Machoke · Base Set (BS) #34

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1. 

   Ambassador

   (2 years ago)

   Machoke and Kadabra have pretty high Retreat costs for being Stage 1s in the middle of an evolution line. A comparison with the trade evolutions shows that the retreat costs actually seem to line up with the printed Levels on the card. Since it’ll take a very long time to undo the “Retreat Cost is based on Speed” myth that’s perpetuated itself in the fandom for a very long time, I’ll list their in-game Base Speeds as well, alongside the card’s HP and Retreat¹.

   Pokémon – Base Speed – Card HP – Retreat Cost
   Machoke Lv.40 (BS) – 45 – 80 – 3
   Kadabra Lv.38 (BS) – 105 – 60 – 3
   Graveler Lv.29 (Fossil) – 35 – 60 – 2
   Haunter Lv.22 (BS) – 95 – 60 – 1
   Haunter Lv.19 (Fossil) – 95 – 50 – 0

   Since there shouldn’t be any special relationship for trade evolutions in the card game, let’s rope a few more Stage 1s into this;

   Pidgeotto Lv.36 (BS) – 90 – 60 – 1
   Dragonair Lv.33 (BS) – 70 – 80 – 2
   Charmeleon Lv.32 (BS) – 80 – 80 – 1
   Poliwhirl Lv.28 (BS) – 90 – 60 – 1
   Wartortle Lv.22 (BS) – 58 – 70 – 1
   Ivysaur Lv.20 (BS) – 60 – 60 – 1

   I’m leaving a few out, but there’s no apparent trend developing as I look through them. Certainly, with the first 5 cards, it looked like there was a trend between Level and Retreat, but for the other Stage 1s, there are likely some multifactorial concerns to take into account there.

   You won’t see any other non-fully evolved Stage 1s with a Retreat of 3 until the e-Card block². Machoke and Kadabra are quite odd cards out in this regard. A look at Pokémon Card Official Book 2000 proposes that the best way to play Machoke is to use Submission, use Super Potion to clear damage, and since you’ve just had to discard Energy, are relegated to using Karate Chop, which is fine, since you’ve just used Super Potion. It’s quite a convoluted proposal given you’d just want to evolve this thing (if not skip it entirely with Breeder), and in a meta full of Energy Removal, any recoil on Submission all seems entirely unfair if you’ve actually managed to power it up to being able to use it.

   ¹ It can be noted there were two other JP only cards that came out, such as two more Machoke cards that came out in the Vending/Expansion Sheet sets, with the following stats;
   Lv. 24 – HP60 – Retreat 2
   Lv. 28 – HP70 – Retreat 2
   ² The list of non-fully evolved Basics with a Retreat of 3 isn’t too long, just JU Rhyhorn and one of the two Brock’s Rhyhorn; BS Onix gets retconned into the list, with nothing joining this list until the ADV block.

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