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Cover Fossil (Noble Victories)
This is a strange card to be reviewing, but completely
worthwhile. Cover Fossil is part of the new Fossil
mechanic that is introduced in the Noble Victories set.
Except they aren’t called Fossils any more . . . what we
have now are ‘Restored’ Pokémon.
In the past we have had many Fossil
Pokémon that have been pretty powerful cards.
Think of Rampardos
PL, or quite a few
Aerodactyls for example.
However, this power has always come at the hefty cost of
having to deal with the whole Fossil mechanic. When the
Basic Pokémon of an evolution line is a Trainer, it
makes things a bit difficult: they can’t be played under
Trainer Lock, they can’t be grabbed with the staple
Basic search cards (currently Pokémon Collector), and
they can’t be recovered by the usual methods either. It
seems as if the trend for powerful Fossil
Restored Pokémon is continuing in the Black and White
era: Carracosta has big HP
and a damage reduction Ability, while
Archeops prevents evolution
just like the old Aerodactyl
from the Fossil set. But will these
type of Pokémon be any more easy to play than they were
in the past? Let’s take a look at Cover Fossil and find
out.
Cover Fossil’s text tells you to look at the bottom
seven cards of your deck and, if you find a
Tirtouga (the Stage 1)
there, put in on to your Bench. Well, I suppose the good
news is that you don’t need to bench a vulnerable Basic
and you can go ahead and evolve it on the next turn
without needing Rare Candy. The bad news though? Where
do I start?
For one thing, there is no reliable way to make sure you
have a Tirtouga in the last
seven cards of the deck. Yes, you can try and achieve
this with Research Record, but this only shifts the
problem: now you need a Tirtouga
in the top four cards. So to even begin to minimise the
inconsistency and luck factor, you need to run the
maximum number of copies of the Stage 1 AND a
playset of Research Records.
Even then, a successful outcome is not guaranteed,
though you can increase your chances further by running
Junk Arm to get back wasted Cover Fossils.
I don’t know about you, but I am not thrilled about a
mechanic that makes me rely on Trainer card combos and
sheer luck in order to be able to set up a main attacker
(Carracosta) or a bench
sitting tech (Archeops). Why
would I be, when there are many other Pokémon I could be
searching out easily and reliably with Pokémon Collector
and/or Pokémon Communication? For a Restored Pokémon to
be worth this much trouble,
it would have to be a virtual game winner and, although
Carracosta and
Archeops are decent Pokémon,
they are a long way short of that.
Basically, Pokémon just made playing Fossils a lot
harder than it has ever been. Unless they start
releasing some seriously good support for the mechanic,
such as a card which would let you put the Stage 1 from
your hand to the bottom of the deck (Claydol
GE reprint anyone?), then these new Restored Pokémon are
going to be completely unplayable in a tournament
setting.
Rating
Modified: 1.25 (A Fossil Basic that makes playing
Fossils virtually impossible)
Limited: 1.25 (well, you have a smaller deck here, so if
you somehow pull 4+ Tirtouga
you could try it)
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