Hi Pojo,

I am a loyal reader of pojo.com and think that by far, it is THE BEST on
information regarding Pokemon.

Could you please post this as I have been constantly been reading
debates as to which haunter is better, or why basic hauter sucks.

Well I have news for all you who think that basic haunter isn't worth
sticking in their deck.

For those that like to play the Ghosts in their deck.  4 Gastly, 3
haunter, 2 Gengar, most would consider playing 3 fossil haunter.  I have
read stuff like "fossil haunter is GOD compared to basic haunter, and
basic haunter flat out sucks."  Well I'll give you 3 good reasons why
one basic haunter should be added in place of a third fossil.

1) It makes for a good pokemon discard, that is if you have Prof. Oak,
Energy Retreival, Computer Search, Item Finder or any other trainer card
that makes you discard any card in your hand.
2) Can be used to evolve Gengar! (After all, who wants to use a
perfectly good fossil haunter!)
3) Can be used in awesome force with fossil haunter.  Let's use an
example:

You are using a ghost deck variant and your opponent is using... ohh
lets say an Electric/Bird deck variant.  You have fossil haunter out
with two damage counters and two psychic energy attached and have basic
haunter on the bench with 3 energy attached.  Your opponent has a basic
raichu out with 3 damage counters and 4 electric energy and has a
spearow on the bench with one dce energy.  His turn, he decides to use
agility (has he might not hurt haunter but rather hurt himself for
thirty) and fails on the agility coin flip, you however get lucky and
take no damage.  Now you attack and do 10 damage plus put him to sleep.
He then proceeds to fail on his next two attempts to wake up and has no
retreat helping trainers or pokemon (like Dragonite).  Your turn. Do you
do another nightmare for 10 and put to sleep an already asleep pokemon?
H*ll no!  You would retreat fossil haunter and bring out "old useless"
basic haunter and flog him for 50 with dream eater, thus ending basic
raichu's short existance in the game and one more prize for you.  Yeah,
I know the odds.  I read them from all of the percentage freaks that
write to pojo, that you really only have a 1-4 chance of using dream
eater as your opponent gets two chances to wake up.  But how many of you
ghost lovers out there have been out with fossil haunter for 7+ turns,
just stalling with the pokemon power alone!  Eventually, your opponent
will get unlucky and then you will get a wicked attack off with basic
haunter.  Finally, you can evolve him to Gengar and have a fossil
haunter out with gengar hurting the bench!

There still is use for basic haunter!
--
Don Taylor,   email to:  dtaylor@nas.net