Name :
Giant Stump
Set :
EX Legend Maker
Card# :
72/92
Rarity :
Uncommon
Type :
Trainer
Sub-type:
Stadium
Effect Text:
This card stays in play when you play it. Discard
this card if another Stadium card comes into play.
If another card with the same name is in play, you
can’t play this card.
Each player can’t have more than 3 Benched Pokémon.
When Giant Stump comes into play, each player
discards Benched Pokémon and any cards attached to
them until he or she has 3 Benched Pokémon. (You
discard your Pokémon first.)
A very interesting card, though not a new concept:
Narrow Gym cut your bench size by one, and this goes
a step further cutting it by two. This card explains
how to handle your excess Pokémon right on it, which is
nice, since the card has room for it.
So, how does Giant Stump affect the game? 3
Pokémon on a bench is still quite a bit: to give you an
idea, you could still have your main attacker active, a
supporting search Pokémon, a supporting non-search
Pokémon, and a back-up attack or another supporting
Pokémon. That’s really quite a bit.
So what decks will it help/hurt? Well, it hurts decks
that need a lot of Pokémon in play. This mostly affects
“counting decks” and combo heavy decks. What are
counting decks? A quick, lame name I just made up off
the top of my head to describe cards whose effect(s)
count the number of Pokémon in play for something.
Ludicargo decks will have their top damage cut by 40
points, though it’s more like a 20 point cut since most
players know better than fill their bench against
Ludicargo. It will also cut the top mark for
Steven’s Advice, but again it is more apt to draw
three or four than five or six anyway. So the deck’s
real use might ironically be, for “healing”. That is,
when you have something badly hurt on a bench with at
least four Pokémon, drop this card to safely discard
it. ZRE decks should love that: a near dead Zapdos
ex can be benched by the Legendary Ascent of another
copy of it, and then the near dead one can be discarded
via Giant Stump.
Ratings
Unlimited :
1.5/5 – Wigglytuff/Wigglytuff ex decks
haven’t been overly strong for a while, though they do
still have some adherents. Raindance is mixed: I
know when I run it I like having several Pokémon ready
to go, but it’s not like I run the deck religiously. I
know I see a lot of combo heavy decks, but those are
very casual ones played mostly for fun. More over,
anything that does have such a full bench can probably
make do with it at (just over) half strength: if I have
four Slowking in play, I can probably get by with
just two if I must, since that’s still drops my
opponent’s odds of successfully using a Trainer against
my wishes down to 25%.
Modified :
3.5/5 – It needs to be run in the proper deck for useful
tricks or proper meta for hurting the opponent… but it
is less likely to help, than say, Battle Frontier,
Cursed Stone, or Desert Ruins.
Limited :
3.5/5 – Not actually as useful as in Modified for it’s
tricks, but if my opponent has some combo going off
their Stadium, I’d rather be able to shut it down if I
can. At least two of the Stadiums have a fair
propensity to be abused if you can only get some simple
combo. Oh, and there’s a Furret that can use Do
The Wave. ;)
-Otaku
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