Hey SixPrizes! It’s Celebi’ again, and this time I’m reviewing the uber-cute Little Bear Pokémon, Teddiursa. Past his adorable looks, Teddiursa is actually quite a good card.
First things first: stats. Teddiursa has a fairly low 50 HP, and Fighting weakness. This makes him susceptible to a donk, especially from Donphan (although he’d get Ko’d anyway without the weakness). Colorless typing is decent, and one retreat is average.
Teddiursa’s first attack, for one C energy, is called Fake Tears. It reads: “Flip a coin. If heads, your opponent can’t play any Trainer cards from his or her hand during your opponent’s next turn, and any damage done to Teddiursa by attacks is reduced by 30 (after applying weakness and resistance).”
Wait a second. Flip a coin? Flippy attacks are a no-no in this format. Sure, Victini NV would help out a lot, but until Noble Victories is released and we can properly test with the cards in it, Victini’s usefulness is just a matter of theorymon. Right now, is the attack worth the flip? I think so.
What strikes me right off the bat is the fact that you can, in effect, Trainer lock your opponent for a turn. This makes Teddiursa very unique – he is the only card in the entire format that can locks Trainers on turn one. In addition, the 30 damage “Defender” means your opponent will have to do 80 damage to KO him, which can be tough under the lock. Teddiursa provides a “wall” for a Trainer lock deck to set up behind, and while he’s likely to be KO’d within a couple of turns, especially if he whiffs a flip or two, Teddiursa can still work as Twins bait.
When Call of Legends was released, Teddiursa was just a lame junk common. He first came onto the competitive scene as an integral part of “Bear Hug,” the deck piloted by Carlos and Xander Pero, which won Nationals this year in the Junior division and made the Top 32 in Masters.
“Bear Hug” consisted of Teddiursa CL/Ursaring Prime, Yanmega Prime, Vileplume UD, Roserade UL, and Sunflora HS. While the decklist and in-depth strategy have not been disclosed, one can gather that it focused on locking the opponent the entire game, transitioning from Teddiursa to Vileplume; the attackers were Ursaring and Yanmega, and Roserade was used to inflict status conditions.
Since this deck not only won Juniors but did very well in Masters, it could definitely be a fun and semi-competitive play. Trainer lock is extremely frustrating, especially for Zekrom, which runs a turbo Trainer engine. It already has a bad matchup against Trainer lock, and if it’s locked from the outset of the game, should definitely suffer.
Teddiursa is, in my opinion, rather underplayed. He has cons, obviously – low HP and flippiness – but his attack is amazing. Teddiursa makes a great starter for any Trainer lock deck (excepting Mew, which aims to get a T1 See Off) and, besides, he’s just adorable.
That’s all, folks! Comments and/or criticism are appreciated. Hope you enjoyed my review!
If a Pokemon is cute AND good, there is no excuse to not make at least 1 deck with it. :D
I’ve actually been testing out Ursaring for a while now, its gotten a lot stronger in this format. I’ve tested out a variety of partners, I’ll probably get an article on it soon.
Another solid article Celebi!
Sounds cool, Dakota! I like strange decks, and angry grizzly bears definitely cut it as strange. :D
Great job as always.
Nice evaluation, explains past and possible future uses for the card
No gimmicky decklist
No score for people to bitch about
Adorable card
5/5
I don’t understand why people aren’t doing cards that actually have a purpose right now.
The only thing is there’s not really much to talk about. I mean, sure you can review Reshiram, but you’re probably not going to be saying anything that literally everyone doesn’t already know. All it would be is 500 words of repeating stuff that’s being tossed around for the past few months.
That’s not to say the top cards should never be reviewed, but IMO the best reviews are the cards that aren’t top of the format, but yet also aren’t useless either.
I thought this site was about teaching new players the game. If a new player comes to this site and sees this COTD, that new player will be very confused.
Did you even read the review?
“Since this deck not only won Juniors but did very well in Masters, it could definitely be a fun and semi-competitive play.”
I assume that’s because for every Teddiursa out, there was an Ursaring most of the time, and this was an early game attacker. If you were to win worlds with ReshiBoar, would you say that Tepig was a major part of why you won for other reasons than to get out Emboar?
How is it at all confusing?
A new player comes to the site. They see a fair evaluation of how good Teddiursa is. They leave wiser.
The card isn’t being hyped. The use is explained. Unless they are stupid enough to just think it MUST go in their deck because it’s CotD and don’t bother to read, they won’t be confused.
They leave wiser, but a newer player would also know less about the BDIFs and more about this.
What’s there left to review that hasn’t been done time after time? We know what Reshiram does, we know what Pachirisu does, and we know what Beartic does (although to be fair, Beartic EP has a good CotD).
Right now, the CotD writers are taking requests for CotD rather than picking the meta cards. Why? Well why would they do cards that nobody is asking to see on the front page? I’d rather see cute and/or new Pokemon in the CotD slot, while Zekrom and Donphan clog up the articles. (I swear if I have to add another Reshiram or Zekrom scan to a front page article I’m gonna be sick of seeing the cards.)
I noticed you posted a bunch of requests on TCGscans, and that’s pretty proactive. There’s already been several of those cards reserved for review, so you might be seeing them shortly. It does mean that they’ll run out of “useful” cards eventually, but there are a lot of people requesting their favorites so the writers will get to everyone eventually.
If they run out of “useful” cards, then there should be some Noble Victories cards soon enough.
There’s a big difference between doing something like CL Teddiursa here and UL Spearow.
One can actually be useful ;)
I see that it can be useful because there are two different Teddiursas. If Fearow suddenly became BDIF, there would only be one Spearow to choose from, so you wouldn’t have to do a review. Plus, there is the point that this is the one card that locks trainers t-1 in HS on, so it’s decent, but I thought this site was based on making newer players wiser in the game of Pokemon TCG.
Finally, something I like today.