Nidoqueen RR, a very sought after card especially during the RR Pre-release, became the topic of discussion to be included in many decks. It’s Poke-Body, Maternal Comfort, removes 1 damage counter from each of your Pokémon, between turns.
Nidoqueen has become a favorite tech in many people’s decks. Such a favorite that many people have retorted to teching in Dialga G LV.X to stop Nidoqueen’s body from working. Since it has 120 hp, bench sniping it will be hard to do unless heavy damage can be applied. Healing in between turns is amazing, if your active Pokémon took heavy damage, it can be retreated to the bench and receive small healing as time goes by, and also gives your main attackers more of a “tank” ability. And most people play Pokémon with low retreat cost so running to the safety of the bench can help heal those battle wounds. Pokémon with fairly low hp can last longer and deal heavier damage before getting KO’d or even saved by retreating to the bench. Also, Nidoqueen puts a stop to a lot of decks that spread damage around, for all of your Pokémon have already healed 20 damage by the time your turn rolls around again. Basically, there are no clauses, the Body goes into effect the moment Nidoqueen is played and from then on, until it is KO’d or Body Locked by Dialga G LV.X.
There are only 2 problems that I see with Nidoqueen. Nidoqueen is a stage 2 Pokémon so Rare Candies are needed. Also, Nidoqueen has a 3 energy retreat cost, so in the unfortunate event your Nidoqueen is pulled out, unless you have a switch or a warp point, your Nidoqueen is going to stay there for a while. However, she is a fairly decent attacker, 40 damage for 1 psychic energy can help you at least damage the opponent while stalling/tanking and healing yourself. Ruthless Tail costs 3 energy, but with the majority of bench filling decks out there, an upper energy can help Nidoqueen do heavy damage for 2 if you are lagging behind. I would most likely play either a 2-1-2 line or a 1-0-1 line in any deck that uses Rare Candy. A majority of decks use Broken Time-Space, so either using yours or your opponents, chances are you wont use all your Rare Candies and drawing into them may pose as a bother. Nidoqueen can be best used in almost any deck that uses stage 2 Pokémon, the most popular being teamed with Gengar for the “Mother Gengar” variant and also in Flygon, which removes the 3 retreat cost problem.
Nidoqueen… is it a good Pokémon to have? I definitely think so. The stop of spread and tanking ability will make plenty of Pokémon much stronger. And as with the Dialga G techs, while trying to set that up, they have wasted at least 2 turns to get that Dialga out there and working. In that time you could draw a prize or two.
I’m a big fan of the Nidoqueen tech. Try it out if you like and let us know what you think!
