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  • Nidoking
    • Base Set
    • 12 / 102
  • Poliwrath
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Ninetales · Base Set (BS) #12

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  • 👀 3K
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$ / TCGplayer (13 hours ago) ↗
  • ↓ 7.00
  • ꩜ 19.87
  • ↑ 40.00
Ninetales · 80 HP · {R}
Pokémon (Ninetales) › Stage 1 : Evolves from Vulpix and into Ninetales BREAK

{C}{C} → Lure
If your opponent has any Benched Pokémon, choose 1 of them and switch it with his or her Active Pokémon.

{R}{R}{R}{R} → Fire Blast : 80
Discard 1 {R} Energy card attached to Ninetales in order to use this attack.

weak: {W}×2 | resist: n/a | retreat: 1
illus. Ken Sugimori · LV.32
Classic › Base Set (BS) › #12/102 : Rare Holo · ↘ Jan 9, 1999
Formats: Other: 1999–2001
External: Bulba ↗ · Shop: TCGplayer ↗, cardmarket ↗, eBay ↗
Very smart and very vengeful. Grabbing one of its many tails could result in a 1,000-year curse.

Rating

Overall: 55.32% (26 wins, 21 losses)

Within Set & Formats:

  • Base Set: 100% (2 wins, 0 losses)
  • BS-on (1999–2001): 67% (2 wins, 1 loss)

Note: The rating system is currently disabled.

Reader Interactions

14 comments

  1. WilliamH.

    (10 years ago)

    Seems like this was a good card back then. It has built-in Gust of Wind, and a strong attack with only a single Fire energy discard, and a great retreat cost. HP seems kinda low but, I bet it was good back then.

    Reply
    • Curtis WilliamH.

      (10 years ago)

      It was a decent card, but its biggest issue was ?Energy Removal. An ER on Nintetales after a Fire Blast, and its basically down 2 turns of attachments.

      Reply
      • WilliamH. Curtis

        (10 years ago)

        I could see how that would ruin the strategy. Better respond with an ER of your own!

        Reply
        • Mantidactyle WilliamH.

          (10 years ago)

          Tis a bad card, 4-energy attack without any form of acceleration on a stage 1 made it unplayable.

          Reply
          • WilliamH. Mantidactyle

            (10 years ago)

            haha. That’s too bad. So this energy acceleration, it sounds like it’s been a huge deal since the very beginning of competitive play.

          • Chosen_PikachuWilliamH.

            (10 years ago)

            Competitively speaking, any attacker with more than a 1-energy cost was unplayable in Base Set, because every deck ran 4 Energy Removal, 4 Super Energy Removal, 4 Item Finder. It was literally impossible to charge a(n?) RRRR cost. Lol, even typing that is painful.

          • WilliamH. Chosen_Pikachu

            (10 years ago)

            That’s too bad. I guess Pkmn has never had a slower competitive format?

  2. feyblade

    (10 years ago)

    If they wanted this to be symmetrical to Arcanine, fire blast should have been (R) (R) (C) (C) . If that were the case, this would actually be an acceptable card. As it is , though ,you won’t be pulling a fire blast out on turn 3 , and , with multicolored energy as rare as it was at the time, your deck’s energy base would have to be very heavily invested in fire for Fire Blast to accomplish anything.

    I do have to wonder, though… which is more valuable in any given modified format? HP, or Energy? Which drawback really was the worse one?

    Reply
  3. Anthony POKEMON EXPERT

    (9 years ago)

    My friend has this but it sucks because its from the second base set ahhhhhhhhhh this agravating typing this

    Reply
  4. No Name

    (9 months ago)

    CGC identified an alternate variant of this card, with a black flame
    https://www.cgccards.com/news/article/8861/pokemon-ninetales-variant/

    Reply
    • TwylisNo Name

      (9 months ago)

      Misleading name for the variant, since the black part is just the background. The flames are light blue in both, and represent kitsunebi, ghostly flames associated with foxes.
      https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kitsunebi

      Reply
      • AmbassadorTwylis

        (3 months ago)

        BS Ninetales (and its EVO retrain) is still, as of 2022, the only time this Lure attack has appeared in the TCG¹. It’s got an interesting name in the original edition of the game – かどわかす [𝐊𝐚𝐝𝐨𝐰𝐚𝐤𝐚𝐬𝐮], which can be translated as “Kidnap”. Would that go along with the kitsunebi mythology, or is it a separate thing entirely?

        ¹ Jungle Victrebeel’s “Lure” is a different attack, さそうかおり[𝐒𝐚𝐬𝐨𝐮 𝐊𝐚𝐨𝐫𝐢].

        Reply
        • TwylisAmbassador

          (3 months ago)

          There’s some context to this word that’s being lost in translation; Google is translating it as itself and defining it as “Deceive and take (a woman or child) away. Kidnap.” Meanwhile translating “kidnap” to Japanese directly yields several words, none of which are kadowakasu.

          I’m not finding any explicit link to kitsune, but they are heavily associated with deception, and kidnapping doesn’t seem out-of-character. There *is* related phenomenon with the kitsunebi, though:
          https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kitsune_no_yomeiri
          Essentially, the Kitsune no yomeiri is an event where a procession of kitsunebi would appear and signal a wedding of foxes. Some legends state the wedding was actually a trick, and the lights would disappear when a human got close (thus presumably getting the human lost).

          “Lure” actually isn’t a bad translation, as simple as it is. “Lure Away” would better capture the tone of it though.

          Reply
    • Tokiwa City SmuggleNo Name

      (3 months ago)

      It’s more like Wizards brighten the background to show its true colors more. I don’t think there was nothing black about the card but rather the saturation was low in the original Japanese art.

      Reply

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