Welcome to today’s review of Steelix Prime from HeartGold SoulSilver: Unleashed. This card received a lot of attention before its release. Was it deserved? Let’s find out.
pokebeach.comSteelix Prime is a Stage 1 Metal Pokémon, which is good since it can (ab)use Special M Energy. The only downfall is that many Lightning Pokémon, such as Luxray GL LV.X, will resist you. It has a monstrous 140 HP, which surpasses most Stage 2s. Its Poké-Body, “Perfect Metal”, makes Steelix unaffected by Special Conditions. This isn’t an amazing Poké-Body, but is a nice counter to Skuntank G, Crobat G’s “Toxic Fang”, and the occasional Gliscor deck.
Steelix comes armed with two equally important attacks, “Energy Stream” and “Gaia Crush”. The first, for CC, does 30 damage and allows you to attach any Energy card in your discard pile to your hand. “Gaia Crush”, for the massive cost of MMCCC, does 100 damage and allows you to discard a Stadium card in play.
Typically, when a Pokémon has two attacks, such as an attack that costs MMCCC, the first is only meant as a stalling attack until you can either power up its second attack or bring up another Pokémon. Thankfully, “Energy Stream” is a pretty good attack. Its flexible CC cost means you can use Basic Energy or the faster Double Colorless Energy to attack. While its damage output is a bit on the low side, it will allow you to retrieve an Energy (yes, just Energy, meaning it can take Special Energy) from your discard pile and attach it to Steelix.
However, despite having all of this going for it, if its second attack sucks, it won’t see much play. So, do you think “Gaia Crush” is good? Sure, the cost is very steep and probably a bit pricey, but I think it’s worth it.
Of all the benefits of Steelix, I think its best attribute is how it combos with so many other cards so well:
Skarmory UD — A great way to speed up that energy attachment and fish out those Special M Energy at the same time.
pokemon-paradijs.comNidoqueen RR — Its damage removal Poké-Body will be especially useful because Steelix Prime is difficult enough to KO when it has 140 HP and 3 or 4 Special Metals attached, so healing for 10 in between turns won’t make it any easier.
Exploud SV — A big problem Steelix decks face is Blaziken FB LV.X as it can 1HKO Steelix, even with a number of Special M Energy attached.
Expert Belt — Allows it to 1HKO or come very close to 1HKOing nearly every attacker in the format, including Luxray GL LV.X, Garchomp C LV.X, Blaziken FB LV.X, Machamp SF, Kingdra LA, Kingdra Prime, etc.
pokemon-paradijs.comBlissey PL — In my opinion, it’s one of the best cards to combine with Steelix. Blissey’s Poké-Power, “Nurse Call”, allows you to discard a card from your hand to remove two damage counters from one of your Pokémon. First of all, the healing is a nice edge, making it harder still for Steelix to be killed. Secondly, you can actually help speed Steelix’s set up because you can discard an Energy card, which Steelix can then pick up and attach to itself with “Energy Stream”.
Skuntank G — Since you are immune to poison, all it will do is poison your opponent’s non-SP active Pokémon.
There are others, but, for the sake of time, I won’t be able to get into all of them; however, these should give you a good idea.
My recommendation: I chose to review this card because I believe that this card is a lot better than most people think. Definitely try it out. I have found that it’s a very fun deck to play.
My Rating: 3.75/5
Steelix is a beast. I wrote an article on this deck not too long ago. Paired with Blissey PL, the only energy you need to attach FROM YOUR HAND is a DCE. It was such a fun deck. I think the deck’s main problem though is that Scizor prime rapes it.
I can’t see Scizor Prime being big tho.. I know some parts of the states its in use but I’ve never seen one in the maint parts of Ontario Canada, or have read about Scizor Prime doing really well at BRs and such
I know but just because it’s not big doesn’t mean that it doesn’t pose a threat to this deck in particular lol I was just saying. Scizor has potential. We just haven’t seen it yet.
I know C in Arizona (your friend) beasted a couple brs with it
Then run your own scizor prime tech. What beats scizor? another scizor.
Steelix is a beast. I wrote an article on this deck not too long ago. Paired with Blissey PL, the only energy you need to attach FROM YOUR HAND is a DCE. It was such a fun deck. I think the deck’s main problem though is that Scizor prime rapes it.
Now we are talkin! This has been my baby since the UD prerelease when I paired it with Scizor. Didn’t like Scizor but fell in love with Steelix. Like hgssprime said, Scizor does rape it, but it can be worked around…and, like Peter said, Scizor isn’t popular, so I think it is a non issue. What I love about this deck is that it’s only real bad matchup is Infernape 4, which isn’t that popular either, and a straigh fire deck, which isn’t that popular either. The Dialgachomp matchup is tough only because Dialga can “Remove Lost” Steelix’s energy. If Dialga continually hits tails or doesn’t continually hit mutliple heads, this matchup isn’t too bad. Every other deck, Steelix has a pretty favorable matchup against. Gyarados is about 50/50, really depends on Gyarados’s ability to hit the SSU’s. Anyway, I love the deck and (as of right now) plan to run it all season….since it isn’t very popular, most people don’t know the matchup very well.
As for a rating…well, its not perfect, but no card is. But, what makes it great is that it can easily work around disruption and trainer lock, has the perfect attacks, and has good matchups against main good decks. So, in this format, I’ll give it 4.5/5.
With Blaziken FB X being a more and more popular SP tech, with uses against Vileplume, Dialga G X, ect., Steelix Prime will have a hard time with Blaziken techs all around. Also, a Charizard deck, although not super popular, still exists and would cause Steelix Problems.
However, it has great energy acceleration and is a great TANK versus anything but fire.