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Dark Muk (Team Rocket RO 41)
Dark Muk — 60 HP — [G]
Stage 1 — Evolves from Grimer
Pokémon Power: Sticky Goo
As long as Dark Muk is your Active Pokémon, your opponent pays [C][C] more to retreat his or her Active Pokémon. This power stops working while Dark Muk is Asleep, Confused, or Paralyzed.
[G][G] Sludge Punch: 20
The Defending Pokémon is now Poisoned.
weakness: [P]×2
resistance:
retreat: 2
Illus. Kagemaru Himeno
Team Rocket — 41/82 — Uncommon
Muks appear suddenly, spreading sludge everywhere. Whenever one appears in a city, panic ensues.
Kristóf
Actually, it’s one of my favorite cards from the whole game. Easily one of the most underrated cards period. Just think about it. 20 damage and poison in the second turn? Also, the opponent can’t really retreat? Combining it with Gust of Wind is just evil.
100000Volts
Let’s not forget it gives the finger to the opponent.
Otaku
The Pokémon Power was kind of good; though it escapes me now as to why it was so important, back then you could retreat more than once per turn. In fact the only limits were other card effects, including failing a Confusion check (that Special Condition used to force you to flip to attempt to retreat out of it).
The attack wasn’t that impressive, however. From what I could tell, it followed proper pricing for the time, but then again this was a 60 HP Stage 1; even when it first released that was still 10-20 HP too small. Erika’s Jigglypuff could OHKO it with a Double Colorless Energy and two PlusPower, and even after the shift to Rocket-On Modified, a deck’s main attacker usually had at least a chance of hitting that hard. Just looking at the Energy costs, though, it was good: [C] used to pay for 10 damage, [X] (an Energy cost that was something other than [C]) paid for 15, and guaranteed Poison was worth [C] as well. So 20 damage = [CC], Poison = [C], put it together and 20 damage with Poison = [CCC] = [GG].
Krisi92
Guaranteed poison is always good, though, and it was pretty rare back then. Really the only one that comes to mind is base set Nidoking (aside from the Japanese version of Rocket Grimer).
Sure, it could have more HP, but essentially doing 40 damage for [GG] on the second turn and blocking the opponent from retreating on the second turn without any major setup is really good. I know there are much better cards out there, but this guy has won me so many matches.