Hey COTD fans, today I’ll be reviewing Jumpluff from HeartGold SoulSilver. Jumpluff was released last year and took the TCG world by storm, earning many tournament wins in its name, including the Junior Division at the World Championships. However, that was last format, where we had Claydol GE and Night Maintenance. Now, even though Jumpluff is still in the format, it lost a core component from its deck, making it drop from Tier 1 to Tier 4.
Before we get any further, let’s start with the basics of the card. Jumpluff is a Stage 2 Pokemon with a terrible 90 HP, but the nice advantage of being Grass, since it can use Cherrim, Sunflora, and all of the other Grass support out there. Jumpluff has a x2 weakness to Fire, meaning Blaziken FB LV.X will OHKO you. However, if you have another ‘Pluff set up, you should be able to get the revenge KO rather easily. The -20 Fighting resistance is nice, giving it some protection against both Machamps, Donphan and Promocroak. The Free retreat cost was always good and only gets better.
Its first attack, “Mass Attack”, for the excellent cost of G will do 10 damage times the number of Pokemon in play. The power of this attack relies on you filling your bench to make sure you’re hitting for a minimum of 70 per turn. However, they will typically have enough benched Pokemon to boost your attacking power to over 100. This is all for one Grass Energy, which is beyond amazing.
Jumpluff’s second attack, “Leaf Guard”, for the cost of G does 30 damage and reduces all damage done to it by 30 next turn. Not bad if you used “Mass Attack” last turn and were just short of the KO or if you’re playing against Donphan. Factoring in resistance, you’d be reducing their damage by 50. However, you’ll typically be using the first attack.
Overall, Jumpluff is an amazing card that probably won’t get its chance to shine this format because the support cards just aren’t there. I’m sure that there’s some build that uses 2-2 or 3-3 Sunflora with Unown R’s and perhaps Shaymin LV.X to make Jumpluff a bit slower, but perhaps a bit more sturdy at 130 HP so you wont’ be OHKO’ed by anything other than Blaziken FB. We shall see.
Recommendation Try it out, see how it works and really utilize that grass support and I recommend trying out Shaymin LV.X.
Rating 3.25/5 (Good card that can hopefully make a comeback to at least tier 2 again.)
