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A Pokémon TCG Strategies Column by Shadow

Hello everyone, I'm Shadow, and this is my area devoted to Pokémon: The Card Game. My first column will discuss a major issue in Pokémon cards, that of energy efficency. Now, I'll assume that everyone reading this knows how to play the card game already, so I won't bore you with the rules. Now, as you all know, the golden rule in TCG that all Pokémon must follow is that they must have energy in order to use their abilities. No Pokémon in this entire game can do much of anything without energy, so therefore, Pokémon need to be able to use energy well and not squander it.

That being said, I'll now go on to give examples of what is and what isn't an energy efficent card:

Now, this is Charizard, one of the least energy effiecnt cards around. Sure, very few other Pokémon can deal 100 damage in one turn, but in order to use Charizard’s Fire Spin, you need to discard two fire energy cards. Now, think about it. How much energy do you go through in order to use Charizard. In order to use Charizard and wipe out six of you opponent’s Pokémon, you would need 14 energy cards attached to Charizard, not counting if your opponent decides to use an Energy Removal or two. This is what energy efficency is all about. Sure, Charizard deals alot of damage, but you have to discard large amounts of energy in order to use it. In general, all Fire Pokémon have bad energy efficency, but none worse than Charizard.

Now, instead of using Charizard and throwing away all that energy, there are other Pokémon to use. Here’s one alternative to Charizard:

Ninetales is a much more energy efficent alternative to Charizard. For discarding one fire energy instead of two, Ninetales takes off 80 damage instead of 100. Ninetales can also be evolved from Vulpix faster that Charizard can from Charmander and Charmeleon.

There are many other instances of energy effiency and ineffiency. There you have just one example. Try to remember this and apply it to other Pokémon. Remember, energy ineffiency doesn’t just apply to discarding energy, if an attack takes alot of energy to use and it isn’t that great, then that is also ineffiencent.

Well folks, that about wraps up this installment of Pokémon: TCG Strategies. Until next time, I’ll leave you with this pic from a Pokémon card. Try to guess which Pokémon it is and e-mail me at MStelly007@aol.com. I’ll name the winners in my next post.

Who's that Pokémon??