Magmar · Supreme Victors (SV) #65

2 comments

1. 

   LeoBN

   (4 years ago)

   Assuming a flamethrower’s path is a straight line near the source… I can only see this Magmar slipping in the magma!

   Reply
2. 

   Ambassador

   (1 year ago)

   My comments on SW Wooper‘s card design (and justifying its +20 Weakness) were very quickly running away from being a conversation about SW Wooper and more a conversation on Magmar cards, namely SW Magmar, MT Magmar, and SV Magmar and their Retreats.

   SW and MT Magmar and their HP / Weakness / Retreat are fairly easy to explain;
   – 70 HP is the upper end of normal for Magmar up until this point. We wouldn’t expect either the Weakness or Retreat to be increased to compensate.
   – +20 Weakness is unusual for a Basic Pokémon in DP. However, it is perfectly ordinary for a Stage 1 Pokémon in this era to have a +20 Weakness, and MT and MD Magmar is in line with most (if not every?) other DP Basic Pokémon that has a Baby Pokémon printed in this block.
   – {C}{C} Retreat seems heavy – its HP doesn’t point to a {C}{C} Retreat being necessary, and in fact I would’ve expected it to be a single {C} to compensate for the +20 Weakness, but the same principle that caused its Weakness to go up is being applied here – Magmar is being treated like a de facto Stage 1 Pokémon and all these stats are in line for a Stage 1 card of the era¹, and we also end up with a very smooth evolution line – MT Magby has {C} Retreat, SW/MT Magmar have {C}{C} Retreat, and MT/SW Magmortar have {C}{C}{C} Retreat.

   If we apply the same set of logic to SV Magmar, its HP and Weakness check out, but now its Retreat seems a bit too low – shouldn’t it be {C}{C}? The simple answer is no, and thankfully it’s not to difficult to explain. I actually like the way PUSA/TPCi handled Generation 4 of the TCG, clearly delineating the DP, DPt, and HGSS eras from each other², and wish they had done this for Generation 3, or had kept doing it for later Generations³, but I digress (and digress a fair amount in the below footnotes). The logic has to change because SV Magmar is in a different block of the TCG from the other two Magmar cards, and in this block, there is no Magby, and so the rhyme and reason gets shaken up completely. Bearing in mind the Platinum block is a *sequel* block and not an entirely independent block;

   – 70 HP is the upper end of normal for Magmar up until this point. We wouldn’t expect either the Weakness or Retreat to be increased to compensate.
   – +20 Weakness is unusual for a Basic Pokémon in Platinum, but Platinum is a sequel block to the DP block, and has to consider the precedent of Magmar having a +20 Weakness. Not that precedent is binding (compare DP Electabuzz to SW Electabuzz), so they *could’ve* set it back down to +10. They chose not to.
   – {C}{C} Retreat is unusual for a Basic Pokémon in Platinum, but Platinum is a sequel block to the DP block, and has to consider the precedent of Magmar having a {C}{C} Retreat. Not that precedent is binding, so they *could’ve* chosen to *not* set it back down to {C}, but in this case they did so.

   Another way of looking at it is that while they’re not negating the existence of Magby, but it had been a few sets since they’d printed one, and in a block this card is part of a sequel to. So it’s like you have this Schrodinger’s Magby in terms of whether to treat this Magmar as a Stage 1 or a Basic, and in deciding whether to adjust the Weakness or Retreat, you pick one or the other and call it a day. I think they could’ve just as readily gone with a +10 Weakness and left the {C}{C} Retreat. You’ll probably also notice that SV Magmortar has also been adjusted in line with this Magmar, with its Retreat being adjusted from {C}{C}{C} to {C}{C}⁴.

   ¹ Suggested search query; stage:stage-1 retreat:2 series:diamond-pearl
   ² IMO, Stormfront shouldn’t have been classified as *either* a D&P or a Plat set. In many contexts, Japanese marketing treated the set it was based on as it as its own thing entirely (think of like, Generations and the way it wasn’t treated like an XY set, it was just its own thing) – but international editions of Gen 4 TCG sets introduced and insisted upon the convention of every TCG set being prefixed by the current flagship mainline game (except for some incidental sets, like the example I just used).
   ³ i.e. the results you get for the search on this site for queries; || series:ex || lumps together the ADV, ADV ex, and PCG eras of the TCG, || series:xy || lumps together the XY and XY BREAK blocks, and || series:sm || is lumps together the SM Expansion Pack and SM Enhanced Expansion Pack blocks. That this site handles it like this is is a consequence of how PUSA/TPCi has handled it over the years, and its focus on the English edition of the TCG. It’d also be pretty difficult to unwind and try to force English sets to fit the JP categorization system – Hidden Fates simultaneously belongs to SM Expansion, SM Enhanced Expansion, and neither – but it’s another one of those things worth keeping in mind when considering card design. For consistency’s sake, the EN fan community should’ve treated the DP, Platinum, (and HGSS? debatable) blocks as a giant continuous series, and any reason for grouping them together only became obvious in hindsight, long after the convention of treating them separately was already in place.
   ⁴ And, something I get to say so often: all of these possible decisions regarding a Pokémon card’s Retreat, and yet and no point is its in-game Speed stat really being brought into the conversation. It’s almost like There’s No Correlation Between In-Game Speed And Retreat. Crazy!

   Reply