Discussion Barbaracle

[pokedan24]

Barbaracle – Water – HP100
Stage 1 – Evolves from Binacle

Ability: Hand Block
You can use this ability if you have a Stadium card in play. As long as this Pokemon is in play, your opponent can’t attach any Special Energy cards from his or her hand.

[W][W][C] Claw Swipe: 70 damage.

Weakness: Grass (x2)
Resistance: none
Retreat: 3

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Where I see this being especially deadly is in Trevenant Decks. Item lock is bad enough, but taking away special energy gives opponents even less options. Fortunately, the new set gives us a couple more counters to Trevenant (Rotom and Mandibuzz).

 

[Yog]

I think everyone's waiting for the exact translation before we get too hyped about this card. "You can use this ability if you have a Stadium card in play" could be read a few different ways.

If it's a blanket any stadium in play, woah this is all kinds of powerful and worth building a deck around getting it on bench for turn 1. And suddenly people are upping their Delinquent counts and even adding Paint Rollers just to counter it. It could have serious Meta-defining consequences.

However, if it reads as you need to have a Stadium in play, well then the lock is very easily broken simply by playing a counter stadium of your own and the only knock-on meta effect is special energy reliant decks get back to playing four-counts of their stadium of choice, instead of trying to skimp down to two where they can. Still powerful, still worth looking to building it into some decks, but just way less so than the other way.

And it wouldn't be the first card to revolve around who laid down the stadium card either, think like BKT Mamoswine's attack : [F][C][C][C] Primordial Boom: 80+ damage. If you have a Stadium card in play, this attack does 40 more damage. If your opponent has a Stadium card in play, heal 40 damage from this Pokémon.



Lots of eyes watching and waiting for the English version of this card.