- ↓ 0.20
- ꩜ 0.41
- ↑ 3.93
Ability ⇢ Earthen Shield
Prevent all damage done to your {M} Pokémon by attacks from your opponent’s Pokémon that have any Special Energy attached to them.
{M}{M}{C} → Push Down : 110
You may have your opponent switch their Active Pokémon with 1 of their Benched Pokémon.
illus. Hasuno
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It lived in the same environments as Rampardos. Their fossils have been found together—seemingly from after they’d fought to the finish.
SPIRE_FAN
Love the artwork. It’s so ironic that the TCG does a cool job depicting Fossil Pokemon just chillin in modern day regions….. and then sadly keep trying to push an unneeded mechanic that makes you “evolve” from an actual fossil that has hurt them in matchups (especially Trainer lock) since the dawn of time (pun not intended.)
Otaku
I’ll second that.
I appreciate the attempt at adding more flavor to the game through this, and to try and make Fossils distinct, but by this point, I think the best approach is to handle them like Ultra Beasts. Slap a tag on them in the corner of the artwork (or wherever seems appropriate) labeling them as “Fossil Pokémon” or “Restored Pokémon” or some new term, but they don’t evolve from Trainers, they don’t require the effect of a Trainer to hit the field, etc.
Something like the above Bastiodon would be a Stage 1, Shieldon would be a Basic, and there might be a support card called “Armor Fossil” that did something for the line the way Dusk Stone helps certain Pokémon… if that much detail is even necessary. It is like if Graveler, Hanunter, Kadabra, and Machoke required you discard a Pokémon Trader from your hand in order to evolve them!
SPIRE_FAN
Yeah out of all the sub-categories of Pokemon (Starters, Ultra Beasts, Fossils, Legendaries) Ultra Beasts got a net-plus while Fossils always have had a net-loss when it comes to their category. A lot of this is also like what you said, there’s simply a lack of commitment to really binding Fossil Pokemon together as a sub-group with cards that unify the archetype more (like Beast Ring/Ultra Space.) But even with that, Pokemon needs to stop the illogical “Aerodactyl EVOLVES from a fossil” stuff when he’s already a fully Evolved Basic in the games.
As for Starters and Legendaries….. well they just get a ton of positive attention WITHOUT an archetype, though you can literally say all of the EX’s in Gen 5 before the last set was just a Legendary Pokemon-thing.
Otaku
Evolving Pokémon also get the short end of the stick too often. I think the powers-that-be were onto something with the original approach to Pokémon-EX. There were still balance issues, but it was a way for high-powered Pokémon only “balanced” in the video games by their rarity and how late in the game you received them, to be at least somewhat balanced in the PTCG. I also wonder how great would Mewtwo-EX (NXD) have been without Double Colorless Energy? Darkrai-EX (DEX) without Dark Patch? Pacing has long been an issue, as has also been evolving Pokémon that were little more than filler.
Getting back to another point you made, I’ve often wondered if “Starters” should be their own mechanic. Instead of mulligans working as they do (a mechanic to deal with a no-Basic opening hand), why not emulate the game by designating certain Pokémon as “Starters”? You’re allowed one such card in your deck. It would be a designation, not part of the name, so Evolution, 4 Copy Rules, etc. work normally… but during setup, you search your deck for your starter (before laying down Prizes), and put them facedown into the Active position. Then just require all decks have a starter, and the mulligan mechanic could be used elsewhere, or abandoned entirely.
SPIRE_FAN
I like your way of thinking, I kind of wish the other 2 big TCG’s (Magic and Yugioh) did something to alarm the Pokemon TCG team for potentially losing their playerbase numbers to them. Because no matter the opinions on current Magic and Yugioh and their meta’s, they always think and bring in new ideas, mechanics, and archetypes. Something the Pokemon TCG has been lacking (the Urshifu stuff coming out is at least something I’ll give them that.) But the IP of Pokemon alone will net enough profit that they can make the game as simple and unbalanced as possible and not bat an eye.
But yes, to what you were saying, what seemed like universal energy accel to Pokemon no matter the Evolution stage (Dark Patch, DCE, etc.) just bolstered the notion of playing Big Basics and padding out the decklist with more of these Trainers (“Why dedicate a 4-2-4 line of a Darkness Stage 2 in a deck when I can just run 3 Darkrai-EX and be more consistent?!”) Sadly we’ve been living in an era where the rare times you see a Stage 2 is when they are used for Ability support (Even the Empoleon DEX that did well had an ability for sustained consistency.)
Otaku
Ah, looks like we finally found something to disagree on, SPIRE_FAN. XD
I wouldn’t hold up MtG or YGO as good alternatives to Pokémon myself, but this is a bad place to explain that. XD
Nosredna
I’m honestly okay with how they evolve from fossils, I just wish they made them more powerful compared to other stage 2 Pokemon. Not only are they competing with standard evolution cards that come from easy to search basics, they also have to compete with the actual backbone of the current format of unreasonably giant basic Pokemon. Giving this Bastiodon an extra 20 HP (or more) and a better attack would make it far more appealing of a card. Granted, Rampardos from this set is actually really good on paper, but the fossil requirement hurt it (as far as I’m aware) so maybe keeping the basic fossils is a lost cause.
Otaku
Think carefully about what you are saying, Nosredna… and remember that is the path the powers-that-be seem to take all. the. time. It can be hard to believe, but Basics haven’t always been the best Stage; indeed, there was a stretch where one assumed unevolving Basics were filler, and that something needed to be a Stage 1 or Stage 2 to have a chance.
I want a well-balanced metagame, and I believe (but do not know for certain) that such an outcome is most likely achieved through making the end results equal, and instead balancing the inputs. “End results” being the fully evolved forms of various Pokémon, as well as a balance between Pokémon Types, so that nothing it automatically too weak or strong because of such things. Think of it like solving an algebraic equation; the goal is to to isolate the variable or variables, and to do that, you perform the same operations on each side. In other words, if x-1=0, you add “1” to both sides, so that it becomes x=1.
Find a way to properly pace the game, so that there is time to evolve. Make evolving Basics and Stage 1 Pokémon worth the extra space they take relative to Basics. Some things would be restricted to higher Stages of evolution, but that gets back to pacing e.g. effects that are broken Turn 1/2 can appear on an Evolution but not on a Basic. Getting back to Fossil Pokémon… one of the additional issues is that there are a lot of quirky mechanics, like Pokémon evolving from Trainers that are put into play like Pokémon, which further complicate things. Maybe when everything else is sorted out, try it again but… for now, simplifying seems in order. Not that it will ever happen. XD
SPIRE_FAN
Pokemon has always had a problem with staying consistent with power scaling Basics/Stage 1’s/Stage 2’s, I think Gen 3 and 4 was the closest we have got to a healthy balance (this is also in part to the design philosophy of “working for your damage” and more attack/ability slots on each card to increase utility.)
The Rampardos from Platinum is a perfect example of a fully Evolved Stage 2 that was a bit overbuffed compared to other Stage 2’s to compensate for being from a Fossil card…… but they clearly were too optimistic with this and didn’t test enough to see how those compensations STILL could not break the weaknesses you will always have from needing to “evolve” from a trainer card. I was hoping that the Fossils in Gen 8 would just be fully evolved Basics as they are in the game like Aerodactyl as well, but I really shouldn’t be surprised at this point.
The TCG design team needs a complete re-work in design philosophy, they really had something going in Gens 3 and 4.