Pokemon Card of the Day: Rampardos (Platinum)

Today's Pokemon Card of the Day is Rampardos from the Platinum set. This is a stage 2 Pokemon card with an hp of 130 which is right around average for a stage 2 Pokemon like Rampardos. Rampardos only has a +30 hp weakness to grass type Pokemon. It has no resistance type and has a low retreat cost of 1 colorless energy card. I really like Rampardos's Poke-Power called Iron Skull which says that Rampardos's attack's damage isn't affected by resistance, Poke-Powers, Poke-Bodies or any other effects on the defending Pokemon. This will become in handy because a lot of decks are built around specific Poke-Powers or Poke-Bodies that limit the damage that is able to be done to their active Pokemon, with this card you will be able to do at least 40 damage every turn, with the necessary energy cards that is. Rampardos has two moves, the first is called Head Smash and for only 1 fighting energy card, Rampardos does 80 damage which is absolutely fantastic, but if the Pokemon would be knocked out by this move Rampardos does 40 hp damage to itself. Rampardos's second move is called Mold Breaker and this move takes two energy cards, one fighting, one colorless, this move does 40 hp damage and all damage done to Rampardos until the end of your next turn is reduced by 20. As far as strategy goes I would definitely use Head Smash every time if the defending Pokemon won't be knocked out, that will work on most non-basic Pokemon at least the first turn. Once I get close to knocking the Pokemon out I will use Mold Breaker. I will use Mold Breaker in two situations, the first being if I am facing a basic Pokemon with less than 80 hp, I will use Mold Breaker twice to knock it out because more than likely the defending Pokemon doesn't have any moves that will do more than 20 hp so no damage will be done to Rampardos if it uses Mold Breaker, the second situation I would use Mold Breaker in would be when I need to knock out a Pokemon, I would do this so I don't do damage to myself and because when I knock out that Pokemon the next Pokemon that comes into play hopefully won't have any energy cards on it, or maybe just one so they will have to do a weak move and then no damage will be done to Rampardos if it is 20 damage or less done from the defending Pokemon. So thanks for reading my review today and stay tuned for tomorrow's review of Muk from Platinum.