pokebeach.comWhat’s up 6p community? Today, I’m reviewing the new Nidoking from Triumphant. When you first glance at this card, you can tell it was meant to be a tank. I’ll get to my reasoning for that in a second, but let’s first start with the basics of the card.
Nidoking is a stage 2 Pokémon with a nice 140 HP. Being Fighting is pretty good, being able to hit Luxray GL for weakness, the Water weakness isn’t terrible now, but could become much worse depending on what happens with Gyarados. The Lightning resistance is nice (as you reduce damage from Luxray GL) and the three Retreat Cost is expected, but it still stings.
Nidoking’s Poké-Body “Pheromone Stamina” states that this beast gains +20 HP for each Nidoqueen in play. Obviously, you can have a bit of a tank with just one Nidoqueen RR in play, 160 HP and healing for 10 between turns, imagine having 3 Nidoqueen and an Expert Belt in play, that’s 220 HP and healing. THAT is a tank.
There are a few issues with that idea, however. First of all, it requires you to get 4 stage 2 Pokémon in play and with the loss of Claydol, will be very difficult. Second of all, Dialga G LV.X will shut off Nidoking’s Poké-Body as well as Nidoqueen’s, meaning you loose the monster HP and healing.
Is his attack good enough to make up for that? Well, sorta. “Venomous Horn” for the huge cost of FFCC (not quite as huge with DCE) does 80 and poison. Normally, I wouldn’t say this is great, and it isn’t. However, with Expert Belt, you’re hitting for 100 and Poison, which is the magic number to 1HKO Garchomp C LV.X, Blaziken FB LV.X and Luxray GL LV.X.
In addition, since you’re only doing 100 + 10 from the poison, you can successfully avoid Gengar’s “Fainting Spell” . Again, there is a problem with that, Trainer Lock will lock Expert Belt. If you cannot avoid “Fainting Spell”, there’s a 50% chance you could loose Nidoking. If you loose the tank in a tank deck, you usually loose the match as well.
Overall, it’s a good card that could have been awesome, but Nidoking just has some huge problems (Set up speed, Dialga G, Fainting spell) that stop it from being a viable deck. Perhaps next year, when both Dialga G and Gengar are (hopefully) out of the format and we get another draw/search engine at least somewhat close to Claydol’s power, but until then…
Rating: 2.5/5
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An idea to help give this guy some support is to add Nidoking from RR. Whenever your TM Nidoking takes hit, the attacker gets another 20 damage on it. This plan does have its share of flaws, though, but still something that could help.
that makes six stage 2s and that sucks.
it’s so mighty cool, but it’s just too weak
If it had a second attack like toxic it’d be fantastic.
Sorry, but water weakness WILL become worse as Gyarados players get Junk Arm and Rescue Energy. Also, a belted Gyarados (not that uncommon) hits for 220 against him (90+20= 110, 110 x 2=220), so even with 4 Nidoqueen and a Belt, Nidoking OHKOs to Gyarados.
check your math 160+(20*4)+20= 240 so it would be 20 shy. even still a gdos is way easier to get a full set up than a nidoking and still kills his deck.
dont forget gyarados has resistance to nidoking
260 lol
nidoking and nidoqueen have different basics (nidoran m and f) so you could add a 4th queen to that
I don’t think Gyarados is the end-all for this guy. Sure, it’s an atrocious (harharhar) matchup, but at the same time, a “good” list could theoretically deal Luxchomp some heavy damage, and maybe do well vs Sableye and Dialgachomp as well.
“lose”, not “loose”.
/constructive criticism