Hey! It’s kn3ll_ again with your card of the day! This time it’s Bibarel, from Stormfront.
Bibarel SF is a Stage 1 Water-type, with a meaty 100 HP. It’s got a +30 weakness to fighting, unusual for a water Pokémon, and no resistance. Too bad! And a 3 Retreat Cost! Laughable!
As it evolves from Bidoof, I’ll say that Bidoofs aren’t good and are very flippy, and that I’d probably use the one from Stormfront.
Let’s get to the good stuff. “Unaware”, its Poké-body, prevents all effects of attacks except damage done to Bibarel. This may seem similar to Steelix Prime’s Poké-body, which prevents Special Conditions, but in reality, It’s much better. Bibarel is not affected by attacks that drag it out onto the field, prevent it from attacking, Special Conditions, or even the placement of damage counters. That’s pretty good!
Its first attack, “Amnesia”, costs two colorless (Double Colorless Energy anyone?) and deals 20 damage. Not great, but it also allows you to prevent the opponent from using one of their attacks next turn. So it goes from not great to… still not that great. Unfortunately, it’s too easy to switch and switch back.
And then we have “Surf”. Surf costs two water energy and deals 60 damage with no drawbacks. That may not sound fantastic, but if we think about it, that’s pretty good… If we give it an Expert Belt, it can hit as hard as Garchomp C LV.X (without sniping ability, that is) and it’ll be 10 HP bulkier. Not bad! It also hits a few of the common decks for weakness, such as Donphan and Charizard.
Bibarel SF is an oddity: Very few Stage 1 Pokémon can hit as hard and as fast as Bibarel without any drawbacks. Its Poké-body makes it even more annoying, and 100 HP is enough to take punishment. 60 damage for 2W allows Bibarel to attack faster than a lot of decks can get set up. I’d go as far as to say that Bibarel could make a decent deck, if someone took the time out of their day to make a list. If Seviper CL can compete, this certainly can.
Perhaps the biggest advantage Bibarel has is that it’s simply frustrating to play against. It’s not cool-looking, it’s not Donphan, or Steelix, or Garchomp. It’s some silly little beaver-thing, and it hits like a bear. I’ll give it a 3/5, which is probably higher than a lot of the readers would rate it. What I say to them is to get a 4-4 line and take it to the tables, and it’ll probably earn you respect pretty quickly.
I don’t agree with your rating, as 2.3/5 would be better, but I agree with its awesomeness. When I was getting back into the game, which I think was just after SF was released, I ran BibaBeatdown with Abomasnow at City Champs, and the only person I lost to was the one who ended up going to Top 2 cut. It’s a great Pokemon to teach newer players about bulk, power, and decent speed, but not good enough to compete in this format.
this is actually a great gyrados counter. If you just use amnesia they can never use tail revenge. Plus it wuld be hard to do the switch and then go back out because gyrados has a 3 retreat cost
dude, most G-dos plays warp energy, and it can be played constantly
And also Warp Point, Super Scoop Up, and Junk Arm. It is a terrible Gyarados counter. Maybe unless you pair it with Vileplume and even then DGX says stuff like hello.
yeah, overall a terrible counter, unless you can hand lock them out of warps/points/SSu/Junk for ever…
Yeah, some rogue decks based around this… chubby, fat, oversized, water-blasting beaver would be cool.
There’s this little 6 year-old in Juniors that plays Bibarel with Starmie from Legends Awakened, and with the combination of sniping Uxies and Azelfs with Starmie and pounding hard with Bibarel, he’s able to go 3-3 or 4-2 every time. This little kid’s got an interesting deck that obviously seems to work for him.
“Not bad! It also hits a few of the common decks for weakness, such as Donphan and Charizard.”
I wish Charizard was seen enough to call common XD. Even then it would only do 90-110 with no lucario.
I forgot to finish my thought on my last comment. I was going to say that for a beginner this would be helpful to have a simple counter to gyrados. It may not be great, but for a beginner this would help out some.