Audino (Emerging Power EP 83) – Card of the Day

Written by | August 29, 2011 | 34 comments | 928 views | Rating: +4

Hey guys, Captain here with another Card of the Day. This one has been requested in the request thread, and a few people on the forums have been giving it a bit of hype. It’s Audino from our newest set, Emerging Powers.

As I just said, the card has been receiving a bit of hype but I can’t imagine why. It’s a Colorless Basic with a fair 90 HP, awful Fighting weakness, the fairly standard no resistance, and a rather hefty retreat cost of 2. So far, things aren’t looking too great.

It has two attacks and the first is the one that’s been receiving hype. It’s called Powerful Slap and requires you to flip a coin for every energy (note that this is “energy” and not “energy cards”) attached to it. For each heads, you deal 40 damage.

This means that it could technically one-shot anything in the format. Combined with DCE, Pachirisu, and Shaymin, it can even deal massive Turn-1 damage, possibly donking. There are a few problems with all this, though.

1. Audino requires a very large energy investment. Even when “Fliptini” is around, it will still be risky. Reshiram and Zekrom can deal 120 damage for 3 energy. Audino is less bulky and averages 6 energy needed to do that. Then what happens when Audino gets discarded? You lose a lot of energy, that’s what. Even if you have acceleration (really just Emboar and Pachirisu), you’ll still need to recover your energy, which requires cards like Energy Retrieval and Fisherman, which take up valuable deck space.

2. Audino will get steamrolled by Zekrom, Reshiram, and especially Donphan. The fact is, all of those Pokemon are bulkier, generally hit harder, and have notable type advantages (not quite as much for Reshiram, though that nerfs Kingdra), so they also happen to be better plays for the most part.

3. Audino’s Turn-1 potential damage is a 160 and that’s with perfect flips (Double Colorless Energy + 2 energy on Pachirisu + Shaymin to move those energy around). Zekrom runs on the same engine and would hit a consistent 120. The self-damage Zekrom would take is irrelevant in this comparison because Zekrom would end with 90 HP- the same HP that Audino has when fully healed.

4. There’s always a chance that you will get very unlucky and deal very low damage despite having a lot of energy on Audino.

Anyways, the other attack is called Heal Pulse and heals 50 damage off any of your Pokemon for the cost of CCC. Honestly, this is very mediocre as there are plenty of better ways to heal, but this attack has been mostly ignored anyway.

So overall, Audino is not too good. The only potential I really see in it would be as a finisher in Reshiram variants, but Magcargo already does a good job of that even though it’s a stage 1 (and even then you’re taking a risk with Audino). Basically, I can only see this card being useful in Prereleases, as it’s simply outclassed and has only decent recovery once a large amount of energy is discarded. So for these reasons, I give it a 1 out of 5.

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  • Anonymous

    Junk Arm + Jiraci + Pachirisu + Shaymin + DCE. Yep, not likely but possible so the “cap” of 160 is actually incorrect :p

    Seriously though, how many other pokemon can hit 80 on T1 for a single energy? With Fliptini you have (i think) roughly a 43% chance of hitting 80 damage. Not to mention that if you win the flip you’ll usually get 2 attacks before your opponent can evolve or attack.

    Not amazing but worth more than 1/5.

    • Anonymous

      D’oh! I seem to have overlooked that. Still hard to pull off, though, but I imagine it would be a fun league deck.

  • Anonymous

    Even though I think the minor hype around this card is completely unjustified, it’s not complete rubbish.

    1/5 is a bit harsh . . . maybe 2 would be better. The donking possibilites are enough to save it from the worst possible score.

    • Anonymous

      Maybe it’s because I use a different scale; I believe in 0 out of 5.

  • Anonymous

    fun deck when paired with emboar and once fliptini comes out

  • Anonymous

    sounds like its more like a tech in an Emboar deck for something like RDL or another good colorless weak pokemon.

    • Anonymous

      audino would be better with emboar.

  • Anonymous

    Start T1 with audino 4 lightning energy, dual ball, Juniper. Draw double colorless. Dual Ball 2 heads for 2 pachirisu. Play two Pachirisu and the 4 lightning energy onto them. Attach double colorless to audino and juniper. Get 1 shaymin, 1 dual ball, 4 lightning energy, and lets say pluspower. Dual ball two heads, get two pachirisu, play both pachirisu’s with self generation to play 4 more lightning energies. Play shaymin and move all 8 lightning energies to audino who has a double colorless. play plus power and you can now do a maximum of 410 Damage. not 160. Is it likely for all this to happen? no. Can it still kill a reshiram on t1 with three heads and a pluspower? absolutely.

    • http://twitter.com/arcv2 Mac Crowley

      this is epicly improbable sounds fun 

    • Alex Flamm

      I love you

      • Anonymous

        i love you too

    • Anonymous

      May I say that, that stratergy revolves 14 coin flips for the duel balls and the attack and in the end that is a 1 in 16384 chance you could pull that off, heck if you flip 4 coins the odds of getting 120 damage in 1 in 16 assuming you get a set up of 4 energy, now assuming the same set up for Zekrom you can get 120 damage without a risk of flips and while it loses health it goes to 90 hp which might I add is the same as Audino.  SEE ANY PROBLEMS!

      • Anonymous

        umm.. thats not the strategy of the deck. was just making a point about max damage. also to do 120 + you only need a minimum of 3 heads which would be 1/8  going for 4 heads would be 1/16 if you are going for either 3 heads or 4 heads you can get a 3/16 chance And this is only by attaching the 4 energy which you can probably exceed. the point is that it is not the best card in the word but i am so tired of looking at these card reviews and reading “it’s not zekrom or reshiram so it is less than mediocre” if the people who write these articles do not go through their past Card of the Days and look at the ratings they have given cards in the past they really should. According to Captain X cubone is a 2/5 but this isn’t. Don’t even get me started about the first tornadus article lol.

      • Anonymous

        The thing is these card of the days are for compeditive play and not “have fun at league with” reviews.  The fact is Audino is bad for competitive play and deserves a low score.  And there are fun techs which are good and get good reviews, to list a few weavile UD, Slowking HGSS/CoL, Roserade UL and Magcargo UD.  These cards get good reviews because they fulfill tasks which can’t be done by standard metagame cards.  Weavile discards a chosen card from the opponents hand, Slowking Lets you sort out your opponents top decks, Roserade puts status on opponents by placing energy and Macargo has a high damage output to make up for reshirams 120 cap.  But why is Audino not getting high reviews like these cards.  Because what people want it to do is already done by metagame cards like Zekrom and the point of this is to help direct new players that there are better pokemon for the job.  Good on Captain X for doing a correct review.

  • Anonymous

    I just don’t understand people who thumbs down any more…

    • Anonymous

      You’re just being nice.

      I think we all understand them only too well.

  • Anonymous

    I’m tired of seeing cards get the lowest possible score because it’s not “top tier” and doesn’t compare to the likes of “Reshiram and Zekrom”

    It’s an interesting card with niche potential in a few builds. It’s not going to win world’s but someone on a limited budget trying to make a deck for league can definitely find the potential in this card. It’s still a 90hp basic and has a huge damage potential. That alone brings it out of the “worst possible cards in the format” rating.

    Disliked

  • John DiCarlo

    All I can say is that this was a good card at the prerelease

  • Anonymous

    Great article Captain X.  I have to agree with you, after testing it is a mediocre card,  While yes you can turn 1 lots of damage, it is so much “if this happens and if that happens then it will do this”  All this kind of theorymon is stupid because you got to look at the odds and odds are you won’t get half the stuff you need for it to work unless you are running a deck which is based solely on Audino and the fact is that it would be aweful, and as a tech there is no way it will work.  CONSISTENCY MATTERS people!

    • Anonymous

      mediocre means average. the average of 5 is 3. not 1.

      • Anonymous

        My personal scale:
        5 = excellent
        4 = very good
        3 = good (there’s a little gray area for me from 2 to 3)
        2 = mediocre
        1 = bad
        0 = awful

        Maybe my rating was a bit harsh; that’s actually my least favorite part of making these reviews. I still think the card isn’t good, though.

      • Anonymous

        It might be a 1.5 but actually mediocre was the wrong word to describe it.  It is bad, I like running techs to fill a void of some sort (example samurott or yanmega for the donphan counter in zekrom decks) but audino does none of that.  People who say it is there for early game damage are silly, The fact is to get it in the active takes a lot of resources or space and then to add the energy makes it even more useless.  People have been saying reshiram decks could use it for early game damage, but that is stupid because it needs a tight list to be consistent.  You want to throw in Megazone, bad idea you need that energy to power up magnezones attacks rather than risking it with a 90HP basic which could in the end not do any damage.  If you want a 90HP colorless basic, throw in a bouffalant.  It allows for revenge killing zekroms if your deck has trouble with them.  This is a bad card, no way around it.  DON’T PLAY IT, unless you like losing consistency and wasting energy on needless risks!

      • Anonymous

        So yes I agree with you Captain X, excellent, detailed review =D

  • Anonymous

    htis card could be potentionally a good tech in cincinno decks its a great starter being a basic with 90 hp and a easily possible t1 damage output of 80 its not perfect but its not a bad card especially for prerealeases i got second with it being virtually the best card in my deck
     

  • Anonymous

    Well, this article isn’t really a -7 article so I’ll give it a thumbs up

    tbh I agree with everything here, you have to commit so many resources to something that could just flip tails and it’s just not worth it.

  • Anonymous

    I thought of Audino Emboar, that would rock. Just don’t like audino as a pokemon, it’s not fun playing a puny basic as an attacker, it just seems wimpy.

    • Anonymous

      when you look at it that way, Zekrom could be a puny basic.

  • Anonymous

    This article definitely doesn’t deserve to be in the red (liked). I think this card should not be played by anyone. The only redeeming value it has is that it is not rare (like tropius…)

  • Anonymous

    thanks for writing that lots of people hyped it and there was no point you probably will stop that

  • Anonymous

    A good in-depth review. Perhaps a bit low, but certainly not deserving of any more than a 1.5.. give him a break

  • Anonymous

    Your opponent mulligans many times

    First turn

    attach dce 
    junk arm and sages all energy (11 in discard)

    play 4 jirachi and get all heads for 11 energy back
    play shamin and move all the energy onto audino then scoop up 4 times on all 4 jirachi
    Play 3 pachirisu with 6 energy (1 bench space open) and move all 6 with a second shaymin

    Thats a dce, plus 11 psychic, plus 6 electric on first turn. 

    You DID say ‘potential’ damage T1…

    • Anonymous

      may as well make it 12 psychic then.

      and that would make it 800 damage.

      and that, my friends, is something that would OHKO Donphan with no specific energy requirements

      not that I’d recommend it.

  • Anonymous

    I like how the rating of this article fluctuated from -7 to +1 over the course of about a day.

  • http://twitter.com/arcv2 Mac Crowley

    Might I say that these should stop including a rating and just give a closing recommendation stop most of these arbitrary arguments.