most of its stats. However, there is one last thing: the Poké-body. It states that damage dealt to Cubone (after weakness and resistance) is reduced by 20 for each Marowak in the discard pile. Suddenly, you can take a wimpy little common from Triumphant and turn it into a tank.

Junk Armpokebeach.comIt shouldn’t be too hard to discard 3-4 Marowaks either, especially because of Junk Arm and Professor Juniper (maybe even Sage’s Training). The whole idea actually reminds me a bit of the Gyarados deck, where Gyarados would deal 30 damage for every Magikarp in the discard pile. It’s a shame Regice isn’t still around, but like I said, discarding a couple of Marowaks shouldn’t be too hard.

Anyway, if you successfully pull this off, you could have a Cubone that can prevent 80 damage per turn, and that’s not even counting Defender, resistance, or the upcoming Eviolite (which is a Tool that prevents 20 damage from a basic Pokémon). Seriously, with Defender and/or Eviolite, you could wall against a ton of powerful attackers in the format. And then with a single Potion, you can heal off all the damage on you!

I know I’m probably making Cubone sound like it’s actually really viable, but for the most part it’s not. It makes for a really fun deck as well as an interesting idea, but the damage output is too low for it to be particularly effective.

Don’t expect to win Cubone to win you any tournaments, but it can actually be a surprisingly effective counter to Yanmega/Magnezone or even MagneBoar. However it will get a lot stronger once Emerging Powers is released, and can be a very fun league deck (as well as being very cheap).

So overall I’d give Cubone a 2 out of 5. The damage output is low enough to where you can let a lot of decks set up without much of a hassle, though Cubone can tank damage pretty well. Like I said, don’t expect to win any tournaments with it, but you can definitely mess with some MegaZone players.

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Reader Interactions

7 replies

  1. aura

    FIRST!!! I actually came up with this a while ago, but only had 1 Marowak. So I made Sneasel :P

  2. Sam Stevens

    Evolite+Defender+4 discarded Marowaks=120 damage nullified… with 4 Cubone+Revive+FSL you can have a continual wall set up to use Pokemon like Grunbull with “Timid Tackle” (or another switch out after attacking Pokemon) and hide behind Cubone (Pokemon Catcher makes this more difficult however)

    • Mekkah  → Sam

      Ferrothorn (Gyro Ball) / Dodrio (Retreat Aid) / Cubone, yeah! And if you’re afraid of Catcher you can always add Vileplume or Gothitelle to make the deck even more clunky!

  3. J Humphrey

    I just got a TM box and pulled like 4 reverse holo of these

  4. Travis Yeary

    There’s an awesome dude at my league that specializes on decks like this. He built a good one around Cubone, and I play it alot. I play reshiboar, and when this deck gets set up, it’s actually very hard to leave damage on the Cubones. He tested Eviolite in the deck, and I just couldn’t touch him. Really fun deck to play.

  5. Travis Yeary

    There’s an awesome dude at my league that specializes on decks like this. He built a good one around Cubone, and I play it alot. I play reshiboar, and when this deck gets set up, it’s actually very hard to leave damage on the Cubones. He tested Eviolite in the deck, and I just couldn’t touch him. Really fun deck to play.

  6. Edgar F

    Emerging Powers won’t be helping Cubone very much, as Eviolite is very unlikely to be in it.

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