“Hey! Learn our syntax here.”
- zoom
- jpg (121 KB)
- cred: P.P.
2.2K
- ↓ 1.65
- ꩜ 5.37
- ↑ 40.00
Pokémon Power ⇢ Toxic Gas
Ignore all Pokémon Powers other than Toxic Gases. This power stops working while Muk is Asleep, Confused, or Paralyzed.
{G}{G}{G} → Sludge : 30
Flip a coin. If heads, the Defending Pokémon is now Poisoned.
illus. Mitsuhiro Arita · LV.34
Formats: Other: 1999–2001
External: Bulba ↗ · Shop: TCGplayer ↗, cardmarket ↗, eBay ↗
Thickly covered with a filthy, vile sludge. It is so toxic, even its footprints contain poison.
Mantidactyle
Please reprint this
coolestman22
What about a “this” that required a tool?
feyblade
Whooooo boy. With the ruling that effects that effect poke powers and pokebodies do not effect abilities, this guy and garbodor are just going to be bizarre. I can envision actual battles emerging between pokepower decks and ability decks.
HEZ
Not quite as good, Garbodor can’t end a Trainer/Item lock. There’s also better Grimers like the one from Legend Maker with Ascension (evolves from your deck) or the Rocket Returns one with a “Catcher” attack.
feyblade
“Even its footprints contain poison”
Yes, it certainly left an undeniable footprint on the Unlimited metagame. This is a perfect example of a card that “scales up” alongside power creep. As long as broken power/trainer combos exist, this will be there to stop the insanity. Sadly, it’s a stage 1 pokemon. If they wanted a true unlimited defining card that wouldn’t necessarily “break” the limited format it was printed in, they could print a variation of this ability on Lunatone, Sableye, Spiritomb, or Sigilyph
WilliamH.
The dirty sewer-dwelling redneck third cousin of Vileplume. :P
coolestman22
“It’s so toxic, even its footprints contain poison”
It doesn’t have footprints!
Dark Kira
What happens when this is active and confused (so that it power doesn’t work) and the other active Pokemon is Ditto FO?
Mantidactyle
From Wizards of the Coast :
Q. What happens if Ditto copies a Confused Muk (so that when Ditto copies Muk’s Pokemon Power: Toxic Gas, it turns off its own Pokemon Power: Transform)?
A. The end result is that Ditto is Ditto, not Muk. (Fossil FAQ, WotC Website)
Ambassador
I noticed something weird in the comments of EX Dragon’s Muk ex. In comparing that Muk to this one, Feyblade suggests that a difference between the two is that Muk ex’s Toxic Gas will be shut down by cards that shut down Poké-Bodies, but Fossil Muk’s Pokémon Power wouldn’t be.
That’s not right.
I have a very low regard for the idea of an English unlimited format – I think it’s a lost cause – but I’m going to throw people a bone here. In 2002, a Q&A was published to pokemon-card.com that errata’d Fossil Muk’s Toxic Gas to be a Poké-Body[1] (among errataing all other old back card Powers to be either Poké-Powers or Poké-Bodies). I’ve talked about this list only a few times on the site, and I don’t think people really grasped the significance of it.
In an effort to elevate awareness of this errata for the English fanbase, I’ve turned it into an image and written a whole blog post about it; https://ambassadortcg.substack.com/i/113180356/the-pokemon-power-errata
1. It’s probably the only decent counterpoint to my insistence that the game’s designers never meant to “mix” old back and new back cards in any serious manner. I feel strongly that this wasn’t meant to prop up the idea of a Japanese unlimited format supporting 1996 through 2001 and on, and much more likely to be something the Japanese team wrote up to support the English game (..and, after WOTC rejected it? published it to the JP site for some unclear reason[2]), but that’d still demonstrate an awareness such a format existed and they’d commit to *some* level of service for it.
2. It might not be as relevant anymore – I mean, I’m replying to an 8 year old thread, and both Powers, Poké-Powers, and Poké-Bodies have all now been replaced by Abilities, but I know some people might play a variety of different formats, and so on. This is an errata I’d strongly suggest you adopt, if it’s relevant to the game you’re playing.
Anyhow, check the list out. While I make blunt my views on the EN failure to adopt the new back as exactly that – a failure – I do walk through some examples both supporting and rejecting the premise of “old back” and “new back” cards ever being able to interact. At the least, it’s part of the building blocks of something I’ve been trying to figure out for a while now. The endgoal feels like it’s finally in sight in terms of some of the major questions I have about the TCG :)
[1] In full, the errata is that Toxic Gas is a Poké-Body, and shuts down all other -Powers and -Bodies. i.e. it’s identical to EX Dragon’s Muk.
[2] Honestly, at this point in the franchise, maybe they felt like WOTC had pretty much become an obstacle to getting the game out to English players, which they’d by now stated several times they wanted to standardize internationally. If WOTC did reject it, this May 5, 2002 errata – just a few weeks before WOTC’s May 24 release of Legendary Collection – might’ve been like throwing a bottle into the ocean and hoping English players might find it and realize how they *intended* English players to play their unlimited format, even if WOTC was making a mess of it.
JP
fwiw it’s a common (although not universal) “house” rule for cubes to split Pokemon Powers into Poke-Powers vs Poke-Bodies, based on activated vs non-activated. (It’s definitely not as common for folks to play with the same split for constructed Unlimited.)
parttimetcgcollector
Pretty much if it has a continuous effect, then it is a poke-body. So, Dark Vileplume’s Hay Fever is a poke-body. Is that the case?
Ambassador
@JP: Yeah. I mean.. I think it’s intuitive, even if the errata hadn’t been issued, so I’m not surprised to find out people already implemented house rules along these lines. But I see lots of older comments where folks seemed to think Powers were discretely different from Poké-Powers and -Bodies, and rolled with these weird interactions. I’m going to go out on not too much of a limb and assume some WOTC ruling was to do it like that..? [1]
At the same time, though, some folks I’ve talked to have a sense of “I think we *did* know this, and then kind of forgot, or something?” Twylis has mentioned Otaku might’ve helped proliferated the info on Pojo.com, I think, so I’m not the first person to discover this list exists – I’m glad that this is technically a refresher for the EN fanbase, rather than brand new information.
@parttimetcgcollector: Exactly! (And Dark Vileplume is on the list.)
[1] The rulings on https://compendium.pokegym.net/compendium.html have it backwards, defining -Powers and -Bodies as “sub categories of Pokemon Powers.” This ends up in something that is almost right – they do say Toxic Gas shuts off -Powers and -Bodies, but then says something like this;
Q. For the E-cards that target only Poke-POWERS, do they also target Pokemon Powers?What about E-cards that target only Poke-BODYs? Do they also target the older PokemonPowers?
A. No they do not. As previously stated, anything that effects Pokemon Powers (likeSputter) affects both Poke-POWERs and Poke-BODYs. It does NOT work in reverse. (May22, 2003 WotC Chat, Q1680)
Well, that’s wrong, because yes they do.