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779
- ↓ 0.01
- ꩜ 0.37
- ↑ 1.98
{C} → Defense Curl
Flip a coin. If heads, prevent all damage done to Brock’s Sandshrew during your opponent’s next turn. (Any other effects of attacks still happen.)
{F}{C} → Rolling Attack : 20
illus. Ken Sugimori · LV.13
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feyblade
Ha. Base set Sandshrew is almost entirely superior to this guy. Your goal with a pokemon like this is to stall out for an evolution. This guy needs to drop his shield to attack, which is a notable liability. Brock’s Sandslash (Gym Challenge,) on the other end of the spectrum, is generally better than fossil sandslash thanks to its (bizarrely off-flavor for Brock) ability to poison the foe.
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This is the debut of Defense Curl in the TCG, though it’s contested. ポケモンWiki’s page on Defense Curl seems to suggest that Scrunch, an attack which showed up on Base Set Chansey, is Defense Curl. Its original name, まるまる, means something like “roll into a ball”, and Defense Curl’s name is まるくなる, which means more or less the same thing.
In favor of this would be the fact that Japan’s Base Set had a couple egregious errors, including misspelling Dragonair’s name. Mixing up まるくなる for まるまる seems plausible. However, if まるまる was an error, it seems strange it would ever show up again – like it does on DR Shelgon (#20), MT Chansey, et al. – or that they’d pass up on the opportunity to ‘fix’ the error for the retrain of Chansey in Evolutions.
It doesn’t necessarily need to be an error, though? It could just be that they want the ‘other’ move, まるまる, being part of the same “move family” as the ‘main’ move, まるくなる. The effects are completely identical across all instances across the years, it’s tough to say. I’m inclined to say Chansey takes this for me after all – sorry Sandshrew :(