aroramage |
Ahhhh, what's there to say about Forest of Broken
Plants-sorry, GIANT Plants, that hasn't already been
said?
It
breaks a rule of the game for Grass Pokemon (that being
the "can't evolve during the turn it's played or
Evolved" rule), and that led to a rather broken combo
that got Shiftry banned in Expanded. Outside of that,
it's just a nice card to have around for any Grass
decks.
What, you thought I'd go more in-depth with this one?
...eh, it's 3 in the morning, I'll let Otaku do that.
On
an unrelated note, Star Wars VII was awesome.
Rating
Standard: 3.5/5 (still a great Evolution card for Grass
decks like Vileplume, Vespiquen, and M Sceptile-EX)
Expanded: 3.5/5 (with Shiftry out of the way, this card
is about as playable here as in Standard, and without
going TOO crazy...just crazy enough)
Limited: 4/5 (if you end up with more Grass Pokemon, you
could run this pretty successfully)
Arora Notealus:......yep...Star
Wars VII was great. I liked it!
Next Time: The dragon
returns!...no, not that one. Or maybe that one? Eh, who
knows, point is it's a Dragon-type!
|
Jason Klaczynski
(Three time
World Champ) |
Forest of Giant Plants (Ancient
Origins)
How good was this card? Good enough
that an otherwise unplayable card (Next Destinies
Shiftry) became the focus of a deck that could
consistently win on the first turn of the game! The
combo was so broken that Shiftry ultimately had to be
banned from competitive play! That’s not to say Forest
of Giant Plants has no other uses, though; in Standard
it can still be used to get a Turn 1 Vileplume, meaning
your opponent may never have a chance to play any item
cards.
(Jason had this at #8 on his list)
|
Otaku |
After a
long weekend we return to cover our fifth place finisher
Broken Vine Space Forest of Giant
Plants (XY: Ancient Origins 74/98)!
This Stadium was our
12th place pick over on our XY: Ancient Origins list and it allows both
players to immediately Evolve Grass-Type Pokémon (which
may Evolve into any Type and not just Grass). The
nickname I dropped is a reference to Broken
Time-Space (Platinum 104/127) an older card
that isn’t all that old for some of us: the Platinum
expansion officially released in English on February 11,
2009, nearly six years ago but only six years ago.
As you get older (whether you’ve been playing the whole
time or not) from what I can tell both in dealing with
others and my own personal experience, time seems to
move faster… which is oddly fitting given that is in a
sense what these two Stadiums do (for the affected
Pokémon, anyway).
We
reviewed Broken Time-Space twice, though as this
was during one of those gaps where I wasn’t reviewing
(and even more unusual, was barely if at all playing the
TCG) I am using “we” rather loosely. We didn’t do
countdowns for the top cards in a set back then, though
the
first review
of Broken Time-Space managed to happen on the
set’s official release date, putting it as the 15th card
we reviewed of the set, suggesting it managed to catch
someone’s eye before we were too far in. Proving
it was recognized as potent and influential is how it
took
sixth place
in the Top 10 Cards of 2009 list. I really, really
want to post this long lecture about how the game ought
to keep the pace of Evolutions steady because the entire
point is that some effects aren’t balanced unless they
come into play at a certain time and with a certain
resource commitment: not “either/or” and especially not
“neither”. Doing that requires not just explaining
Forest of Giant Plants and why it is on the list,
not just going over Broken Time-Space but firmly
establishing what the Pokémon TCG is and why my
preferences in this matter happen to align with what is
best for the TCG in terms of being a business and
satisfying the greatest number of paying customers.
We
aren’t going to do that because if it were easy I would
be linking to an article on the subject I’ve been
tinkering with on and off for the last few years,
because it would already have been done, submitted and
posted by Pojo. I will focus on the facts that
don’t require deep explanation or a similar view on the
game. Forest of Giant Plants did something that
not even Broken Time-Space managed; it got
another card banned. Shiftry (BW: Next
Destinies 72/99) when from chump to champ once a
player could immediately Evolve Seedot to
Nuzleaf to Shifty itself in a single turn… in
addition to everything else going for it in the current
metagame: decks with low Basic Pokémon counts and thus
prone to starting with just one or two Pokémon but with
Ability based draw power to supplement Trainers plus a
Trainer engine that could reliably rip through most of a
player’s deck (and sometimes all of it) the very first
turn of the game. This allowed decks to spam the
Shifty into play from hand, which matters because
of its Ability “Giant Fan”, which triggers only when you
Evolve one of your in play Pokémon into Shiftry
from hand and also requires a coin flip (“heads” and it
works, while “tails” means it does nothing). When
Giant Fan works it allows you to bounce one of your
opponent’s Pokémon to hand and if you have no Pokémon in
play, you lose.
Even
with the coin flips, Shiftry decks were reliably
winning through “Bench Out” first turn. Odds were
a bit worse if they went second but from a tournament or
even a casual play perspective, this was still a
problem. Most of us don’t enjoy just sitting there
and winning or losing solely based on the opponent and
his or her deck either working or misfiring, and while
less certain I believe a good deal of us don’t enjoy
tournament play boiling down to coin flips even with
decks that are not designed to win (either
completely or effectively via lock) first turn.
Put the two together and we might as well just let the
coin toss decide who wins each match; it is faster and
technically it should be perfectly fair. There
were some counters for Shiftry (with a few more
now) but they were not reliable in and of themselves.
You could run more Basic Pokémon in general, but besides
costing you several non-Shiftry matches by making
your deck less competitive against everything else, you
could still fail to draw enough of them to endure or
your opponent could get enough “heads” on Giant Fan
flips to bounce your full Bench. You could also
run Basic Pokémon with the “Θ Stop” Ability but the one
example we had at first wasn’t worth using for any other
purpose (the later ones haven’t really changed that
either) and even maxing out a single one of them again
meant you had to hope you opened with it and were
facing a Shiftry deck.
With
Shiftry gone, we still have some Grass-Types
significantly enhanced by Forest of Giant Plants.
The most notable in my eyes is Vileplume (XY:
Ancient Origins 3/98) as with it a player can lock
down Items from the Bench on his or her first turn and
without sacrificing a Supporter. As I am still
woefully under informed about Standard, I don’t know if
such decks are stronger there than in Expanded, but even
in Expanded it is just a nuisance; the designers gave us
a format built around heavy Item use and the “counters”
the-powers-that-be have released (like Vileplume)
don’t change that because when you aren’t crashing into
them you still need all those Items. It just seems
to be an exercise in frustration as you have to sit
there and make do with a major chunk of your deck gone…
and while I have no problem with locking down just Items
or just Abilities etc. rarely is only one crucial
element of your deck denied you but instead your
opponent will also attack at least one more.
Thanks to the other forms of Item lock Vileplume
(even with Forest of Giant Plants) isn’t even
close to Shiftry level abuse, but at this point
it seems like we can only wait for the next example.
We are fortunate that Exeggcutor (BW: Plasma
Freeze 5/116) has such a low damage output that
without Items it is not good enough at doing damage
while locking down Supporters, or I would expect it
alongside Vileplume to be one of the top decks
(again, it thankfully is not). Though for
all we know we’ll get an Exeggcutor BREAK that
will change that.
Ratings
Standard:
3.5/5
Expanded:
3.65/5
Limited:
4.75/5
Summary:
Forest of Giant Plants is too potent for the
game’s own good, but the first card to really hammer
that home was banned, so for now it is just something
every deck relying on a Grass-Type should consider.
Yes, only consider; some will be better off with a
different Stadium or no Stadium at all because deck
space is just that tight, plus the drawback of Evolution
acceleration is that outside of early game it tends to
matter less and less.
For my
own list, it again bounced around landing in a different
spot each revision, but in the end Forest of Giant
Plants only took eighth place for the reasons I have
given throughout this review.
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