Name:
Lake Boundary
Set:
Mysterious Treasures
Card#:
112/123
Rarity:
Uncommon
Type:
Stadium
Text:
This card stays in play when you play it. Discard this
card if another Stadium card comes into play. If
another card with the same name is in play, you can’t
play this card.
Apply Weakness for each Pokémon (both yours and your
opponent’s) as x2 instead.
Lake Boundary
is a new Stadium that would have made no sense
pre-Diamond and Pearl era since all Weakness doubled the
damage. One of the high points of the newer cards was
that while little annoying openers could now hit harder
if you had one of the high end of the “+X” Weakness (+30
or +20), it was much better when facing anything fully
Evolved where 80 base damage just meant 100 after
Weakness which you might survive instead of 160 which
you had no chance against. Type matching was just a bit
too strong.
Well, now you can mess with an opponent by dropping this
and forcing Weakness to work as it originally did.
While, for example, the new Machamp from Diamond
and Pearl will still enjoy a better :”big” attack and
more HP than its EX Power Keeper counterpart, frustrated
Psychic decks can drop them and make the new one almost
as easy a OHKO for your average Psychic Stage 1/Stage 2
Pokémon.
Now, many will say “But it is a Stadium! That is so
vulnerable.” This is true but try to use it almost as a
one-shot Pokémon Tool: expect it to be discarded, and
just save it for the KO. So many decks can be run
without a Stadium (and are, due to Windstorm and
Tauros making Stadiums a bit risky), so there
shouldn’t be much conflict to running a copy or two of
this, preferably when using Pokémon that already have
the double Weakness. Even if not, for a good long while
I’ve found running a Stadium split to be preferable to
running just one: rarely will you need a three copies,
let alone four, of the same Stadium, but it is most
advantageous to be able to run two different Stadiums.
So you could run it and just use the copy or two as
discard fodder (plenty of useful Supporters still need a
discard) if you are facing your Weakness.
Ratings
Unlimited:
1/5 – Type matching will probably be less prevalent
here, and there are some really potent Stadiums that
almost everyone runs or learns to counter.
Modified:
3.5/5 – If you’re playing using older Pokémon and a new
deck is Weak to your type, there risk is minimal (dead
card) but the reward is incredible (old-style cheap
Type-matching OHKOs).
Limited:
4/5 – The same as above, but here one Prize is a fourth
way to victory! Still, be careful not to drop it too
early: you need to make sure it is really unlikely your
Weakness is being played by the opponent, and to be even
fairly sure, you can’t just bust it out in the first few
turns.
-Otaku
