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Today’s Card of the Day is Manaphy from Unleashed. Let’s look at his stats. He has 60 HP, a x2 Weakness to Lightning which is unfortunate due to Zekrom being so popular (it did win both the Canadian and Mexican Nationals), no Resistance, and a Free Retreat. The free retreat is nice, but everything else is meh. Let’s hope his attacks make up for it.
Well, they definitely do. Manaphy’s first attack, Deep Sea Swirl, costs a single C energy and tells you to shuffle your hand into your deck and draw 5 cards. Now that just seems like a weaker version of Cleffa’s Eeeeeek, but we’ll get to why Manaphy’s useable a little bit later. Manaphy’s second attack, Wave Splash costs one Water energy and does 20 damage. Meh.
But like I said above, people do use Manaphy. Why? Because Cleffa only has a measly 30 HP, and can get donked easily by Tyrogue, Reshiram (DCE + PlusPower), and Zekrom (DCE + PlusPower). Manaphy has twice the amount of HP that Cleffa has, and therefore is much harder to donk; only the Zekrom listed above can donk you.
At Nationals, many great players didn’t make Top Cut due to donks. For example, Jason Klaczynski lost three games by getting donked by Tyrogue. If he was using Manaphy instead of Cleffa, he might of been able to win those games. Another plus of using Manaphy is the fact that he doesn’t become asleep; it’s super annoying to use Eeeek and not be able to do anything for 3 or 4 turns due to unlucky flips.
Of course, every plus comes with its con; Manaphy requires an Energy to attack and only draws five cards, unlike Cleffa, who attacks for free and draws six cards. Also, Manaphy has a Weakness to a huge type right now, where Cleffa doesn’t even have a weakness at all. But that doesn’t discourage players from using Manaphy. I would much rather give up and energy to attack than to risk being donked.
So saying all this, I’m going to give Manaphy a 4 out of 5. I feel that Manaphy is a very useful card, and the only decks that I’ve found where I don’t like Manaphy are MegaZone and KYJ, due to their low energy counts. Thanks for reading, and I’ll see ya next time. Bye!
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I love Manaphy right now. It’s so much safer and therefore more consistent than Cleffa with those Tyrogues running rampant. One deck I have right now is using Manaphy for a good starter primarily to take the first hit and free retreat without ever attacking. Such a great card.
You didn’t mention another argument for Cleffa, though, which is that when it’s sleeping, it doesn’t take damage from attacks, so it can wall when you want it to (and when you don’t want it to :P), but some people think that more than makes up for its HP. I don’t totally agree, but it’s a fair argument.
Another reason that Donphan players like Manaphy–okay, really the same reason, just put a different way–is that Manaphy can take more Earthquake damage than Cleffa before handing your opponent a prize.
Uhh nice article….but you didn’t have to mention Jason Klaczynski in it, and say how he got donked and how he could have played manaphy instead. Thats pretty rude dude.
Stick to the card not the players.
So you’re saying when a Worlds-caliber player gets donked multiple times at one of the biggest tournaments of the year because of a card choice he made it has no bearing on whether similar cards without the same drawbacks might have been a better choice?
The point was that the card is better at preventing donks than Cleffa, not that Ness was wrong for not playing it.
Actually what Im saying is, stick to the CARD not the player.
Alright, let me fix the offending part of the article for you. Whenever you read it replace the fifth paragraph with this: “At Nationals, many great players didn’t make Top Cut due to donks. One particular Worlds-caliber player talked about how he lost three games by getting donked by Tyrogue. If he was using Manaphy instead of Cleffa, he might of been able to win those games. Another plus of using Manaphy is the fact that he doesn’t become asleep; it’s super annoying to use Eeeek and not be able to do anything for 3 or 4 turns due to unlucky flips.”
Let me fix what your not getting, its CARD of the day, not tournament article where you mention a champion’s mistake or wins.
You just give combos you can use and give the card its good and bad. If you want to make an example of a donk situation just say player 1 and player 2, not a real person, its so simple.
Then lets agree that I see absolutely no problem with him using a concrete example to prove his point, and you think that it was a gratuitous act to mention the name of a particular player.
pachirisu says HI. he would like to donk you ^_^, also one of the reasons we run a copy of cleffa is to be able to stall out of a bad situation with a hopefully successful tails flip. also the lack of energy to attack allows you to build up stage 2 decks much more efficiently. not saying that manaphy is bad, just that cleffa also has many uses that manaphy doesn’t offer.