Ferrothorn (Emerging Powers EPO 72) – Card of the Day

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Welcome to today’s Card of the Day, everyone. Today, I put forth on the sacrificial altar of card hype Mr. Ferrothorn of Emerging Powers.

Ferrothorn is a Metal-type card. It evolves from Ferroseed, both cards of which are also Metal type. Ferrothorn has a relatively low 90 Hit Points, which is just pathetic for a Metal-type Stage 1; compare it to Steelix Prime (140) or even Steelix Prime (120). This means that for this card to get a good score, it must have something that makes this low HP workable.

Ferrothorn has a Fire weakness and a Psychic resistance with a Retreat Cost of two. But, thanks to his attacks, which I’ll get to in a moment, the only important stat of those three is his resistance. A Psychic resistance used to be not that important in HS-BW, but now that we have a Psychic deck in the metagame, it’s at least a nice bonus.

Ferrothorn has two attacks which, upon close inspection, have some minor synergy with each other, and the above-mentioned stats. Said synergy stems from the fact that the first attack serves a possibly-decent damage output while waiting to power up the second. In addition, the second attack negates the downsides of HP and Retreat Cost. “Steel Feelers” for the cost of a single metal energy, does 30 damage time the number of heads from three coin flips. So, on average, we hit for 45 “units” of damage for a single energy. In other words, 30 some turns, 60 others, and rarely 0 or 90. One for 40 on a Stage 1 is fairly decent, but not quite up to par with the likes of Donphan Prime or Yanmega Prime.

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“Gyro Ball” is the attack that makes this card worth a look. For the cost of MCC, the attack does 60 damage and has a “reverse Warp Point” effect. This means you get a free switch out to a benched Pokémon of your choice (making his Retreat Cost much less of an issue) and then your opponent does the same. In both cases, the person moving their own cards chooses. Of note is that this cost is efficiently designed to work with Double Colorless Energy. Ideally, you can have “Gyro Ball” up by the second turn.

So what is the use of this card, then? Those of you that are new may not remember this, but last format, we had a deck named Cursegar. Cursegar used a Gengar that did 60 damage and 10 to the bench, and retreated itself as an effect of the attack. The Cursegar player would bring up Spiritomb AR, a Pokémon that blocked Trainers while active. Does such a Body/Power/Ability sound familiar? Right, we have Gothitelle EP 47 in our format, which has a similar effect, but on a Stage 2 Pokémon.

Enter a fun deck in our metagame that has been relatively ignored. Gyro-Goth is a deck that runs Dodrio UD, Gothitelle EP, and Ferrothorn EP 72 with a heavy line of Junk Arm, Pokémon Catcher and Max Potion to provide a consistent output of 60 damage per turn, and a nigh-unkillable wall to put up in between hits. The deck is by no means Tier one and falls to many of the same issues Gothitelle/Reuniclus worries about, but has a slightly better Mew Box matchup. I won’t provide a decklist because this is a CotD post, but there’s a bit of talk about lists on the forums.

Overall, I give Ferrothorn EP a 7/10.

Here’s what would make it 9/10:

• 30 more HP (Making it more resistant to starts without Trainer lock up.)

• A less flippy first attack (Letting it serve as a decent opener while you build the Goth.)

• 80 damage for Gyro Ball instead of 60 (Makes everything in HS-EP at worst a 2HKO.)

Well, that’s all I’ve got on this card, everyone. Hope you enjoyed me applying my style to COTD posts. Let me know in the comments. As always, I’d love to hear all feedback, good or bad, lengthy or short.

~Zackary “Cabd” Ayello