Happy New Year 6P! Today for your COTD I will be reviewing Spoink TM. No, this isn’t a so called “joke article.” These are my actual thoughts on a very overlooked card from TM.
Let’s start with the basics. Spoink TM is a basic Pokemon, has a times two weakness to Psychic, no resistance, one retreat cost and 50 HP. At this moment, Spoink isn’t looking like a very good card. Its weakness will put it in range to be donked by the most popular card in the format: Uxie. 50 HP is yet another reason to trash it, allowing it to be “Sabeldonked” or “Chompdonked”
Spoink’s attack, “Sleep Pearl” is where it is severely underrated. “Sleep Pearl” puts the defending Pokemon to sleep and then requires you to switch Spoink with one of your benched Pokemon. The attack costs merely a Psychic energy, so it can start working T1.
Here is why I think “Sleep Pearl” could be a good enough attack to make a deck around. If you use “Sleep Pearl” to switch to one of your benched Pokemon such as Spiritomb AR, you can Trainer-lock your opponent to prevent them from using cards such as Poketurn or Warp Point and Deck lock them so they’ll draw garbage Via Chatot G.
Using Cyrus’s Initiative, you can get rid of key cards in your opponents hand, furthering the lock. To do actual damage, you can fill your bench with Darkrai G, putting damage on the sleeping Pokemon. While that Pokemon is asleep, they won’t be able to attack or retreat, letting you sit around and lock them till they wake up. You can even use Power Spray because of the Darkrai G and Chatot G filling your bench.
Problems the deck faces are Mewtwo LV.X, Machamp SF and Dialga G. Mewtwo and Machamp can both be easily countered by 1 card. Grumpig LA. It is an evolved Pokemon so will be able to attack Mewtwo LV.X and won’t be KO’d by Machamp SF’s “Take Out.”
Those two are both weak to Psychic, making it easier to remove them from the board. Dialga G is more of a problem as it shuts down all Poke-Bodies in the deck. A Blaziken FB LV.X can easily counter it.
While I believe Spoink will definitely be a fun League deck, I have a feeling it might even linger to the top tables of lower level tourneys. This is why I thought is good enough to do an analysis about.
DISCLAIMER: I am not claiming that I discovered this deck. Others have probably figured this out by now and may have even taken it to CC.
Rating: 3.1/5
