Japan's XY9 Set: 'Rage of the Broken Sky,' New 'Battle Strengthening Sets'

crystal_pidgeot

Bird Trainer *Vaporeon on PokeGym*
Member
This is different. Would like to see lock abilities go away though if they aren't going to give us options to deal with them effectively.
 

Clear

Birb is the Word
Member
hopefully, they give you Deluge Blastoise or something. lol
but hey, garbodor is back.
 

shadows797

Aspiring Trainer
Member
noooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo!!!!! R.I.P. my swampert and eevolutions decks
 

Hexogen

Merc W140
Member
seems like I have to quit this game now. Still waiting for a shiny Seismitoad EX reprint though…-.-
 

Ms Hugo

Aspiring Trainer
Member
Just terrible. Make new cards!

Hopefully the upcoming format will make him a bit less effective, but still. This means we have a Garbodor for the next 3 years.
 

Javi Blizz

Spanish TCG Player
Member
Why? I'm the first one that wanted a new usefull Garbodor, but why in this way? Instead of doing this, make a new one, make this one with another pokemon or reprint the one that already exist, so I could use my shiny Garbodor t.t
 

Purrloin

#509
Member
Welp. Here's to hoping for a Trainer card with an "If your opponent plays Garbodor, he or she loses the match" effect.
 

Blui

lv85 paladin
Member
seems like I have to quit this game now. Still waiting for a shiny Seismitoad EX reprint though…-.-

But Toad is and was far more degenerate than Garbodor ever was at any given point.

Honestly, I like Garbodor as a card, it was never absurdly powerful on its own as cards like Tool Scrapper and Startling Megaphone just shut it off straight away and being printed on a Stage 1 also hindered its overall playability (even though it was still very powerful). In fact, before Plasma Freeze Garbodor wasn't even a particularly good card because it was bad to have a 3 RC Pokemon that could just be Catchered up.

One of the things I enjoy about Garbodor is that its one of a few choice cards that actually interact with your opponents and that it wasn't a form of hard lock that couldn't be countered. As I said before, cards such as Tool Scrapper and Startling Megaphone were things that kept Garbodor from being entirely oppressive. Something like Seismitoad or Exeggutor just sucks because you have no way of interacting with it, there's nothing you can do to stop it after it swung other than hope you can KO it and pray they don't have another.

Another thing that Garbodor did was create one of the most interesting (although easy-ish to pilot) decks in recent memory in Darkrai/Garbodor. Who would've thought that shutting off Darkrai-EX's powerful Ability would result in a net profit? For that reason, Garbodor is a card that also inspired innovation, something the Pokemon TCG is absolutely dreadful at doing.

Stray observations about Garbodor in the current meta:
+Shuts down Shaymin-EX
+Shuts down non-interactive Abilities on Pokemon such as Altaria and the Eeveelutions
+Doesn't exist in a world with Hypnotoxic Laser, one of the cards that pushed it over the edge
+Less Bats
+Interacts nicely with more oppressive cards such as Aegislash and Pyroar
-Decks will need to be built differently (less emphasis on Shaymin)

side note: i hope they finally reprint tool scrapper, that card is baler as anything
 

MegaButterfree

Old Timer
Member
A few have mentioned it, but I don't see why they couldn't have given this ability effect to another Pokemon, with another name (other than Garbotoxin) or caveat (vs. having a tool attached)...sometimes there seems to be a creativity void in the Pokemon world..
 
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