Pokemon Card of the Day: Feraligatr Prime (Heart Gold/Soul Silver)

Today I´m reviewing an incredibly hyped card from the HeartGold and SoulSilver set, Feraligatr Prime.

Back when the game first started in 1998, Base Set Blastoise was printed. Blastoise's Pokemon Power, Rain Dance, allowed for multiple Water Energy drops per turn, allowing the player to power up their big hitters ridiculously fast. Combine this with the absurdly powerful Trainers from Base Set and a few other friends along the way like Suicune ex, and Rain Dance is considered by many to be one of the best and most important deck archetypes in the Pokemon TCG.

Let us now look at HeartGold and SoulSilver, and Feraligatr Prime. For the first time since Wizards of the Coast were in charge of the game, Rain Dance has been reprinted in its original glory. But how will it do in our current metagame? Chances are, a pretty good Rain Dance deck could happen, even though we don't have the old Trainers. Immediate combos with Feraligatr Prime that come to mind are Lumineon MT, Lapras PL, or even Starmie HGSS as main attackers, and Delibird HGSS for card draw. Even more fun happens when the new Reviving Legends set comes out in the US, as Lanturn Prime is going to combo fantastically with Rain Dance.

As for Feraligatr's non-Power stats, it has 140 HP, which is pretty good for a Stage 2. Grass Weakness isn't too bad to have right now, but if this deck's popularity takes off, people will start playing potent Grass decks again in a tournament setting like Jumpluff and Meganium Prime. No Resistance is too bad, and a Retreat Cost of 3 is expensive, so hopefully you won't be retreating too much.

Other than Rain Dance, Feraligatr has a single attack. Hydro Crunch deals 60 damage plus 10 damage for each damage counter on the Defending Pokemon for [WWWW]. While the cost looks really expensive (and it is), Rain Dance powers this up very quickly and allows you to hit hard soon. While 60 damage for 4 energy is pretty bad on its own, Feraligatr can score many two-hit KOs because of the damage-increasing effect. Overall quite a solid choice.