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

Otaku said:
I find it a buzzkill when people hype cards, especially overhype cards. They rarely live up to the expectations except when they are negative e.g. "This will force the game to go this way even more!".
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Why? Why is this different from all the other Evolutions with some promise but which cannot hope to keep up with the contemporary metagame because the pace has become too quick and Evolving Pokémon are largely worthless and thus just wasted deck space? If anything, the fact that the designers keep doing this is just a sign they are going to keep doing it.

The more useful Evolving lower Stages we see, the more big, Basics we see that take a few turns to properly set-up and can't really do anything before then, the more promising things are for a balanced metagame where fully Evolved Pokémon (what includes Basics that don't Evolve!) are on approximately equal footing. ;)
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I was just following on what WPM said... Sure, it probably doesn't mean anything and nothing will change but it doesn't hurt to speculate... Also, we're thinking there may be evolution support not because of this card in particular but because of the set's theme being EXs vs Megas vs BREAK... And I don't think people were overhyping the card so to me that was buzzkilling... and this is coming from someone who's usually the buzzkiller...

On the other hand, what we don't need are ideas that were fully implemented but failed spectacularly before like
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Been there, done that, bought the t-shirt. It didn't balance things out, it just ended up making Evolutions overpowered for a while, until by the end it only made specific cards overpowered. Although such things work across the board, they don't fix problems.
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You know, I don't actually play competitively, or even play at all, so you can dismiss what I say at will, but I've always followed the competitive scene due to pure interest...
If I remember correctly, Rare Candy and Broken Time-Space also coexisted with Pokémon SP which everyone complained about back then... But I also remember people complaining about the bunch of Flygon, Beedrill, Magnezone Prime, etc. decks, for example... My point being, at least back then, there were actual Stage 2 main attackers in decks whereas now people only use them as support pokémon, mainly.
I don't know if Rare Candy being printed again the way it worked before would fix things, but are you seriously telling me that it wouldn't help evolutions cards? I keep seeing people asking for Broken Time Space reprints... I doubt that will happen (well, it happened but only for Grass-types) but that's why I said Rare Candy would be a start.
 
Otaku said:
If you want this card that is fine, but I don't believe this is the first good Raticate that we have seen... because frankly it isn't that good. XD
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Aw come on, it's a good raticate. This is all any raticate fan could ever hope for. I love my ratty. :(
 
Unfortunately PCL has made it so good cards don't make it competitively, only the broken ones. Raticate as a theoritical Stage 2 is probably not considered broken. x_x
 
OMG when I first saw raticate and how he had a kind of sucky attack, my mind was like, "There is DIFFIDENTLY going to be a Raticate break with a MUCH better attack," and what did we get, a RATICATE BREAK. I CALLED IT!! Also, that art on the card is AMAZING.
 
Metalizard said:
I don't know if Rare Candy being printed again the way it worked before would fix things, but are you seriously telling me that it wouldn't help evolutions cards? I keep seeing people asking for Broken Time Space reprints... I doubt that will happen (well, it happened but only for Grass-types) but that's why I said Rare Candy would be a start.
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Well, my attempts at making it in the competitive scene failed spectacularly and are horribly dated (turns out I "choke" rather easily under pressure >.>).

Still, as someone that has been playing the game a long time, the short version of what the entire game needs (not just Evolutions) is proper pacing. What does that mean?

The idea behind the game is to enjoy any Stage of Evolution right? Or at least the non-gimmicky core three: Basic, Stage 1 and Stage 2. So the thought is this: instead of trying to balance things out by making Evolutions stronger than Basics (which just makes Basics and sometimes Stage 1 cards terrible if it doesn't in fact fail entirely) or instead of trying to speed up Evolutions (which is begging for broken combos because the point is for these cards to take a two card investment and one or two cards to get into play):

1) We need the powers-that-be to stop making big, Basic Pokémon (or looking at Night March, even small ones) that hit hard and fast. In fact, we need them to specialize: if something is meant as an opener, that is what it does. It doesn't have a good enough attack to be the opener and the main attacker. If it is the main attacker, it needs to take a few turns to still be built up, giving Evolutions time to get into play. Same for valuable Bench-sitter. That right there solves some of the problem with "card advantage", because now a single big, Basic can't take the place of two or three cards worth of roles.

2) Evolving Pokémon need to be better. An Evolving Basic Pokémon can and should double as an opener. A transitional Stage 1 should probably be on par with a Supporter as a coming-into-play Ability or as an Item card if it has a once-per-turn-effect or as a Stadium if the effect is always on. In both cases when giving them HP, I recommend looking at the HP score of the fully Evolved form and subtracting a bit from that (say 20 or 30) for each lower Stage. This "front loads" the HP which is important for the TCG where a twice Evolving Basic is facing things far bigger than it has to deal with in the video games (...or at least than it has to deal with when you don't make a bad call there =P).

3) Nothing does damage on a player's first turn, not as a player rule but as a design principle. The-powers-that-be need to start designing cards that can't do damage on either player's first turn. Go ahead and add in other effects; the game seemed a lot more fun when I was able to attack to help my set-up for the first few turns instead of almost instantly be struggling to stay in the game.

Put these three together and you remove the speed and card count advantages of Evolutions. We have seen hints of this at times, but it never appears to have seen an across the board application. Of course, the issue is that such cards would struggle against the current card pool, to which I suggest upping HP scores (but not damage); older cards will hit the new stuff hard but the extra HP will keep them at least potentially playable while the newer stuff won't overpower the old because they won't hit as hard... creating a temporary balance. After the current cardpool rotates out, odds are power creep will inflate HP scores and/or damage, but that is a separate issue (and potentially a non-issue if handled correctly: I don't expect an evergreen card pool).

Questions? Comments? I understand a lot of people think this is nonsense. XD
 
^Actually, you have very good points and it makes a lot of sense... Seems like you've put a lot of thought into this.
 
Wow, it's actually not bad with its heal ability. Though, I do think the DRX Ho-oh is better in terms of attack. I really love the new art!
 
I have to have this card.It would be nice if the card could attack with fire energy so I cant see any competitive use for this card because of that. I don't want 4 energy on any card with things like X Ball around.

I also just noticed this is a colorless Pokemon. I want a full art version of this. Give me my Pidgeot EX.

Edit, is the ability translated right? Are we sure it doesn't say heal 50 damage from 1 of your Pokemon with an [R] energy attached to it or is it just Ho-Oh? It seems so odd to have an ability that doesn't work with the card at all.
 
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The cards looks freakin' beautiful! I recognize Eske Yoshinob did a good job this time... And I like it's a Colorless one, we haven't seen one since Neo Revelation...
It's just a shame that energy cost... why the hell [G][W][L]? No sense... It should have been [R] instead of [G], but they didn't include a [R] cost in the attack so it wouldn't abuse its ability right away... Still, for the same purpose, I would rather see a [W][L][C] cost than this...
Rainbow Energy is a must, I'd say... Ok, it has to be basic energy... now I feel bad for this card...
 
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The attack cost is a tad high, and in order to attack and utilize its ability, it needs four different energy cards attached to it. Ouch. Unless you use Rainbow, which means it should fit into an Aromatisse deck pretty well.

Parasect could get the energy out for you (via an attack, sadly), but you'd have to use energy switches or an equivalent ability. Smeargle can help get the right energy out if you run only a couple [R]. Expanded could use Beautifly (Dragons Exalted).

I'm probably missing some obvious way to accelerate Ho-Oh's attack, but it seems too costly to me at first glance.

Nice art though. :3
 
SaiScott95 said:
While this card is obviously bad competitively, I do want to point out that casual players could easily use a Rainbow Energy for the attack cost, and I believe that would also allow the ability to work.
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Once during your turn (before your attack), if this Pokemon has any basic [R] Energy attached to it, you may heal 50 HP from this Pokemon.
 
What a beautiful card! Definitely a step up from XY8's hit and miss artwork for EX's.

However, somewhat like XY8, the set seems to be gearing towards most cards not being competitive whatsoever.

Because of this, I think I can safely say that this is one of the least playable EX's in Pokemon TCG history. The ability contradicts the attack with the ability using Fire Energy, and the attack using 1 of each of a Water, Lightning, and Grass energy.
 
Purrloin said:
The attack cost is a tad high, and in order to attack and utilize its ability, it needs four different energy cards attached to it. Ouch. Unless you use Rainbow, which means it should fit into an Aromatisse deck pretty well.

Parasect could get the energy out for you (via an attack, sadly), but you'd have to use energy switches or an equivalent ability. Smeargle can help get the right energy out if you run only a couple [R]. Expanded could use Beautifly (Dragons Exalted).

I'm probably missing some obvious way to accelerate Ho-Oh's attack, but it seems too costly to me at first glance.

Nice art though. :3
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If you really wanted to play with it, you could use Solar Birth Volcarona from Ancient Origins paired with Smeargle.
Solar Birth > Get Ho-Oh + 2 Basic Energies
Next turn attach a different energy to it, if it's a rainbow you're good to go. If it's a basic that you don't have, you're good to go. If it's a basic you already have on it, switch it with Smeargle. That's the way I immediately think of..
 
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