aroramage |
Dusting off our old hats, we
venture forth into the depths of the ruins in order to
find the lost fossils of ancient Pokemon from an era
long gone. Welcome back, explorers, and prepare
yourselves for Fossil Week! We're gonna be covering all
the new Fossil Pokemon cards that came out alongside
Fates Collide this week, but we must prepare ourselves
accordingly! After all, who knows what dangers lurk in
the field of archaeology!!
...okay, not that many, but it's
good to be prepared anyway.
And that's where we come to Fossil
Excavation Kit, our first card of the week! Using this
Kit lets you take any combination of two of the three
cards - Helix Fossil Omanyte, Dome Fossil Kabuto, and
Old Amber Aerodactyl - and put them into your hand from
your discard pile. Now for any new cadets unfamiliar
with the new mechanics, Fossil Pokemon are now known as
Restored Pokemon, thanks to the mechanic revision in the
Black & White sets. The Fossils no longer act as a
Pokemon to put on the Bench but rather act like a
reverse Great Ball of sorts for the Pokemon in question.
For instance, Helix Fossil Omanyte searches out the
bottom seven cards of your deck for an Omanyte card and
lets you play it onto your Bench for free!
So in short, the Kit helps you
cycle back these Fossil cards, which in turn allow you
to try again to bring out your Restored Pokemon. Now
there are some cards like Caitlin that make this process
easier, but as a whole, this card can only do so much.
If it allowed you to look up any Fossil card (or Old
Amber Aerodactyl) and add any combination of two to your
hand, then it could have a broader outreach to other
decks and such, but as it stands it's just a
half-hearted way of making things like Omastar and
Aerodactyl more consistent...by just giving you more
chances.
Unless you're running one of the
Pokemon that are on those Fossil cards, you can probably
give Excavation Kit a skip, but if you're aiming to
bring out a great beast from ancient times, might I also
suggest taking a look at what Maxie and Archie are up
to?
Rating
Standard: 1.5/5 (the card itself
has limited use and potential, and that's not even
looking at who it helps)
Expanded: 1.5/5 (which the typings
give away that you've got better options for your guys
anyway)
Limited: 2/5 (still, at least it's
got...some good qualities?)
Arora Notealus: Regardless of the
card's practical usage in the TCG, an excavation kit is
still a very vital asset to digging up fossils! You have
to take great care not to damage them, or else they
won't be held up as high in value when you're shipping
them off to the Natural History Museum! And besides,
we've gotta have the best stuff there.
Next Time: Our first specimen
demonstrates its cutting prowess with its arms...
|
Otaku |
Welcome to Fates Collide Fossil
Week, because no one asked for it but I felt like having
a theme anyway.
First up is
Fossil Excavation Kit (XY: Fates Collide
101/124). This is an Item that allows you to add
two copies of Dome Fossil Kabuto, Helix Fossil
Omanyte, or Old Amber Aerodactyl. You
could instead add a combination (still limited to two)
from among those three cards. Now it is really
important to understand what those three cards do: each
is itself an Item that allows you to search through the
bottom seven cards of your deck for a copy of the named
Pokémon (Kabuto, Omanyte, or Aerodactyl,
respectively) and put them into play. This is the
same mechanic introduced in BW: Noble Victories
so that Cover Fossil could put Tirtouga
and Plume Fossil could put Archen into
play. Not every Pokémon that (in the video games)
are the result of SCIENCE!™ reviving them from
fossilized remains have been given the “Restored
Pokémon” treatment, but those that have appeared since
the BW-era sets have. As you cannot put Restored
Pokémon directly into play without another card effect,
running out of that card (and thus its effect) is a
serious concern and unlike with just Benching a Basic or
Evolving into a Stage 1, this can whiff, completely
failing to even get you a Restored Pokémon. So if
all copies failed, you either needed another method to
play Restored Pokémon or something to recycle Items, and
that last one hasn’t often been easy. Until now;
Fossil Excavation Kit gives you two more chances
to get Restored Pokémon into play. So that makes
it a good card?
No. Various
Pokémon in the video games have gone extinct in the wild
(usually in prehistoric times) and are only able to be
obtained thanks to SCIENCE!™ cloning new ones from
ancient DNA samples. Unless overridden by another
game mechanic - like when we received Aerodactyl [GL]
(PL: Rising Rivals 55/111) as a Basic Pokémon SP
- these Pokémon have never been allowed to simply be
Basics. The original three way back in Fossil
(third set released in North America) all were Stage 1
cards that Evolved from Mysterious Fossil, a
Trainer that has received numerous updates and
corrections over the years. All such subsequent
Pokémon ended up getting their own specific Fossil
card from which to Evolve, until the BW-era when
Restored Pokémon were introduced. This is very
creative, somewhat flavorful, and have never really been
a good idea. Some of these cards have been
amazing, but as you can tell by the previous mechanic
having been abandoned after spending over a decade
trying to refine it, this probably wasn’t the best idea.
So getting back to
the present, the current Restored Pokémon mechanic
hasn’t fared much, if any, better. Probably has
been worse, honestly. Nothing in game
distinguishes the Stage 1 Pokémon which happen to Evolve
from Restored Pokémon from other Stage 1 Evolutions, so
they only get the same support as everything else.
Which normally would be a good thing, except again, this
really awkward mechanic for getting their lower Stages
into play is a problem. It is bad enough when a
Stage 2 suffers because Item lock is blocking Rare
Candy, but Item prevents Restored Pokémon from
hitting the field using their official default mechanic.
We do have at least one example of a Stage 1 which
Evolves from a Restored Pokémon that has seen
significant success in competitive play, and that is
Archeops (BW: Noble Victories 67/101; BW:
Next Destinies 110/108. However it did this
through Maxie’s Hidden Ball Trick. For
most of these cards, that is the case; only a few
can’t use Archie’s Ace in the Hole or Maxie’s
Hidden Ball Trick to hit the field. Amaura
and Tyrunt also have Fossil Researcher to
snag them directly from the deck and Bench them, while
any Restored Pokémon can take a chance with Twist
Mountain. The Stadium can only be used once
per turn and requires a coin flip as well, but on
“heads” you get to Bench a Restored Pokémon from hand.
Fossil Excavation
Kit
helps out the various Restored Pokémon stuck relying on
their specific Fossil card or Twist Mountain,
but it doesn’t help them by a lot. The bottom
seven cards of your deck is a lot, but unlike say Max
Elixir and Basic Energy cards, at most you’ll have
four targets in your deck for the effect. In any
Format, if you insist on using something which has to
rely on one of these Fossil cards to get into
play, go ahead and run Fossil Excavation Kit
(assuming you also pull it in Limited). Mostly I
would just avoid those Pokémon and stick to the ones
that have a better shortcut.
Ratings
Standard:
1.5/5
Expanded:
1.5/5
Limited:
1.75/5
Summary:
The Restored Pokémon mechanic is burdensome. This
is one of the many things fans should be telling
the-powers-that-be need to be fixed (or at least
abandoned for the next generation). Fossil
Excavation Kit technically helps, but not enough to
really matter.
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