Team Galactic Grunt – Space-Time Smackdown
Date Reviewed: April 23, 2025
Ratings Summary:
Ratings are based on a 1 to 5 scale. 1 is horrible. 3 is average. 5 is great.
Reviews Below:
Otaku
Team Galactic Grunt (A2 151, 191) is a Trainer-Supporter that randomly adds a Croagunk, Glameow or Stunky from your deck, to your hand. It is available as a ♦♦ or ★★ rare. Let me be crystal clear about how this card’s effect works. It picks at random from the available cards named “Croagunk”, “Glameow”, and/or “Stunky” that are in your deck. It cannot snag something you’re not actually running, or that is already out of your deck.
For who haven’t been reading the last several reviews, there are no card effects that apply to Trainers in general. Even when it comes to those that specifically refer to Supporters1, they’re all anti-Supporter effects that haven’t seen competitive success. As such, the main thing to remember is you only get to use one Supporter during your turn. Based on the oft cited X Speed (P-A 002) versus Leaf (A1a) comparison, Supporters should be twice as potent as the equivalent Item.
That’s not the case with Team Galactic Grunt. The closest Item to it’s effect is Poké Ball (P-A). That’s right, somehow being restricted to randomly getting one of three potential Pokémon, is supposed to be at least roughly close to a twice the benefit of an Item that randomly adds any one Basic from your deck, to your hand. Yes, the limitations give you a better chance of getting the exact card you want, but at the cost of your Supporter and not working with anything that is not a Croagunk, Glameow, or Stunky.
Is it because of the Pokémon you can get?
Currently, there’s Croagunk (A2 107, 173), Croagunk (A2a 051), Glameow (A2 139, 178), and Stunky (A2 102). All are 60 HP Basic Pokémon, with (F) Weakness, (C) Retreat Cost, and one attack except for Stunky, which has 70 HP. Croagunk (A2 107, 173) is a (D) Type that, for (D)(D), can use “Group Beatdown” to flip a coin for each Pokémon you have in play, doing 20 damage per “heads”. Croagunk (A2a 051) can use “Beat” for (D) to do 20 damage. Glameow is a (C) Type, and for (C) it can use “Pose” to do 40 but the attack requires a coin toss; if “tails”, the attack instead does nothing. Stunky uses “Scratch” for (D) to do 10 damage.
Maybe it’s their evolved forms? For now, there’s Purugly (A2 140), Skuntank (A2 103), Toxicroak (A2 108), and Toxicroak (A2a 052), all of which are Stage 1 Pokémon with (F) Weakness and one attack. Purugly is Colorless, has 110 HP, and Retreat Cost of (C)(C)(C). Purugly knows the attack “Interrupt”, also for (C)(C)(C). Interrupt does 60 damage to the opposing Active, while also forcing your opponent to reveal their hand to you. Then you select one card from their hand that gets shuffled back into their deck.
Skuntank and the Toxicroaks are both (D) Pokémon. Skuntank has 100 HP, a Retreat Cost of (C)(C), and for (D)(C) it can use “Poison Gas” to do 50 damage and Poison. Toxicroak (A2 108) has 90 HP with a Retreat Cost of (C)(C). It can use Group Beatdown for (D)(D) – like Croagunk (A2 107, 173) – to flip a coin for each Pokémon you have in play, doing 40 damage per “heads”. Toxicroak (A2a 052) has 100 HP with a Retreat Cost of (C), and for (D) it can use Toxic to Poison the opponent’s Active, but doing 20 damage during the Pokémon Checkup (instead of the usual 10).
Nope. Skuntank seems like filler, and while Purugly and the Toxicroaks aren’t all bad, but they pail in comparison to the other Colorless- or Darkness-Type Pokémon seeing competitive play. Even if you decided to run a deck with all three of Croagunk, Glameow, and Stunky, I don’t know if Team Galactic Grunt would be worth the deck space. On one hand, having a third and fourth “Poké Ball”, even if it counts as a Supporter, is tempting… but you can only have four Pokémon in play at a time, and there are so many “great”, let alone “good”, Supporters, I don’t think I could justify the deck slots.
Rating: 1.5/5
Maybe they’ll create a better Croagunk, Glameow, and Stunky in the future? Or perhaps it’ll be a better version of one of their evolved forms? I suppose they could take a page from the full TCG, where we get a “family” of related Team Galactic cards, with effects that make them greater than they are individually. Or maybe Team Galactic Grunt originally had a better effect, but it proved too good so they nerfed it last minute, into what we actually received? Or they just needed set fill?
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