#dark blastoise

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Pokémon TCG Team Rocket expansion (2000)

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Pokemon Card of the Day #2572: Dark Blastoise (Team Rocket)

Dark Blastoise did have some serious damage potential. Getting there required a good bit of Energy, which wasn’t easy if not pairing with Blastoise or another way to deal with Energy Removal in the Base Set formats, and there was a ton of competition in later formats. It’s still hard to ignore 70 for 4, though, at a time where more than a few Pokemon had around 70 HP. That sort of Pokemon would have people working to find ways to make it work.

70 HP was quite low for a Stage 2, being similar to the most popular Basic Pokemon available when Dark Blastoise came out. That did mean that the attacks that were used to take those down could work on this card as well. The Lightning Weakness made life tougher against Electabuzz and Rocket’s Zapdos, and how much that mattered depended on the format. Lightning was better in earlier times but fell off a bit in the Rocket-On and Neo-On formats. Dark Blastoise also needed 2 Energy to retreat, so help getting around that in some way was nice.

Hydrocannon was the big attack here. The base was just 30 damage for 2 Water Energy, which was still decent to be fair. It was comparable to attacks from Electabuzz, so it was quite usable. The thing here was that additional Water Energy added 20 damage, with a maximum of 40 extra. 70 damage could take out a wide variety of Pokemon from the Base through Gym sets, though getting 4 Water Energy on a Pokemon required some sort of trick. Putting a copy or two in a Blastoise deck was one option, though it lowered consistency and had a different Stage 1 than the base so Pokemon Breeder was huge. Another option was to pair it with Brock’s Ninetales and Brock’s Protection, which resulted in a more frail but more flexible alternative to Misty’s Gyarados. These tricks weren’t as needed Rocket-On or Neo-On, as removal wasn’t something to worry about and Hydrocannon could function as a good attack.

Rocket Tackle was pretty interesting. 40 damage for a Water and 2 Colorless Energy was good enough, especially early on. Doing 10 damage to itself made it a little annoying, falling into Wigglytuff and Blastoise range and letting Magcargo save an Energy. Then there was the coin flip, and if heads, all damage done to Dark Blastoise was prevented during the opponent’s next turn. This was a good way to finish off a weakened Pokemon that was in range for a KO from this, trying to get a free turn (or at least a forced use of Gust of Wind or Double Gust).

Dark Blastoise was an interesting Pokemon. It did need some tricks to work out in Base Set formats, and was generally worse than using bulkier Pokemon with Brock’s Ninetales or other Pokemon that didn’t need Squirtle along with Blastoise. On the other hand, when it got going it could be devastating, taking out Mewtwo, Hitmonchan, and Scyther with a single hit. The Neo formats got rid of quite a few of the obstacles but created a ton of competition, with Water having Feraligatr, Dark Feraligatr, Kingdra, and Kabutops to name a few. The result of all this was that Dark Blastoise was a pretty good card that would also be passed over due to competition in every possible role it wanted to take. It had some drawbacks with its low HP and need to avoid Energy Removal, but was something to take seriously if facing because of the high damage and possible flips to avoid taking a hit for a turn.

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