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Super Energy Removal (Base Set BS 79)
Discard 1 Energy card attached to 1 of your Pokémon in order to choose 1 of your opponent’s Pokémon and up to 2 Energy cards attached to it. Discard those Energy cards.
Illus. Keiji Kinebuchi
Base Set — 79/102 — Rare
Mantidactyle
This card was so powerful that it was banned in Japan.
Oh, and it’s combo with Recycle Energy, just in case it wasn’t broken enough.
feyblade
It’s cards like these that make you wonder just what sort of discussions the design team was having when they made up their trainer cards. Base set’s trainerbase ranges from “situationally good” to “stupifyingly powerful.” If this card saw printing, what OTHER card ideas were deemed too powerful for play, and what ideas were nerfed before the initial print?
Nick15
Discussions? LOL
The original designers has NO IDEA what they were doing. To be fair, neither did Richard Garfield and the rest of Magic’s Alpha/Beta designers. Stuff like this, Oak, Bill, are effectively Pokemon’s “Power Nine”, akin to Magic’s Black Lotus, Ancestral Recall, and Moxes. That said, it’s fascinating how the most expensive card in Magic and Pokemon are 180 from each other: Black Lotus is kinda boring looking but has serious game play value, while 1st Edition Base Charizard is just super cool looking, but has zero play value.
JickFown, Cheung
I think if this card is a prima star card, it may be not too broken, but every deck will have one instead.
Otaku
It would have been interesting to see how an Ace Spec or Prism Star version of Super Energy Removal panned out; without serious playtesting and just Theorymon, I could honestly have seen such cards range from probably-broken-staples to niche-specialist cards and anyplace in between.
As for what the game’s designers from the time were thinking, it was NOT that they were releasing a TCG that would not only stick around for over 20 years, but be played competitively around the world! Looks like there was about 10 months between the official release of the first Pocket Monsters video games in Japan and the official release of the TCG, which means less than that was spent designing and balancing the gameplay.
Remember early suggested guidelines for deck building from official sources? If you actually follow those, a card like Professor Oak and Super Energy Removal, while still powerful is also super costly.
feyblade
It’s cards like these that make you wonder just what sort of discussions the design team was having when they made up their trainer cards. Base set’s trainerbase ranges from “situationally good” to “stupifyingly powerful.” If this card saw printing, what OTHER card ideas were deemed too powerful for play, and what ideas were nerfed before the initial print?
Benjamin Poke Battler
OP card. I neeeeed more.