Pokemon Card of the Day: Toxicroak (Arceus)

Today's Pokemon Card of the Day is Toxicroak from the Arceus set. I am doing this card once again from a request from someone, like pretty much all my cards have been up to this point, so if you want me to review a card make sure and comment and tell me. So Toxicroak is a stage 1 fighting Pokemon with an hp on 90 which reminds me a lot of my Lucario I used to play in my deck which also had the same hp, I think this card is actually better though. A +20 weakness to Psychic Pokemon could be troubling but at least it is only 20 hp. Toxicroak has no resistance and a retreat cost of one colorless energy which isn't too bad. This card has no Poke-Power or Poke-Body which at least draws me away from this card a little bit but it does have two good moves especially the second one. Its first move Corner does 20 hp damage for one fighting energy and also makes your opponent's active Pokemon unable to retreat the next turn, so essentially you could use this move 3 times in a row and knock out most basic Pokemon since they usually have 60 hp, and the only way your opponent could stop this is by using a supporter/trainer card to remove damage or evolve the Pokemon. Toxicroak's second move is called Convert Blow and is a much better move than Corner. For two colorless energy cards it does 30+ damage depending on what type of energy you have attached to Toxicroak. If Toxicroak has any Psychic energy attached to it, the defending Pokemon is poisoned and if Toxicroak has any fighting energy attached to it the move does 60 hp damage total, so if you had a Psychic/Fighting deck you could use this move to both poison and do 60 damage to the defending Pokemon. Also you could just have a plain fighting deck or psychic deck and have some special energy cards in the deck which you could attach to Toxicroak and have them act like the energy card you need. As far as strategy goes, it probably depends on what type of deck you have, if it is a spread damage type of deck or just a fighting deck. But either way I would definitely use Convert Blow as much as possible. Now that I think about it I would definitely use special energy cards in your deck to enable Toxicroak's 60 hp attack for 2 energy. More than likely you will be using this card in a Psychic Deck so including special energy cards is necessary for this card to use all of its potential. Overall this isn't a bad card, I wouldn't use it as the main powerhouse of my deck, but it would be a nice asset to a fighting or psychic deck. So thanks for reading this review and make sure you stay tuned for tomorrow's review of Steelix GL from the Rising Rivals set.