Hello, 6P Nation! It’s Dane here and, as requested by coolestman22 on TcgScans.com, today’s CoTD is as follows:
Shaymin UL
Yep, today’s Card of the Day is on Shaymin from Unleashed. Shaymin, a basic Grass type, has a mediocre 70 HP, as well as a x2 Weakness to Fire, a -20 Resistance to Fighting, and a single Retreat Cost. None of these stats are very good, but Shaymin does hold an interesting Poke-Power…
Shaymin’s “Celebration Wind” Power says that when you bench Shaymin, you can move as many energy cards attached to your Pokemon as you like to any other Pokemon. This, as you might expect, can be extremely helpful. Shaymin is most commonly used in ZPS(T) along with Pachirisu CL as a form of energy acceleration.
Pachirisu has a Power called “Self-Generation” that says when you bench Pachirisu, you can attach two Lightning energy to it. You then use Shaymin’s power to move the energy to your Zekrom or Tornadus. That means you only have to attach one more energy to use either Bolt Strike (with Zekrom) or Hurricane (with Tornadus). Oh yeah. That’s awesome. :D
Shaymin also holds an attack called Energy Bloom, which, for the cost of GC, does a vanilla 30 damage and tells you to remove 3 damage counters from each of you Pokemon with energy on it. That’s actually not that bad of an attack, but people would much rather use stronger, beefier Pokemon to attack.
Now this card has more uses than just ZPS; it is also sometimes used in Mewbox decks to move energy from damaged Mews to fresh Mews, then using Seeker to pick up the damaged one. MewGar and LostGar decks also use Shaymin, along with Jirachi UL to move discarded Psychic energies to Mews/Gengars to ‘Hurl more Pokemon into the Lost Zone.
Other than 10-foot tall lightning dragons and 1-foot tall purple cats, Shaymin can also be used in Gothitelle decks; Psychic energies are harder to move around than you’d think, so adding a Shaymin in the mix could help you a LOT. Want to use Outrage but you don’t have any energies? Use Shaymin. Need to move energies from a damaged Gothitelle to a new one? Use Shaymin. It’s a very helpful & surprising tech.
Finally, Shaymin can be an interesting tech in Magneboar (Ross Gilbert, you reading?). It generally runs a low amount of Lightning Energies, and if they happen to be moved to another Pokemon, Shaymin can easily move the Lightning energies back to Magnezone. Ross, I hope this works for you if you try it. :)
Conclusion
Basically, any deck that needs energy fast (see “ZPST” and “Mewbox”) or requires many energies (i.e. Gothitelle and Magneboar) can use Shaymin. In my opinion, it is a very good card. And as Celebi’ is starting to do, I am going to implement the TcgScans.com card rating system, and I’m going to rate Shaymin from Unleashed an 8 out of 10, aka Very Good.
If you disagree with my rating, please comment why you disagree; don’t just say “Ah, Dane, you stupid idiot!!! Shaymin is a __ out of 10, not 8!!!!”, but say something more along the lines of “In my opinion, you rated Shaymin too high”, or “I personally believe you rated him too low”, so that way I can learn to rate my cards better. Thanks for reading, and have a nice day/night/whatever-it-is-where-you-are-at-the-moment. Bye!!! :)
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