“Hey! Learn our syntax here.”
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- cred: P.P.
673
- ↓ 0.84
- ꩜ 1.18
- ↑ 2.50
Poké-BODY ⇢ Binding Aura
Your opponent can’t play any Basic Pokémon or Evolution cards from his or her hand to evolve an Active Pokémon and can’t attach any Energy cards from his or her hand to an Asleep Pokémon.
{C} → Sleep Inducer
Switch 1 of your opponent’s Benched Pokémon with 1 of the Defending Pokémon. Your opponent chooses the Defending Pokémon to switch. The new Defending Pokémon is now Asleep.
{P}{C} → Psyshot : 40
illus. Midori Harada
External: Pokemon.com ↗, Bulba ↗ · #ad / Affiliate Links: TCGplayer ↗, cardmarket ↗, Amazon ↗, eBay ↗
Anonymous
This would be epic with Darkrai Lv.X.
Curtis
If only you had a way to prevent Switch or Warp Point or whatever, you could basically have sleep lock. Maybe Vileplume? I’d say Dark Vileplume, but the goal of the deck is to be annoying, not stop the game in its tracks.
Foon-Gus Fring
I’d love to play this card in some wacky unlimited format alongside Hypnotoxic Laser + Slumbering Forest
Twylis
One of the more egregious examples of “Why not just say ‘Pokemon’?” Basic pokemon can’t be used to evolve; I can’t think of any workarounds that would change that. Brock’s Ninetales only works with Evolutions, and more recent instances like Ditto Prism Star and Evolving Skies Zoroark specify Stage 1s.
Foon-Gus Fring
I think it’s probably referring to Baby Pokemon??
Twylis
Baby Pokemon are considered Basic pokemon, per the upper-right-corner of the gen 2 cards, and as of gen 3 (when this card is from), the baby designation was gotten rid of in favor of just making them regular Basics. Though the Skyridge Friend Ball does act as if they’re a separate category, so who knows what they were thinking.
Still, the “Basic Pokemon or Evolution” phrasing was an incredibly annoying phrase that persisted all the way through gen 3. Normally nonsensically inane phrases like that can just be assumed the fault of Wizards, but if that were the case, TPC would’ve probably fixed it sooner.
https://pkmncards.com/?s=%2Btext%3A%22basic+pokemon+or+evolution%22&sort=date&ord=auto&display=images
Ambassador
I’m actually kind of ok with the persistence of the phrase? I’ve also always figured it was written that way to exclude Baby Pokémon, as occasionally cards like Broken Ground Gym would specifically call out Baby Pokémon in JP *and* EN, so omissions felt deliberate. Maybe Baby Pokémon are long gone by this point, but I’ll give them more than the benefit of the doubt – maybe the translation team consulted with PCL, who advised them that they hadn’t made their minds up insofar as whether “Baby Pokémon” as a stage would ever come back or not.
I actually suspect “Baby Pokemon counts as Basic Pokémon” is not completely true – I can’t find any such clause printed on any JP edition Baby Pokémon.
Ambassador
To somewhat bolster the theory, I’ll point out the EN edition of Expedition Dual Ball has “search your deck for a Basic Pokémon card other than a Baby Pokémon card” where the JP edition just has “search your deck for a Basic Pokémon card”. WOTC might’ve intended to ‘clear things up’ and avoid silly questions – “If I only have a Baby Pokémon in my opening hand, is that a mulligan?” – but overly simplified a more complicated situation. Baby Pokémon are functionally similar to Basic Pokémon in a number of circumstances, but when card text is talking about “Basic Pokémon”, you probably should not lump Baby Pokémon into that. (This actually probably would’ve been healthier for the meta???? WOTC what the heck did you do?????)
Twylis
Huh, that would explain it in gen 2 at least. The phrase was still inexplicable prior to that, but I suppose many cards from gen 1 are poorly phrased in general. It is worth noting that an errata was issued once DP came out ruling that all instances of that phrase should read as “any Pokemon”, so it’s a moot point nowadays.
(also, missed Foon-Gus Fring’s meaning — yes, Basics can be played to evolve from Babies! Completely forgot that example)
Ambassador
Uh, yeah, I think we’re stumbled on something funny even in the JP edition. The biggest thing that crossed my mind here was “Wait, Nightly Garbage Run wasn’t supposed to be able to get Baby Pokémon back?”
Nightly Garbage Run’s JP text does actually have wonky wording as well;
· JP: あなたのトラッシュから、ポケモン(または進化)…
· WOTC print: Choose up to 3 Basic Pokémon cards, Evolution cards,…
· Suggested translation: Choose up to 3 Pokémon (or Evolution cards),…
By the time the Rocket set came out, even in Japan, work on the next Pokémon video games (i.e. GS) was already more than well under way, so they would’ve known they were going to have Baby Pokémon on the way and were actually doing a bit of future-proofing. Still, while the Japanese text is saying “Pokémon (or Evolution)”, that’s not exactly the same as “Basic Pokémon (or Evolution)”. The next example that is coming to mind for me is Master Ball;
· JP: あなたの山札の上から7枚を見る。その中に「たねポケモン」または「進化カード」があれば…
· WOTC print: Look at 7 cards from the top of your deck. You may choose a Basic Pokémon or Evolution card from those cards…
· Suggested translation: Completely identical…
* Except without the errata where Baby Pokémon always count as Basic Pokémon. I’d guess while PCL was shaky on how they were going to handle Baby Pokemon while developing Rocket (which released 1997), perhaps(???) they’d sorted it out by the time the JP print of Master Ball came out (1998). They didn’t get the language right on Nightly Garbage Run but Master Ball was probably written with the deliberate intention of excluding Baby Pokémon, and it would’ve been the same for the EN edition of the game, save for the clause they decided to print on Baby Pokémon.
Despite the compelling narrative I’ve strung together here, like a lot of other posts I make, there’s a lot of speculation going on. :) At minimum, it’d be nice to know if PCL ever errata’d Nightly Garbage Run to exclude Baby Pokémon before running around and insisting this is a hot new errata drop to consider for anyone wanting to play old formats the way they were designed (as opposed to “as printed”).