Pokemon Card of the Day: Gengar (Diamond and Pearl)

Today's Pokemon Card of the Day is Gengar which is a rare non-holo from the Diamond and Pearl set. It is has an hp of 110 which isn't bad for a stage 2 psychic Pokemon. A +30 weakness to dark Pokemon won't do too much, personally I thought it would have been a x2 weakness but a +30 weakness to Dark Pokemon is good because they aren't very prevalent. A -20 resistance to normal type Pokemon is also really good because normal type Pokemon are a staple in about every deck out there. Also a 1 colorless energy retreat cost is good, but you probably won't ever need to use it when you can just use Shadow Dance to do damage and retreat and the same time. The first of Gengar's moves is super powerful, for only one Psychic energy, Life Drain, allows you to put damage counters on the defending Pokemon until it is 10 hp away from feinting, so if you have a Pokemon that has 200 hp you can do 190 hp in one turn with one Psychic energy card, the only thing that is a downfall to this card is that you have to flip a coin to see if you can use this move at all, if you get heads you can if you get tails you can't, so you have a 50% chance of doing 190 hp damage, I would take that chance any day. Gengar's second move is called Shadow Dance which takes 3 energy, 2 Psychic and 1 colorless, and does 40 hp damage in any way you like to your opponent's Pokemon, but you almost must switch Gengar with one of your benched Pokemon, so you can use Life Drain first and then finish the Pokemon off with Shadow Dance and then retreat and let another Pokemon do some damage. The way I would use this card would be to get it out as your active Pokemon as soon as possible and then use Life Drain to get it 10 hp away from dying, then I would use Shadow Dance the next turn to knock the Pokemon out, then when I have to switch Pokemon, I would either have a Pokemon on my bench that has a free retreat cost so I could put Gengar right back in there, or have a powerful Pokemon already built up on my bench so I could start dominating with that. All in all, this Gengar can cause a lot of havoc and do damage quick for only one energy, it is definitely a card to keep in my when you are looking at Psychic decks and you could also use this card with Gengar Lv. X, which I reviewed here. So thanks for reading this review and stay tuned for tomorrow's review of Salamence ex from EX Deoxys.