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Arcanine (Base Set BS 23)
Arcanine — 100 HP — [R]
Stage 1 — Evolves from Growlithe
[R][R][C] Flamethrower: 50
Discard 1 [R] Energy card attached to Arcanine in order to use this attack.
[R][R][C][C] Take Down: 80
Arcanine does 30 damage to itself.
weakness: [W]×2
resistance:
retreat: 3
Illus. Ken Sugimori
Base Set — 23/102 — Uncommon
A Pokémon that has been long admired for its beauty. It runs gracefully, as if on wings.
feyblade
If this thing’s attacks required 1 less energy apiece, this thing would actually be decent uncommon fodder and it could stack up to pokemon from the later generations.
Brian Duddy
Well that would have made it one of the best Pokemon in BS so…
Otaku
Feyblade, MégaLAG, bduddy:
Historically, this actually was a solid card back in the day. Remember, when the game first hit it seemed like everyone was playing AND there was pretty extreme card scarcity. Remove the nearly two-decades of accumulated Poké-Wisdom and anything resembling the modern internet infrastructure (general and Pokémon-specific), and Arcanine actually did pretty well back in the day.
Otaku
If we restrain ourselves from RADICALLY altering the early card pool, some less-than-thorough testing I did on my own suggests that Arcanine – like MOST of the early card pool – just needed Energy Removal and Super Energy Removal GONE. Lose those, and Base Set Electrode can be sacrificed to speed up your first (maybe a second, rarely a third) Arcanine. Expect to ALSO lose an Evolving Basic against Haymaker, maybe two if you go second. :( The thing is, once you get Arcanine going, without S/ER, Haymaker struggles because you’re OHKOing it far faster than it can respond. Your own Base Set Electabuzz and some Jungle Scyther are needed for Water match-ups, but you’re solid or strong against everything else.
Mantidactyle
I didn’t experience the extreme card scarcity where I live. Seems to have been a problem in the US, not in western Europe.
And we had Buzz Chan Doduo decks right from day 1 (though it was a few months after the game was released in USA).
Otaku
Your mileage may vary. ;)
Mantidactyle
50 for RR & discard R, and 80 for RRC (OHKO on Buzz and Hitmonchan, without having to run DCE), on a 100 HP Pokémon in Base-only would have been very good, not “decent”. 4/4 Arcanine, 3~4 Electabuzz, 2 Doduo, 4 Lass, and the standard Trainers aside Super Energy Removal which you wouldn’t be able to run effectively (or perhaps in 1 copy).
I’m not saying it would have been a bad thing, btw. I would have loved seeing evolution cards played in Base. Another one I’m thinking about is Nidoking, reduce Thrash cost to GC, Toxic cost to GG, and it becomes pretty solid.