It looks like the Pokémon Company International (TPCi) is going full speed ahead as they revealed another set of cards for The Glory of Team Rocket.
The Japanese market is scheduled to receive this new expansion on April 18th. With TPCi all but confirming the card list for Destined Rivals, there’s a substantial chance that these new cards will be added to the Western market on the official release of May 30th.
Tyranitar line confirmed
Larvitar:
Mountain Munch: 10 damage. Discard the top card of your opponent’s deck.
Pupitar:
Explosive Awakening: 30 damage. Search your deck for a card that evolves from this Pokémon and put it onto this Pokémon to evolve it. Then, shuffle your deck.
Tyranitar: Ability: Sand Stream As long as this Pokémon is in the Active Spot, put 2 damage counter on each of your opponent’s Basic Pokémon during Pokémon Checkup. Breakthrough Tackle: 180 damage. Discard an Energy from your opponent’s Active Pokémon.
The Tyranitar we saw peeking out back in March has finally been given its due alongside its more basic forms. It seems like TPCi is trying its hardest to entice players to branch out their deck-building choices with the designs given to these Pokémon.
Larvitar mills the opposing player’s deck by 1 card. It’s not much, but Larvitar is just a basic Pokémon after all, and this on top of a colorless energy cost.
Pupitar follows the same one colorless energy cost for its attack, but this time, it’s the controlling player’s deck that the Pokémon interacts with as it searches out for Tyranitar.
While Rare Candy is still legal in the game, the fact that this utility is available for a colorless attack that still deals damage is insanely efficient.
Finally, we move to Tyranitar itself. For being a stage 2 Pokémon, Tyranitar’s health pool isn’t quite as impressive. However, like Larvitar and Pupitar before it, Tyranitar comes with two utility abilities.
First off, by just existing on the active slot, Team Rocket’s Tyranitar is doing 20 damage to each Basic Pokémon the opponent has on checkup.
Given how a lot of players like to use basic or basic Ex Pokémon on their roster, the mileage on this skill can scale pretty wide depending on how long Tyranitar is on the active slot.
Second is Tyranitar’s main attack, Breakthrough Tackle. Dealing a modest 180 damage, this attack can force a discard of one energy from the opponent’s active Pokémon.
Assuming Tyranitar’s active player can land this early, this can effectively stunlock any active Pokémon.
Unfortunately, Tyranitar’s attack costs 4 (3 colorless, and 1 fighting) energy.
While Team Rocket does have access to their Rocket Energy support card to field two energy right away, this doesn’t change the fact that Tyranitar needs a four-energy investment.
A 4 energy cost attack is pretty slow when attached to a Pokémon with a less-than-desirable health pool size at Stage 2. Even current competitive favorites like Dragapult ex and Gardevoir ex have either a cheaper total energy cost (2 and 3, respectively) and a more robust health pool (320 and 310, respectively).
On the plus side, Team Rocket’s Tyranitar is just a standard Pokémon, so at the very least, it’ll protect its controlling player after a knockout by limiting the opponent to a single prize card.
The Legendary Birds Return
Articuno:
Ability: Resistant Veil Prevent all effects of your opponent’s Pokémon’s attacks done to your Basic Team Rocket’s Pokémon. (Damage is not an effect.)
Dark Frost: 60+ damage. If this Pokémon has Team Rocket Energy attached, this attack does 60 more damage.
Zapdos:
Jamming Wing: 30 damage. You may move an Energy from your opponent’s Active Pokémon to 1 of their Benched Pokémon.
Bad Thunder: 60+ damage. If this Pokémon has Team Rocket Energy attached, this attack does 60 more damage.
Moltres ex:
Flame Screen: 110 damage. During your opponent’s next turn, this Pokémon takes 50 less damage from attacks (after applying Weakness and Resistance).
Evil Burn: Discard a Team Rocket’s Energy from this Pokémon. If you do, discard your opponent’s Active Pokémon and all attached cards.
It’s like looking back into the past. When Pokémon first launched with its original 151 Pokémon, Articuno, Zapdos, and Moltres were ‘the’ legendary Pokémon to catch. Now they’re back, each one contributing a pretty threatening first turn depending on what their controlling player opens up with.
Starting with Articuno, this is the more defensively oriented of the three birds. Its ability protects all thebTeam Rocket basic Pokémon of its controlling player from receiving any effects (not damage) from the opposing player’s attacks.
Articuno does have a more modest attack output at 60, but this can be rectified if it has a copy of Team Rocket’s Energy attached to it; which would basically double its damage output.
In fact, all the legendary birds have an added effect to one of their attacks should they have Team Rocket’s Energy attached to them.
For Zapdos, it shares the same healthpool of 120. But unlike Articuno, it comes with two attacks. Zapdos’ second attack, Bad Thunder, is pretty much in line with Articuno’s Dark Frost. As long as the Pokémon has Team Rocket’s Energy, it doubles the damage output.
Where Zapdos differs is with its Jamming Wing attack. This is a very unimpressive 30 damage but like Tyranitar above, can essentially stunlock an active Pokémon by moving any energy the opposing active Pokémon has to an ally on the bench.
This makes any hope of retreat or reprisal a distant dream unless the opponent’s active Pokémon doesn’t need that much investment to begin with.
And the last of the three, Moltres ex, is probably the most dangerous of the bunch. Its basic 3 energy cost attack does 10 less damage than Articuno’s and Zapdos’.
However, Moltress can apply a minus 50 damage debuff to the opponent’s next attack, raising Moltres’ survivability given its 220 health pool.
Should Moltres have access to Team Rocket’s Energy plus two more energy (another colorless and basic fire), the controlling player can choose to discard Team Rocket’s Energy to just discard the opponent’s active Pokémon right away.
That is straight-up evil. Even if Moltres’ player doesn’t get a prize card for this ability, flat out erasing the opponent’s vanguard without having to chew through any health can be an easy out against any of the competitive staples.
The Second Stringers
Team Rocket continues to show its arsenal by introducing other trainer Pokémon in the form of their Crobat ex line, their Weezing line, and Sneasel.
Sneasel:
Scratch: 20 damage. Backstab: This attack does 20 damage to 1 of your opponent’s Benched Pokémon for each damage counter already on that Pokémon (don’t apply Weakness or Resistance for Benched Pokémon).
Koffing:
Ability: Alert Smog If this Pokémon is in the Active Spot and is damaged by an attack from your opponent’s Pokémon (even if this Pokémon is Knocked Out), search your deck for up to 2 Pokémon with Koffing in their name and put them onto your Bench. Then, shuffle your deck.
Gas Leak: 30 damage. Weezing:
All-Out Explosion: 40x damage. This attack does 40 damage for each Pokémon in play with Koffing or Weezing in its name.
Starting with Sneasel, unfortunately, this Pokémon drew the short end of the straw as its a basic Pokémon with very little redeeming quality.
As far as basic Pokémon who aren’t ex powerhouses, Sneasel technically does more damage than the average Pokémon of the same evolutionary level.
It even has the capability of damaging benched Pokémon should they already be hurt. But given the latter ability is an attack, it would be difficult to justify using Sneasel at this time.
That said, Sneasel is known to have an evolution, Weavile, that hasn’t been revealed yet. So there exists some hope of redemption for this Pokémon.
Unfortunately the same cannot be said for Team Rocket’s Koffing and Weezing. Despite possessing one of the better utility skills in searching for two basic Pokémon upon taking damage -even on knockout- Koffing’s search capabilities are limited to its own evolutionary line.
As for Weezing, it’s one giant gimmick. Its only attack scales off the number of Koffings or Weezings on the field.
Even if you were to maximize this output, it would only go as high as 240 damage -assuming your opponent isn’t using any themselves-.
That said, this is on a 2 energy costing move so technically speaking a deck solely focused on this gimmick could technically win by virtue of speed over attrition.
But this is very unlikely to succeed as there are too many moving parts and too many chances for this kind of plan to fall apart at the seams.
Zubat:
Poison Spray: Your opponent’s Active Pokémon is now Poisoned.
Golbat:
Ability: Sneaky Bite When you play this Pokémon from your hand to evolve 1 of your Pokémon during your turn, you may put 2 damage counters on 1 of your opponent’s Pokémon.
Confuse Ray: 30 damage. Your opponent’s Active Pokémon is now Confused.
Crobat ex:
Ability: Bite About When you play this Pokémon from your hand to evolve 1 of your Pokémon during your turn, you may put 2 damage counters on 2 of your opponent’s Pokémon. Assassin’s Return: 120 damage. You may put this Pokémon into your hand. (Discard all attached cards.)
Moving on to the Crobat ex, this entire evolutionary line seems predicated on getting Team Rocket’s Zubat to go through its different evolutionary stages in order to deal some damage to the opponent’s Pokémon.
Crobat itself is surprisingly robust at being at 310 health. But this is marred by Crobat’s less than stellar 120 damage attack.
However, Crobat can bounce itself from the field as long as all cards attached to it are discarded.
As interesting as this mechanic is, the tempo loss from forcefully discarding precious energy cards while forcing yourself to play multiple Zubats and Golbats for repeated Crobat evolutions can’t hope to overtake the efficiency of more meta oriented decks.
More tools of the trade
It seems Team Rocket is not yet out of tricks as four new trainer cards were a part of this reveal.
Team Rocket’s Great Ball:
Flip a coin. If heads, search your deck for an Evolution Team Rocket’s Pokémon, reveal it, and put it into your hand. If tails, search your deck for a Basic Team Rocket’s Pokémon, reveal it, and put it into your hand. Then, shuffle your deck. Team Rocket’s Venture Bomb: Flip a coin. If heads, put 2 damage counters on 1 of your opponent’s Pokémon. If tails, put 2 damage counters on your Active Pokémon.
Team Rocket’s Petrel: Search your deck for a Trainer card, reveal it, and put it into your hand. Then, shuffle your deck.
Team Rocket’s Proton:
Search your deck for up to 3 Basic Team Rocket’s Pokémon, reveal them, and put them into your hand. Then, shuffle your deck.
Starting off with Team Rocket’s Great Ball, it’s probably one of the better Poké Ball search functions we’ve seen in recent times.
Sure, it’s a little swingy due to relying on a coin toss to determine its search effect, but the fact that it functions as a 2-for-1 package may free up some much needed deck space.
Next we have Team Rocket’s Venture Bomb. At first glance this item looks highly suspect.
A direct damage item that relies on a coin toss. If you succeed, that’s 2 damage counters to any of the opponent’s Pokémon. But if you fail, that 2 damage counters are going to your active Pokémon.
Can anyone really justify this kind of card taking up a valuable slot in an already tight deck list? Probably not.
But then again, the recent Annihilape doesn’t care where the 2 damage counters come from to activate its effect so maybe this card can find some use in some rogue strategies.
Lastly, we have two new members to the cast of Team Rocket, Team Rocket’s Petrel and Proton.
The former basically function as another copy of any Trainer card as Petrel can easily search them out.
As basic as it is, card designs like Petrel are extremely powerful due to their simplicity. Just fish out a card from the deck, no questions asked.
As for Proton, he’s basically an upgraded Nest Ball. Instead of one basic Pokémon, Proton is able to search for three for his controlling player.
Given how a lot of Team Rocket's signature Pokémon tend to be basic Pokémon (Mewtwo and the Legendary Birds to name a few), this one card can easily set-up a strong board presence on turn 1.
In fact, it says so on the card, “If you go first, you may use this card during your first turn”.
Whoever designed Proton really wants to entice players to play a Team Rocket Pokémon roster given how nutty the ability to search for three Pokémon on the 1st turn is.
We still have no clue how many more cards TPCi will continue to reveal for The Glory of Team Rocket expansion.