What’s up 6p community? Today, I’m reviewing the new Nidoking from Triumphant. When you first glance at this card, you can tell it was meant to be a tank. I’ll get to my reasoning for that in a second, but let’s first start with the basics of the card.
Nidoking is a stage 2 Pokemon with a nice 140 HP. Being Fighting is pretty good, being able to hit Luxray GL for weakness, the Water weakness isn’t terrible now, but could become much worse depending on what happens with Gyarados. The Lightning resistance is nice (as you reduce damage from Luxray GL) and the three retreat cost is expected, but it still stings.
Nidoking’s Poke-Body “Pheromone Stamina” states that this beast gains +20 HP for each Nidoqueen in play. Obviously, you can have a bit of a tank with just one Nidoqueen RR in play, 160 HP and healing for 10 between turns, imagine having 3 Nidoqueen and an Expert Belt in play, that’s 220 HP and healing. THAT is a tank.
There are a few issues with that idea, however. First of all, it requires you to get 4 stage 2 Pokemon in play and with the loss of Claydol, will be very difficult. Second of all, Dialga G LV.X will shut off Nidoking’s Poke-Body as well as Nidoqueen’s, meaning you loose the monster HP and healing.
Is his attack good enough to make up for that? Well, sorta. “Venomous Horn” for the huge cost of FFCC (not quite as huge with DCE) does 80 and poison. Normally, I wouldn’t say this is great, and it isn’t. However, with Expert Belt, you’re hitting for 100 and Poison, which is the magic number to OHKO Garchomp C LV.X, Blaziken FB LV.X and Luxray GL LV.X.
In addition, since you’re only doing 100 + 10 from the poison, you can successfully avoid Gengar’s “Fainting Spell” . Again, there is a problem with that, Trainer Lock will lock Expert Belt. If you cannot avoid “Fainting Spell”, there’s a 50% chance you could loose Nidoking. If you loose the tank in a tank deck, you usually loose the match as well.
Overall, it’s a good card that could have been awesome, but Nidoking just has some huge problems (Set up speed, Dialga G, Fainting spell) that stop it from being a viable deck. Perhaps next year, when both Dialga G and Gengar are (hopefully) out of the format and we get another draw/search engine at least somewhat close to Claydol’s power, but until then…
Rating: 2.5/5
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