Rocky Helmet – Mythical Islands
Date Reviewed: Feb. 3, 2025
Ratings Summary:
Ratings are based on a 1 to 5 scale. 1 is horrible. 3 is average. 5 is great.
Reviews Below:
Otaku
The fourth best Trainer from Space-Time Smackdown is Rocky Helmet (A2 148)! It’s a Trainer – Pokémon Tool. For its effect to trigger, the Pokémon to which it is attached must be in the Active Position. That Pokémon must also be damaged by an attack from an opponent’s Pokémon. When both these conditions are met, Rocky Helmet will do 20 damage to your opponent’s Active Pokémon. Rocky Helmet is currently only available as at the ♦♦ rarity.
Pokémon Tools are new to the Pokémon TCG Pocket. In the full TCG, they have existed in some form since the release of Neo Genesis in the year 2000. This was the first of the Neo Series, which were based on the Gen II video games. The exact details of how they worked have varied a little over the years. To use a Pokémon Tool, you first must attach it to one of your Pokémon that are already in play. This is similar to attaching an Energy card to a Pokémon, but instead of having a once-per-turn limit, you are only allowed to attach a single Tool at a time to a given Pokémon.1
In the case of Rocky Helmet, the Pokémon equipped with it will, similar to the “Rough Skin” Ability found on Druddigon (A1a 056). Unless you attach it to Druddigon itself, in which case it’ll act like it has a “double” Rough Skin! This means, if you don’t need to equip a different Tool to it, you can have any Pokémon jump up front as an “offensive meatshield” (like Druddigon). Unlike Druddigon, you may choose a Pokémon that is also a good attacker. Either way, you’ll ultimately gain the same benefit of either making an opponent hold off attacking back, or they’ll attack back and take some damage.
This should sound pretty great. Yes, this means it only works when your opponent triggers it, but could potentially trigger multiple times. This is sort of like getting a double Giovanni, at least when it works out. And again, sometimes the benefit is your opponent not attacking. Your opponent may risk a KO (or easier KO) if they do, or even already be so injured that Rocky Helmet would KO them even if they KO the Pokémon with Rocky Helmet attached!
There are ways for an opponent to deal with Rocky Helmet. Attacks that don’t do damage won’t trigger Rocky Helmet. An attack that only hits the Bench can never trigger Rocky Helmet. One that may hit the Active or the Bench just needs to go for the latter. Ones that hit both Active and one or more Benched Pokémon just need to make sure anything with Rocky Helmet isn’t Active while it attacks. You can use effects that make your opponent change out their Active, like Sabrina, to force an Active with Rocky Helmet out of the way.
Lastly, some Pokémon already have effects that care about Tools. Two of them are counters. Starly (A2 132) has an attack for (C) that discards all Tools attached to the opposing Active, then does 20 damage to that opposing Active. Rotom (A2 062, 164) won’t discard your Tool, but it will hit anything with a Tool harder. Lastly, Pachirisu ex (A2 061, 183, 198) and Skarmory (A2 111, Promo-A 039) have attacks that hit harder if they (the attacking Pachirisu ex or Skarmory) have a Tool attached to them.
Because I can’t resist, Rocky Helmet exists in the full Pokémon TCG. The oldest version debuted back in 2011. It was re-released in 2020. The most recent release released in 2023, and should still be Standard legal. This Rocky Helmet places two damage counters, instead of doing 20 damage. As with Poison, this is due to certain card effects we don’t seem to have in Pocket, where it would actually make a difference. Some versions will also be labeled as “Items” (in addition to being Trainers and Tools). This was correct at the time, but it has been ruled older copies are to be played as Trainer-Tools instead of Trainer-Item-Tools.
Rating: 3.5/5
I won’t be surprised if you think I’m under-rating or overrating Rocky Helmet. In the full TCG, there are times it was good, and there were times when it wasn’t. The latter was usually do to competition from better Tools. The only reason I don’t know if that applies here is I can’t tell how many Tools a deck can efficiently run… yet. Likewise, I could be low-balling or high-balling Rocky Helmet because I also haven’t determined how reliably (or not) one can assemble the desired Pokémon and Tool. So far, it looks promising.
1In the full TCG, there are some card effects that allow a Pokémon to have more than one Tool attached at a time. We’ll have to wait and see if anything similar is released in Pocket.
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