First of all, kudos to Whether Man and all those other "reformers" who fight
the (point)
system.  As it seems to be becoming a sort of usual practice for me, I'm
writing my monthly "Don't use the stupid point system to compare cards"
article.  Today, I'm adressing Radar's comparison of Promos Mew and Arcanine.
For those of you who haven't read it, it came out tied 5-5.  Grading was
done on HP, weakness, attacks, retreat cost, and stage. 

First, I'll discuss my disagreements with his grades.

#1.  For weakness, he explained "Mew has weakness to psychic which is
popular, but when playing psychic vs. psychic, you just do double damage to
each other".  True statement, but he said for Arcanine "Arcanine is weak to
water which is losing popularity but still it is a bad type to be weak to". 
He fails to explain why it's a bad type to be weak to, which leaves you
questioning his reasoning.  Personally, I think it's a metagame situation and
therefore difficult to rate.  Often it's regional, and you won't always be
playing against the same type of deck.  The same problem goes for resistance;
any is better than none, of course, but how do you compare two different
resistances?

#2.  Attacks, specifically second attack.  The problem I have with this is
the clash of
strategy.  On the general level, Arcanine's strategy is obviously high
damage.  Mew's
second attack is for manipulation of your opponent's Pokémon.  Sure you can
go into combosand strategies for either, since they're both unique attacks,
but their basic uses clash.  This makes it impossible to compare them, since
they wouldn't work the same way in a deck.  The only time I see a fairly
accurate comparison possible would be something like Dewgong vs Gyarados,
since they're the same stage, type, and basic strategy.  Otherwise, as they
say, "you're comparing apples to oranges" (I don't know why I'm using that
phrase, I always found it very annoying...) 

Another problem I have with this type of comparison is the one everyone has
with this type of comparison- The point system.  It gives you a rough idea of
which card has the better of a certain stat, but when you try to pull all of
those points together to see the overall winner, you'll find it's inaccurate.


When you're just comparing one thing, like HP, the winner is obvious.  But a
card is made up of many factors, and the overall rating must also consider
the importance of the factors in comparison to each other.  Mew is basic and
Arcanine is Stage 1, but are Arcanine's other advantages over Mew great
enough that they make up for Mew's advantage in stage?  How important is that
20 HP difference?  A good comparison is pretty tough, when you think about
all this.

The last problem is the fact that they're gonna work in completely different
ways in the deck.  He comments that Mew's good against breedered Pokémon, but
what if you're fighting a Haymaker?  And Mew needs Aerodactyl in non-breeder
situations or Devolution Beam is almost useless.  However, if used in the
right situation, Mew can be very strong.  Same with Arcanine.  His attack may
discard Energy, but it'll work well if you use common sense.  The people who
criticize Prof. Oak have this problem, since he only works if you use common
sense.  My experimental Promo Arcanine destroyed my neighbor's Haymaker
twice, which coincidentally contained Mew.  However, I think that might have
been why it was so easy- the
Mew was used poorly in the deck.  Since he had no Aerodactyl, all he could do
was Psywave, and none of the Pokémon I was using had high Energy costs.  The
50 HP and lack of damage made it pretty simple. 

Well, that's my usual rant.  Once again, congrats to those of you with the
patience and eyesight to bear that.  I hope these chosen few found it
enlightening.

                                             ~  Souper  ~
                                                 Souper@Pojo.com