Pokemon Card of the Day: Tyranitar Prime (Unleashed)

Today's Pokemon Card of the Day is Tyranitar Prime from the Heart Gold/Soul Silver Unleashed set. This Prime card has the most hp of any of the Prime's in the Unleashed set with 160 hp, which is pretty good. A x2 weakness to fighting type Pokemon isn't too bad since fighting Pokemon aren't that popular, but any x2 weakness can do a fair amount of damage. I was surprised to see this card had a resistance type since most powerful Pokemon don't, but this card has a resistance to Psychic type Pokemon of -20 hp, which could be really beneficial since Psychic Pokemon usually like to spread damage around so any damage done to Tyranitar Prime by a Psychic Pokemon would be minimal. A 3 colorless energy retreat cost is just above average for a card like this and you should be able to retreat if you have to because Megaton Tail takes 4 energy cards so you'll be left with one energy card if you do retreat it and you'll still be able to do a move with one energy card on Tyranitar Prime if you need to put it into play soon after again. As far as Poke-Powers or Poke-Bodies go Tyranitar Prime doesn't have any but it does have 3 moves that do some damage. The first is called Darkness Howl and for one darkness energy it does 20 hp damage to each Pokemon in play yours and your opponents, so my strategy with this would be to only use this move if you have dark Pokemon in play, which shouldn't be hard if you have a mainly dark Pokemon deck. Tyranitar Prime's second move is called Power Claw and for 3 energy cards, 1 darkness, 2 colorless, it does 60 hp damage, which is average for 3 energy cards, but the thing I like about this move is that it is not affected by Poke-Powers, weaknesses, or resistances. Tyranitar Prime's third move is Megaton Tail which takes 4 energy cards, 2 colorless energy cards, and 2 darkness energy cards, and does 120 hp, which is really powerful but the downside to this move is that you have to discard the top 3 cards off your deck. As far as strategy goes I wouldn't put Tyranitar Prime into your active Pokemon position until you have 3 energy cards on it so you can at least execute Power Claw and knock out most Pokemon in two turns. I would suggest using Megaton Tail just about every turn, especially if you have some type of Poke-Power or Supporter Card in your deck that allows you to retain Pokemon cards from your discard pile. Another strategy to play with this card is to make sure you only have dark Pokemon in your deck and then use Darkness Howl as many turns as you can without getting knocked out so you can probably get at least 60 damage on each of your opponent's Pokemon and then you should be able to knock out all of them with one strong Pokemon. So once again, thanks for reading my review and stay tuned for tomorrow's review of Charizard from Secret Wonders.