A new set is coming and that means that the meta is going to get hot again! Things will get steamy as we get closer to Worlds where a new world champion will be crown. Worlds will be even more hot because it will be the first tournament where the new set Steam Siege will be legal. That means plenty of new cards will be attempting to take over the format in one of the most prestigious events in competitive Pokemon.
So this week in TCG Jump we are going to look at a card that could see some play with the introduction of Steam Siege. It is a tiny Pokemon with tons of fire. Your battles will really heat up due to how fast it can move. This may be a spring chicken but it has a lot of peck to it. This week’s featured card is Torchic from Primal Clash!
Torchic is a Fire type Pokemon from Primal Clash. It has an Ancient Trait call Omega Barrage which allows it to attack twice during a turn. This Pokemon has 50 HP, a weakness to Water and a single energy retreat cost. It has two attacks. The first attack is called Flare Bonus which cost a single Fire energy. This attack allows you to discard a Fire Energy to draw two cards from your deck. The second attack is called Claw and also cost a single Fire energy. You need to flip a coin when you use Claw. If you get heads then Torchic does 20 damage. If tails then nothing happens.
The Pros
What makes Torchic even worth looking at is Omega Barrage and single energy attack. If you can flip heads twice then you can do 40 damage for a single energy. If you attach a Muscle Band to Torchic then two heads means you are hitting 80 damage. If you are wanting more HP but still want to hit hard then attach a Fighting Fury Belt to make Torchic’s 50 HP to 90 HP to hit 60 damage if you hit two heads. This is all possible thanks to Torchic’s Ancient Trait which helps double your damage output.
Now think about how powerful Torchic can be once cards from Steam Siege raid the format. After all, we can always make Torchic hit even harder thanks to a certain card named Volcanion EX. What can Volcanion EX do? This card has the Steam Up ability which can boost the attacks of all Basic Fire Pokemon by 30 if you discard a single Fire energy.
So lets do some math. You have your Torchic in the active with a Muscle Band attach and decided to discard a Fire energy to activate Volcanion EX’s Steam Up. If you get two heads when attacking with Claw twice then you are hitting 140 damage. If you want to heat things up even more then have a second Volcanion EX on the bench to use a second Steam Up to raise your damage output to 200. That is some real fire power that can knock out an EX Pokemon!
The Cons
The bad thing about Torchic is that Claw all depends on a coin flip. If you get tails on both of your Claw attacks then you just wasted an attack. Attacks that rely on coin flips are mostly high risk-high rewards. You will have a high reward if both attacks hit but if you fail then you fail hard.
This is especially true with Torchic’s second con: Low HP. 50 HP won’t get you far in the TCG. You have big EX Pokemon who can hit more then 50 damage for their attacks. A Seismitoad EX without any Tool attach can knock out Torchic with a single Quaking Punch. You can run a Fighting Fury Belt to give Torchic 90 HP. If you do that then you could live the big ugly toad’s attack. It isn’t much and you lose a bit of power but it is better then nothing. Though if you want to knock out Torchic then most of the time you need to just hit 50 HP which most EX Pokemon can do in some form or way.
How to Use It
Torchic won’t be your main attacker. If anything, it will be used as a fun side attacker to put in your Fire deck that features Volcanion EX.
Lets take the situation from above. You start off with Torchic in the active and attach a single Fire energy on to it. You go ahead and place a Volcanion EX on the bench and attach a Muscle Band to Torchic. You discard a Fire energy to activate Steam Up. You have a fifty-fifty chance to flip heads from using two Claw attacks. If one of those attacks is heads then you are doing 70 damage for a single energy by using Torchic. If you want to heat things up even more then get a second Volcanion EX to use Steam Up to hit 100 for one heads. That puts you in the range to knock out an EX Pokemon if you are lucky enough to hit two heads.
If you are playing this strategy in Expanded then you have Victini from Nobel Victories. This Victini has the Victory Star ability which allows you to reflip your coin flips used for attack once per turn. So if you want to try to do a bit more damage after flipping a tail or two then you can add Victini to your deck.
You have three options when using Torchic in your deck. The first one is as an early game attacker to give you a chance to discard energy. You will use Volcanion EX on your bench to discard energy to power up Torchic to help it do major damage early in the game. That way you can later on retrieve that energy by using Blacksmith to a big attacker. If this is post rotation then it will be more fuel for Volcanion.
The second option with Torchic is to use it to pick up knock outs later on while setting up for a second one. Let say you do not take the knock out on a Pokemon and miss that sweet knockout by fifty damage. You can simply send out Torchic to get lucky with a heads to take a knock out and get lucky again on a second Claw attack to damage your opponent’s incoming Pokemon thanks to Omega Barrage.
The third option that you will have with Torchic is just go full gimmick by using Claw to take all your knockouts by doing 100 to 200 damage with the help of Volcanion EX’s Steam Up ability. This method is just having fun and taking advantage of Volcanion EX’s ability.
No matter what option you decide on, Torchic is a non-EX Pokemon that cost one prize card. So even if you get tails on Claw then it could only set you back one prize.
While there will be better attackers to combine with Volcanion EX, Torchic is the only one of those Pokemon that can attack twice in order to do 200 damage. It is just silly to think that a single Pokemon like Torchic can hit 200 damage. Things are going to get hot thanks to Steam Siege and we can see that with Torchic.
The post TCG Jump: Featured Card- Torchic appeared first on Pokémon Crossroads.


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