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4.7K
- ↓ 0.34
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- ↑ 19.99
Your opponent’s Active Pokémon is now Poisoned. Flip a coin. If heads, your opponent’s Active Pokémon is also Asleep.
· Item rule: You may play as many Item cards as you like during your turn (before your attack).
illus. 5ban Graphics
Formats: Modified: 2013, 2014 · Standard: 2015 · Expanded: 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021, Current
External: Pokemon.com ↗, Bulba ↗ · #ad / Affiliate Links: TCGplayer ↗, cardmarket ↗, Amazon ↗, eBay ↗
feyblade
This card is so useful that it’s just silly.
It’s a generally-superior PlusPower.
It enables instant kills with Raticate (BCR) #105.
It has brutal synergy with Virbank City Gym (PLS) #126.
It allows “status conditions matter” effects to suddenly become ridiculous.
It ruins HP calculations.
Even if the foe switches out to avoid taking 90 extra damage just from virbank+hypnotoxic beam before he can get off his second attack, you will have forced a switch in the process.
All of this stuff is only considering the poison aspect. For some bizarre, surreal reason, they decided to throw the entirety of Sleep! on top of this already good card. Now this has the ability to randomly buy you a turn in the earlygame.
And yes, to make this card even sillier, it acts as a one-sided Cessation Crystal (CG) #74 against non-donk pokemon in unlimited. Notably, Muk · Fossil (FO) #13 (and yes, errata means that poison shuts off its Pokemon Power, as well). Obviously you’re not going to be able to hit.
This card is no Erika · Gym Heroes (G1) #16, but it’s a contender for being one of the top few trainer cards of all time.
Curtis
There should be a rule against making cards this good at TPCi. Its a PlusPower at worst, deadly stall card at best. Too good.
HEZ
Ha! They threw the rule book out some time ago >_< Now they just bash the keyboard, stick a picture on it and hit print.
Mantidactyle
Broken obv
coolestman22
Just in case some people still haven’t reached the conclusion yet, Laser stalling almost never works. Even the 25% of the time the sleep status works, odds are your opponent will just have a Switch or be able to Rush In and retreat anyways. Unless you’re about to play a Professor Juniper · Dark Explorers (DEX) #98 there’s no good reason to try to stall via Laserbeams.
TheFlub
I wonder how much differently this would perform if it was auto-sleep, and flip for poison.
coolestman22
I wouldn’t play that.
HEZ
What if it was a Supporter? It really should have been Roxie :/ It’d even go with Virbank City Gym then… oh well.
Jared Scott
This is pretty much the only Team Plasma card I would use in my deck. Thank goodness this is not a rare.
DiamondsAhoy
I have two of these. Got em in the same pack.
inatspong
I just realized how fitting the flavor of this card is to its design. I mean, how could Team Plasma be so dastardly as to use a weapon that likely violates the Geneva Convention in a Pokebattle?
Dylan Frye
how much is it worth?
feyblade
Worth less than the average shipping and handling costs associated with any given card. See the diamond in the bottom right? That means that it’s an uncommon. Uncommons are basically worthless as far as price goes. This is probably one of the most expensive uncommons out there because of its impact on competitive play, but it’s still not worth much.
EverPhoenix
Not much being still more than 90% of the rares in any given recent set.
GadgetJax
I wish I could say that I will miss this card in the XY-on format, but I won’t. Good times from here on out now that Seismitoad-EX/LaserBank is through!
DumbNerd
I still don’t understand how this card isn’t banned.
Otaku
Two reasons:
1) In general, the powers-that-be behind Pokémon only ban cards when they do some pretty crazy stuff. Eliminate a potential win condition from consideration. Enable a reliable First Turn Win. Enable a reliable First Turn Lock, or lock before your opponent can ever do it naturally. If something is simply “too good”, they’ll wait it out, as power creep happens…
2) …which is what happened with Hypnotoxic Laser. It still has a place in certain decks, but it ain’t what it used to be. It might still be a problem if it were Standard-legal, but it isn’t. Doing extra damage – or in this case, Poisoning your opponent’s Active to fake it – only matters when it lets you take KO’s at a faster rate. Even that only matters if the price is right. That often isn’t the case for Hypnotoxic Laser anymore.
There is a small reason to consider banning it, and that is because of the annoying First Turn Win decks that utilize it… but Hypnotoxic Laser isn’t even the real problem in those decks; it is just about everything else.
Foon-Gus Fring
Great to use with Slumbering Forest… or, in some wacky super-unlimited format, with DS Hypno…