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Tyrogue
&endash; Baby Pokemon &endash; 30 HP Baby
Power: If this Baby Pokemon is your Active Pokemon and
your opponent announces an attack, your opponent flips a
coin (before doing anything else). If tails, your opponent's
turn ends. Tyrogue has a lot of great things going for it. Right off the bat it's a baby, so it has the mandatory flip when it's the defending and it's being attacked, it has no weakness and resistance, and it has free retreat. As a minor advantage, it can also evolve three different ways, which could keep your opponent guessing if Hitmonchan hasn't been totally smoked out of your area (he's still happily alive and punching where I play). Last up is his attack, Smash Punch. 30 damage for one colorless is quite good, even if there IS a coin flip. What you have to remember here is that anything that attacks him is also going to have to flip through his baby rule, so it changes the perspective a little. Tyrogue dominates the following: Clefable: Ahh man, a friend of mine plays 'Fable, and this thing just destroys it. You can NOT play Clefable against Tyrogue with any measure of effectiveness. The Tyrogue has to flip once for 60 damage, a near-kill to a Clefable, whereas the 'Fable has to flip twice: once for the baby rule and once again for the Metronomed Smash Punch. If the Tyrogue manages to beats the odds and die on ya, you can snap up the recycle energy you used to fuel him (although he WILL take absolutely any type of energy), dump it onto another Tyrogue, and begin the cycle again. It forces the 'Fable player to fall back onto their "Plan B", and if they don't have one, they're going to be having a tough time. Electabuzz: In a Tyrogue-Electabuzz match up, the Tyrogue needs a single colorless, a heads and a Pluspower to KO the 'Buzz (or just a heads WITHOUT a Pluspower if the Buzz took ten damage &endash; which it probably will, due to its self-damage). The 'Buzz needs an Electric, a Colorless, a heads, and it could damage itself for ten if the attack goes through the baby rule. Not a far match up at all, especially considering that this is one of those great times to evolve Tyrogue into Hitmonchan. Sneasel: This thing HURTS Sneasel. I play SneaselKingKrow a lot, and when I see two or three of these little guys hit the table, my Sneasels cower in fear and hope Murkrow can take care of the them. These are brutal against Sneasel because: Tyrogue is protected by a baby rule: fifty-fifty chance says Sneasel's Beat Up won't even scratch it. Tyrogue is easy to fuel: one crappy energy of any type fuels this little bad-boy, whereas that big-bad Sneasel is eating up two darkness energy. Tyrogue deals 30 damage: The fact that this is exactly half of Sneasel's life, and won't cause a gold berry to go off between turns if the Sneasel is un-damaged, can be reeeally inconvenient. It also first-turns Jigglypuff, Erika's Jigglypuff, Clefairy, and a lot of electric-types on a heads. Plus it whacks any baby for a KO on a lucky deuce. Good for Super Energy Removal too: When your opponent starts plucking high-hp Pokemon out of his deck and Smash Punch becomes sort of useless, don't think of Tyrogue as a bench-warmer! No! Instead, use his delicious (hopefully recycle) energy to get off an SER or three! Now the little guy has his cons as well as his pros. Some cards DO frankly kick the little guy's tush. Those being: Scyther: He has fighting resistance. He deals just enough damage to kill little Tyrogue in one hit, for one "anything" and one DCE. Oh, and he has free retreat, so there's no point in baiting him out with Tyrogue and then retreating him. This is where the Gligar Vs. Tyrogue debate starts to come in. Gligar matches Tyrogue's free retreat, and it gets killed in one shot from Scyther, and like Tyrogue it can't deal any direct damage to it. Tyrogue's pro against Gligar in this situation is the baby rule: Scyther still has to flip to whack it. Gligar on the other hand just gets knocked in one shot without a flip, but it can poison a Scyther for ten damage that turn (whereupon the Scyther will probably be retreated and healed of the poison). It's a pretty even split: pick whichever fits your play style and meta-game. Rocket's Zapdos: Here's where there's a clear winner between Gligar and Tyrogue: Tyrogue can't TOUCH Rocket's Zappy. The Gligar on the other hand can poison it and then fly away while you place in a staller and deprive the Zap of the energy it needs to retreat (laughing evilly as it dies a slow, painful death). Very nice, especially in an all-fighting deck. Again, the only thing Tyrogue has going for it in this situation is its free retreat. Murkrow: As an active Pokemon, Tyrogue can go toe-to-toe with a 'Krow for a while. With two heads it can KO a Murkrow in two hits, while the poor bird just sits there and flips tails against its baby rule. However, one heads and the Tyrogue's dead (assuming the 'Krow has a single Darkness Energy attached). And that's nothing. The real problem comes when Tyrogue is benched and getting nailed by a Murkrow. If your opponent locks you and you have Tyrogues out, your opponent is going to be drawing some prizes, fast. It's not a pretty sight, and it is for this reason that playing Tyrogue as an anti-Sneasel can be quite risky: establish control and you can destroy the sneasels, and sweep out the 'Krows afterwards. But if you lose control, you're going to go down very, very hard. Chansey: I'm adding this one in just because it is such a gray area. On one hand, a Chansey with no Metal Energy and no Gold Berry is going to go down reeeeeally fast to a Tyrogue. On the other hand, anyone who plays Chansey is running four Metal, three or four Gold Berry, and three or four Item Finder. So it becomes an exercise in futility if you try to attack a Chansey with a Tyrogue in mid or late game. Early game it can work well though.
Whew. That's all I can really think to say about my favorite Scuffle-Type Pokemon. He works well in decks that run recycle energy, not too well in decks that run ultra-low energy counts (like a four-Metal four-DCE Chansey deck). He works well in meta-games with only light showings of Scyther and especially Rocket's Zapdos, whereas in areas that see a lot of these two cards, he's nearly un-playable. So keep that in mind, and if you've never played with him before, give the little guy a chance. You'll be very, very surprised at how well he works in Standard.
Note to Modified Format Players: Tyrogue is horrible in Modified, don't play him.
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Smash Punch (30) &endash; Flip a coin. If tails, this
attack does nothing.