Considering that there will be no more tournaments until Black & White is released, I figured that it would make sense to get into the new cards and new rules. So today, I will be reviewing Samurott, the Stage 2 of Oshawott.
Now there are two kinds of Samurott: the Theme Deck Samurott (#31), and the Booster Pack Samurott (#32). Everyone knows what the Theme Deck card does, but there are plenty of people that don’t know what this overlooked Black & White card does. Let’s take a look at his stats.
Samurott has an OK 140 HP, with a horrible x2 Weakness to Lightning. He has a normal no Resistance, and a 2 Retreat Cost. The 2 Retreat isn’t great, but considering that there is is Warp Energy, Warp Point, Switch, and DCE (to manually retreat) in the format, in my opinion, I think it’s OK.
Samurott also has this awesome Ability called “Shell Armor”. It’s basically the same thing as Donphan Prime‘s “Exoskeleton” Poke-Body, but you can still hurt Pokemon such as Umbreon, as Moonlight Fang won’t affect Abilities. He also has a mediocre attack called Hydro Pump. For 3 Colorless, it has a base damage of 70, with the effect that it does 10 more damage for each Water Energy attached to Samurott. I see a Feraligatr/Samurott combo coming on… ;D
Now as a Stage 2 Pokemon, you have to decide which Dewott and Oshawott you want to use. I personally would choose the Theme Deck Oshawott & Dewott, mainly because they just have better attacks. If you get stuck with a lone Oshawott in the beginning, you’d rather be able to attack Turn 1 than wait for two turns! And with Dewott, it’s mainly a matter with the Theme Deck version having 90 HP, otherwise known as no Dragon Rushin’ my Dewott!
Now as I stated above, a Feraligatr Prime/Samurott combo might serve well. Your starter would probably be Spiritomb, so that you can Darkness Grace your Oshawott & Totodile up into Samurott & Feraligatr, as well as blocking Sabledonk (if Sableye isn’t banned). You would want to have massive draw power, so Uxie, Professor Juniper, and PONT might be needed. But if you like to slow things down, you could possibly run Vileplume, but that would mean 3 Stage 2′s, and in my opinion, that’s a little too much. You might want to knock Feraligatr out of the whole picture if you want to try that. I think that this could be a good deck, but definitely not a States/Regionals/Nationals/other-big-tournament winner. It could possibly grab a couple of BRs and Cities, but probably not a big tournament.
So I think that a 2.5 – 3 out of 5 rating should be good. I mean, Samurott can serve as a fun deck, that might even make a BR or two, but with LuxChomp still around, and Zekrom coming out soon, I don’t think that Samurott’s gonna be the next “big thing”. Thanks for reading, and I’ll see ya next time. Bye!
