Card of the Day – Kingdra Prime (Unleashed UL 85)

pokebeach.comWelcome to today’s COTD, where I’ll be taking a look at Kingdra Prime from Unleashed. First off, the basics: x2 Lightning Weakness is pretty nasty as Luxray GL LV.X and Magnezone Prime will hit you for Weakness; no Resistance isn’t necessarily bad, as a lot of cards don’t have one, but it still is disappointing; and a Retreat Cost of C is very manageable. 130 HP should give it some nice durability against anything but Lightning Pokémon. Finally, it’s a Water type Pokémon, meaning you get the slight bonus of hitting Charizard and Donphan for weakness.

Kingdra’s Poké-Power, “Spray Splash,” allows you to put a damage counter on one of your opponent’s Pokémon… each turn! This is a great effect. Getting access to a “Flash Bite” each turn without having to use any Poké-Turns or anything is great. Another bonus is that Spray Splash is stack-able, meaning if you have 2-3 of these guys in play gives you the advantage of 3(!) extra damage per turn, which is a fantastic Power.

So, is Kingdra’s attack on the same level as Spray Splash? “Dragon Steam,” for the low cost of W, will do 60(!) damage. However, the drawback is that, if your opponent has any Fire Pokémon in play, it does only 20 damage instead. This means that you will have trouble against decks like Charizard and BLG.

pokegym.netOverall, Kingdra Prime is a very good card with a lot of raw power. However, like almost every card in the format, it has an Achilles heel, which happens to be Fire type decks. Despite being able to hit them for weakness, having your attack power lowered to a pitiful 20 won’t get you very far.

To help make up for this downside as well as to drastically aid your VileGar match up, I strongly recommend playing this card in conjunction with Kingdra LA, which won’t loose any power against Fire Pokémon and will allow you to discard useless trainer cards from your hand.

The most disappointing part about this card, however, is the Lightning Weakness. One of the most popular cards in the game, Luxray GL LV.X along with a new, very powerful card, Magnezone Prime. Each one can easily 1HKO you (Luxray will need a “Flash Bite”).

My Recommendation:
I strongly suggest that you try out Kingdra Prime with a 2/2 Kingdra Prime/LA split or in a Kingdra/X deck.

My Rating 3.5/5

Reader Interactions

9 replies

      • Robert Hall  → Adam

        tru but i had never done it before so. . . . . .. i had to try it, last time promise. But since this is about kingdra . . . .i would never play it right now, there are just too many luxchomps around my area, and to only play it as a tech seems not worth it for just one damage counter per turn.

        Think about it, it takes at least three cards to get it out, when u could just use crobat and 2 poke turn instead. which is slightly more consistent cuz it’s basic and not stage 2. I feel that Blaziken FB is too common of a tech also in order to compete with the gratuitous amounts of gengar viletomb and dialgaChomp. That of which really hurts kingdras attack. I realize the whole world knows all of this by now but for those of you who dont, for what its worth, that’s my opinion on Kingdra.

  1. Peter Bae

    Lol.. I remember topping a BR filled with VileGar and Luxchomp with a pure Kingdra build 3/1 PRime to LA lol. Mostly because I didn’t face any VileGar or LuxChomp till top 4 LOL basically lucked out XD

  2. Michael Randolph

    Kingdra Prime with SF Gengar = Awesome…Just saying!

  3. Scott Christian

    I played Kingdra/Gengar SF at my last Cities and went 2-3……..My 2 wins were against Gyarados and my 3 loses were against Gyarados, Luxchomp and Jumpluff/Vileplume……..I never felt like I couldnt win those matches (well maybe not Luxchomp) but it is a very competitive deck. I think that if I can find the right build I can actually win.

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