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- ↓ 0.42
- ꩜ 0.79
- ↑ 89.00
{G}{C} → Revenge Blast : 120+
This attack does 40 more damage for each Prize card your opponent has taken.
VSTAR Power
Ability ⇢ Star Bloom
During your turn, you may heal 120 damage from each of your Benched {G} Pokémon. (You can’t use more than 1 VSTAR Power in a game.)
· VSTAR rule: When your Pokémon VSTAR is Knocked Out, your opponent takes 2 Prize cards.
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Twylis
It bothers me how the VSTAR mechanic really doesn’t *represent* anything. VMAXes obviously represent Dynamax and Gigantamax, EXes got Mega forms to evolve into, and BREAKs invented a TCG-exclusive thing of getting covered in gold paint. But VSTARs are just…..a pokemon evolving into itself. It’s not unprecented, since Lvl X cards were sorta like that too, but those still had a clear theme of leveling up which was shown in how they could still access their old attacks.
They should’ve really had form changes where possible. Shaymin V could have been the Land Forme while Shaymin VSTAR is Sky Forme, Arceus VSTAR could have changed into its Flying-type form, and they could’ve maybe even depicted Megas for things like Charizard VSTAR. If nothing else they could’ve kept the same form and just become shiny or something, especially since shiny pokemon are already associated with stars (see: Pokemon Star cards).
VSTAR describes the card layout more than it describes anything about the pokemon itself.
Dewott
I think they haven’t really explained it very well at all but from what I can tell its as if the pokemon are gaining some kind of cosmic power (probably has something to do with Arceus) and become more powerful versions of themselves. That to me makse sense at least
Nos
It is a very bland mechanic thematically. Looking back on earlier sets, things like Dark Pokémon and Delta Species had a surprising amount of lore behind them not connected to the video games. More recently, things like Prism Star, VUnion, and VStar cards just seem like additional mechanics for the sake of having additional mechanics.
INTERNETFRIEND
Good point on Prism Stars.. I remember it occurred to me it was a bit weird it didn’t seem to “be” anything and was expecting it to turn out to be mostly connected to Gen 4, or Lost Zone, or something along those lines.. and then it just ended up this sort of ambiguous nothing. For me, the most “this doesn’t seem to actually mean anything” mechanic was with Fusion Strike cards – I think the point of Rapid Strike and Single Strike was lower energy cost attacks, and higher energy cost attacks in exchange for more damage output, respectively, and the tie-in to Urushifu, but I cannot pick up on what Fusion Strike is meant to be, lore-wise or mechanics-wise (aside from the benefit of having the ‘Fusion Strike’ tag on the card so certain other cards can synergize with it).
VStar is similarly “meaningless” in terms of not meaning anything to the lore/flavor text of a card, yes, but in the tradition of ex, EX, and GX multi-prize cards, so there’s at least a mechanic purpose to their existence. BREAK cards are essentially successor to Lv.X (additional ‘evolution’ Stage without being an evolution proper), V-UNION are successors to LEGEND cards (card art is spread across more than 1 card for a neat effect) ..so I think it’s probably the “Prime” cards from HGSS block that really do claim the top spot for really just meaning nothing, mechanically, flavor-text, or otherwise?
Nos
Well V-UNION cards, unlike the majority of Pokemon LEGEND, only have one Pokemon on the card. What’s the flavor reason for not being able to play a Greninja unless it came out of your discard pile in four pieces? Unless it’s meant to reflect a Viktor Frankenstein-esque grave robbery and stitching together of parts (that would be kind of cool honestly). As for Primes, yeah, I really hated those. I might have blocked them out of my memory lol. They aren’t even really a mechanic per-se, more so just a way to sell more packs.
As for Fusion Strike… Yeah, I don’t get that. The fact that it’s main Pokemon is Mew feels really weird as well. If it were exclusive to genetic or mechanical Pokemon, like Deoxys, Genesect and Mew. I could understand the theme there, but it’s not. Then I realized it was exclusive to Pokemon with multiple forms or the ability to transform. But then there’s Accelgor. So the lore aspect is shaky at best. Mechanically, Fusion Strike seems to revolve around versatility and disruption. Honestly I was hoping we could’ve seen more from it.