“Hey! Learn our syntax here.”
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Poké-BODY ⇢ Saturation
When you attach a {W} Energy card from your hand to Quagsire, remove all Special Conditions and 2 damage counters from Quagsire.
{W} → Hyper Pump : 20+
Does 20 damage plus 20 more damage for each basic Energy card attached to Quagsire but not used to pay for this attack’s Energy cost. You can’t add more than 60 damage in this way.
illus. Miki Tanaka
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Blob Takeshi
First Quagsire since Aquapolis.
Ambassador
I’m digging myself into a hole on the comments of Miracle Sphere Gamma because my friend strongly disagrees with the choice of the word “picking” with respect to Rainbow Energy, in any situation. This card would comprise my counter-example.
Case: Quagsire has Rainbow Energy and a Basic {W} Energy attached.
· Scenario 1: You ‘pick’ Rainbow Energy to cover the cost the attack. The attack does 20 damage, plus 20 more damage for the Basic {W} Energy attached to Quagsire that is not used to pay for this attack’s Energy cost.
· Scenario 2: You ‘pick’ Basic {W} Energy to cover the cost of the attack. The attack does 20 damage, plus 0 more damage.
A couple questions coming up here;
1. Is there a better choice of word than ‘pick’, here?
2. Is this even a good example – that is, do you actually have a choice here? Has there ever been a ruling issued such that you actually do not get to choose how the attack cost is covered, and it necessarily *must* be covered in the most optimal way?
2a. As a matter of practical implications, when attacking with this Quagsire, with the Energy attachment as described above, can you choose Scenario 2 to deal 20 damage to Jungle Mr. Mime, or are you locked into Scenario 1, and therefore Invisible Wall is invoked and no damage is dealt at all? (More generally, suppose there’s some scenario where you don’t immediately want to KO a Pokémon, and just want to deal 20 damage. Are you allowed?)
Twylis
I don’t know of any ruling regarding this, but intuitively I don’t believe you would have a choice — with a Rainbow Energy and Water Energy, it would always deal 40 damage (and thus couldn’t harm Mr. Mime). It definitely feels like something that needs to be explicitly spelled out, though, and there’s definitely room for debate regarding it.
This card *is* acknowledged with respect to a different interaction with Rainbow Energy though, in the compendium:
https://compendium.pokegym.net/compendium-ex.html
You *do* have a choice with the order of effects of its Poke-Body, and can basically decide whether you get the damage tick before or after you use its Poke-Body. This does imply a level of “choice” with the energy cost of Hydro Pump too, but it’s odd they didn’t actually acknowledge it when they were clearly already looking at this card and its interactions with Rainbow Energy anyway.
I think one relevant aspect here is that this type of decision-making is only really mechanically possible in real-life gameplay. Nowadays we have PTCGO and the upcoming Pokemon Live, and it’s likely these processes would be automated if a card such as this existed within them (regardless of what the actual ruling would be). I haven’t personally played either, though, so if anybody knows if it has any mechanisms to handle choices like this, please chime in.
Ambassador
The way Hyper Pump is phrased so as to raise the question appears to be exclusive to Hyper Pump,and Hyper Pump only ever appeared in Generation III. Nothing like this immediately springs to mind.
For the sake of completeness, I did check the old JP rulebook and Q&A as well and didn’t find any direct mention of Hyper Pump [ハイパーポンプ].
2004 rulebook. Basically just says “if you can pay for an attack, you can use it!” and is generally a more bird’s eye view of of TCG rules vs. the advanced rulebook I’ve occasionally linked to for comments on Gen 8 cards. (Not sure when JP introduced the advanced rulebook, but I’m pretty confident it didn’t exist during gen 3, and somewhat confident it didn’t exist during gen 4.)
https://web.archive.org/web/20050408095503if_/http://www.pokemon-card.com/play/officialrule/official_rule_pcg.pdf
ADV ex1’s Q&A, for EX TMvTA Swampert 𝒆𝒙, no questions regarding Swampert [ラグラージ].
https://web.archive.org/web/20050205095529/http://www.pokemon-card.com/play/q_and_a/adv4_magumaaqua_qa.html
PCG1’s Q&A, for EX FRLG Kingler; no questions regarding Kingler [キングラー].
https://web.archive.org/web/20050205070614/http://www.pokemon-card.com/play/q_and_a/pcg1_qa.html
PCG3’s Q&A, for TRR Quagsire (i.e. this card); no questions regarding Quagsire [ヌオー].
https://web.archive.org/web/20050205071216/http://www.pokemon-card.com/play/q_and_a/pcg3_qa.html
Kind of surprised to look back on these again and realize how few Q&As there are overall, given how (relatively) light the rulebook is.
Twylis
Ah! Looks like Swampert ex’s Hyper Pump got mentioned in the compendium:
https://compendium.pokegym.net/compendium-ex.html
…..and it still doesn’t answer the question. They’re basically just saying that Special Energies don’t add to the damage, but we knew that already :/
Ambassador
Yeah, it’s one of those instances where they decided to answer the question they wanted to be asked, instead of what they were actually asked. Honestly, the JP Q&A does the same thing sometimes…
Twylis
On further contemplation, I think you *would* have a choice here, by virtue of there *not* being any ruling regarding it. It’s just a practical necessity, and with super niche situations like this, it does often seem the case that there’s a level of choice involved (again, as with the Poke-Body).
That said, you’re only picking which Energy is covering which part of the attack. You’re *not* picking what energy Rainbow Energy is actually providing.