Skip straight to the scores and summary for a
concise overview.
Name:
Kabutops
Set:
EX Legend Maker
Rarity:
Holographic-Rare
Card#:
7/92
Type:
Fighting
Stage:
2 (Evolves from Kabuto)
HP:
110
Weakness:
Grass
Resistance:
None
Retreat:
CC
Poké-Body:
Ancient Shell
As long as you have Omanyte or Omastar in play,
damage done to Kabutops by attacks is reduced by 20
(after applying Weakness and Resistance).
Attack#1:
(F) Energy Stream [30]
Search your discard pile for a basic Energy card and
attach it to Kabutops.
Attack#2:
(FCC) Extra Claws [50+]
If the Defending Pokémon is Pokémon-ex, this
attack does 50 damage plus 30 more damage.
Name:
Kabuto
Set:
EX Legend Maker
Rarity:
Uncommon
Card#:
36/92
Type:
Fighting
Stage:
1 (Evolves from Mysterious Fossil)
HP:
60
Weakness:
Grass
Resistance:
None
Retreat:
CC
Poké-Body:
Ancient Protection
Each of your Omanyte, Omastar, Kabuto, Kabutops, and
Kabutops ex has no Weakness.
Attack:
(CC) Granite Head [20]
During your opponent’s next turn, any damage
done to Kabuto by attacks is reduced by 10
(after applying Weakness and Resistance).
Name:
Mysterious Fossil
Set:
EX Legend Maker
Rarity:
Common
Card#:
79/92
Type:
Trainer
HP:
50
Text:
Play Mysterious Fossil as if it were a Basic
Pokémon. While in play, Mysterious Fossil
counts as a (C) Pokémon (as well as a Trainer
card). Mysterious Fossil has no attacks of its
own, can’t retreat, and can’t be affected by
Special Conditions. If Mysterious Fossil is
Knocked Out, it doesn’t count as a Knocked out
Pokémon. (Discard it anyway.) At any time
during your turn before your attack, you may
discard Mysterious Fossil from play.
Attributes:
Kabutops is a Stage 2 Pokémon, which of
course acts as a good guideline for evaluating the
rest of its Attributes and Abilities. However,
first let us look at its prior Stages: Kabuto
and Mysterious Fossil. Mysterious Fossil
is one of those Trainers that can sometimes act as a
Pokémon. Specifically, in the opening hand it
counts as a Pokémon, so if that’s all you have, you
must play it and start with it. When it’s in play,
it counts as both a Pokémon and a Trainer card.
Otherwise, it counts as a Trainer card. Of course,
on its own, Mysterious Fossil is good for
stalling and little else. The Kabuto is
really meant only as a Bench sitter: use it to get
rid of Weakness and that’s that. The attack is
“okay” but nothing Special. Both are the only
Modified legal versions, though there are some
alternatives to Mysterious Fossil in both
Formats.
Returning to Kabutops, we see that it is a
Fighting-Type Pokémon. Honestly, it might have been
more useful as a Water-Type Pokémon, which is valid
since it is a Water/Rock Pokémon in the video
games. Fighting is the most common Weakness and the
most common Resistance… but Arcanine ex is
supposed to become a strong, popular deck right
now. Still, Fighting isn’t bad, just not optimal in
this case.
110 HP is the second best a non-Pokémon-ex can have,
so it is pretty solid for a Stage 2. Grass
Weakness, like all Weaknesses has its ups and downs:
most Grass Pokémon don’t specialize in raw damage,
so you won’t get hit as hard as you would by some
types, but now their often mediocre damage becomes
solid. Compared to good damage becoming great, this
is probably for the best. What isn’t for the best
is the lack of a Resistance. Based on its
aforementioned video game types, it should be
Resistant to Fire since its double Resistant to that
Type in the video games. At least we get a solid
two Energy for the Retreat Cost. It isn’t cheap
enough to Retreat willy-nilly, but it is low enough
you can usually afford it when you need to.
Abilities:
Ancient Shell is, at the very least, interesting.
Reducing the damage taken by 20 is good, even if
it’s after Weakness and Resistance. Requiring a
second Evolution line off of Mysterious Fossil
can be a bit annoying. Still, at worst you just
need one Omanyte, and the EX Legend Maker
version has its own beneficial Poké-Body that
affects Kabuto and Kabutops, among
others.
Energy Stream is very nice: for a single Fighting
Energy, you hit for 30 and can attach a Basic Energy
from your Graveyard to Kabutops.
Unfortunately, the second attack isn’t so nice:
Extra Claws does 50 points of damage base, and
another 30 if the Defending Pokémon is a
Pokémon-ex. 50 points of damage for (FCC) isn’t
bad, and neither is 80 points of damage… but since
this is the best this entire line can do for damage…
but when you think about it, its still mediocre
since Pokémon-ex will have more HP.
Uses and
Combinations:
This is pretty much meant for a Modified multi-Fossil
Evolution deck. In such a deck, it will be the
anti-Pokémon-ex “TecH”, and maybe help to exploit
Fighting Weakness if it’s the only Fighting
Fossil you use.
There are some nifty cards to help it though.
Strange Cave allows you, once per turn, to play
a Stage 1 Fossil Evolution from your hand to
your Bench as a Basic Pokémon. This is incredibly
useful, since it makes it much easier to run
multiple Mysterious Fossil lines and indeed,
Kabuto is much more impressive as a Basic.
Likewise, Kabutops is much more impressive as
a… well, it will still count as a Stage 2 while in
play, the way the rulings work, but in terms of
“playability” it act like it was a Stage 1… which is
quite sweet. Remember, you can discard a Fossil
card, like Mysterious Fossil, when you wish.
So if you start with Mysterious Fossil Active
and open with a
Strange Cave
and Kabuto in hand, you can play
Strange Cave,
Bench Kabuto as a Basic and then discard
Mysterious Fossil to make it active. No, I
wouldn’t recommend that trick with this card, but
tomorrow’s CotD and Friday’s both have Stage 1s for
which this is quite handy. If you have to know one
of them, check the Limited score.
Ratings
(Fossil deck, if it wasn’t clear)
Unlimited:
1/5 – We have a better Kabutops and a better
Kabutops ex available, though the new
Kabutops might be worth risking since Jungle
Scyther is still a fan favorite.
Modified:
3/5 – Due to the protective nature of Kabuto,
it seems logical to run a single Kabutops
with it if you can make room for just about any
Fossil heavy deck. Of course, making room for
it may prove difficult.
Limited:
4.5/5 – Not surprisingly, given that this is a
fairly Fossil-oriented Set, Kabutops
is great here... with the standard provision that
you pull it and its lower Stages. What makes it
better than your average Stage 2 is that both
attacks are more valuable here and that there are
three ways to get Kabuto into play this set:
Evolve from Mysterious Fossil, Bench it as a
Stage 1 with
Strange Cave,
or Anorith, which can search the deck and
then Bench any two Stage 1 Fossil Pokémon.
Summary
A niche card that probably just needs one or two
copies at most for a deck, if you really wanted to
you could focus on it, but it wouldn’t do you a
whole lot of good unless your metagame is so
Pokémon-ex and Fighting Weak that you’ll always be
hitting for big damage.
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