This Trashy Pokemon is Dominating the Competitive Card Game

With over 800 Pokemon currently in existence, there's bound to be a few clunkers. Take Garbodor, [...]

By Christian Hoffer

With over 800 Pokemon currently in existence, there's bound to be a few clunkers. Take Garbodor, for instance. This literal walking pile of garbage has been the subject of countless scorn since it first shuffled into the popular game franchise back in 2011. When gamers want to criticize the Pokemon franchise, they often point to Garbodor as an example of how the franchise lost its creativity...even though it's the spiritual successor of the sentient pile of toxic sludge Muk, which was one of the original 151 Pokemon.

Although Garbodor is treated as a running joke even among many Pokemon fans, there's one arena in which it's enjoy some measure of success: the competitive Pokemon Trading Card Game (TCG) scene. Garbodor is currently one of the hottest cards on the TCG circuit, having transformed the metagame when it was released earlier this year.

So why is Garbodor such a hot commodity among Pokemon TCG players? It's due to one of Garbodor's special attacks: Trashalanche. Trashalanche does 20 damage for every Item card in an opponent's discard deck. Since many competitive decks are stacked full of items that either boost Pokemon or allow a player to pull cards from their desk, Garbodor is a unique threat that can singlehandedly dismantle a lot of opponents.

Garbodor's other attack Acid Spray can also hurt opponents by forcing them to discard valuable energy off their active Pokemon.

The Pokemon TCG site Charizard Lounge ranks two Garbodor-based decks among its top ten decks heading into this weekend's North American International Tournament. The site even speculates that one Garbodor deck, an easy to use deck that partners Garbodor with an Espeon-GX card that Confuses opposing Pokemon and forces them to use a curing item, will end up being the most popular deck of the tournament.

Because of the popularity of Garbodor in the current metagame, many top players are now relying on decks that contain very few items. Garbodor's rise also led to many players abandoning the once popular Decidueye-GX/Vileplume deck that was all the rage over the winter.

Garbodor's dominance on the competitive TCG scene is proof that any Pokemon can be great, provided it has a spot to prove its worth in battle.

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