Baby Mario
2010 UK
National
Seniors
Champion |
Plume Fossil (Noble Victories)
Hello and welcome to another week of
Pojo’s
CotD. I hope that US readers enjoyed their
Thanksgiving break and managed to pick up some
Pokémon-related bargains on Black Friday without getting
injured (I heard about that on the news).
We kick things off with Plume Fossil, which is the card
you will have to use if you ever want to get
Archeops into play. Would
you ever want to do that? Well, yes. It has an amazing
Ability: it prevents either player from evolving their
Pokémon.
I won’t go into detail on how useful
Archeops
might be because I suspect that will be the
subject of a future review. As for Plume Fossil itself,
I made my feelings clear on how utterly horrible the new
Fossil mechanic is in my review of Cover Fossil last
week. To summarise, you have to run a whole bunch of
cards (a playset of the
Fossil Trainer, the Stage 1, and Research Records) to
even stand a chance of getting
Archeops on the Field, and even then it’s a real
gamble as to whether the Stage 1 you need is in either
the top four, or bottom seven cards of the deck. What’s
more, the strategy is useless against arguably the most
powerful deck in the format (Zekrom/Tornadus),
and is shut down entirely if your opponent can get
Vileplume or
Gothitelle out first.
They can make these new
Restored/Fossil Pokémon as powerful as they like really,
because unless we get either another method of getting
them out, or a reliable way to send cards to the bottom
of the deck, no-one in their right mind is going to use
them in a tournament.
Rating
Modified: 1.25 (the worst Fossil mechanic ever. And
that’s saying something)
Limited: 1.25 (smaller deck = more chance of working . .
. but you won’t pull enough of the needed cards in six
packs)
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virusyosh |
Welcome back, Pojo readers! I hope that your
Thanksgiving holidays in the US went well, and that all
of you did well at your local City Championships. We're
going to review more Noble Victories cards this week,
and we'll kick things off by reviewing Plume Fossil.
Plume Fossil is a Trainer - Item card, meaning you
can play as many copies of it as you would like per
turn, and it will be blocked by Gothitelle's Magic Room
and Vileplume UD's Allergy Flower. Plume Fossil, much
like the Cover Fossil that we reviewed last week, is one
of the two new cards in Noble Victories highlighting the
new Restored Pokemon mechanic. When you play Plume
Fossil, you look at the bottom seven cards of your deck.
If you can find an Archen in those seven cards, you can
put it onto your Bench, shuffling your deck afterward.
This is currently the only way to get an Archen into
play, and therefore is totally necessary if you wish to
play Archeops, Archen's evolution. That being said,
Plume Fossil is incredibly difficult to use, as there
aren't too many ways to stack the bottom of your deck.
Research Record comes to mind immediately, but even that
isn't a sure thing.
Modified: 2/5 Plume Fossil is difficult to rate, as
it only will be in decks that utilize Archeops, and
those decks will run 4 copies. Archeops' Ancient Power,
an Ability that blocks Evolutions, isn't quite as useful
in this format as one might initially think. With so
many powerful Basic Pokemon commonplace (with more to
come), Rare Candy being unaffected by the Ability, and
the sheer difficulty in getting the Pokemon out,
Archeops (and therefore Plume Fossil) probably doesn't
have a place in Modified.
Limited: 3/5 Plume Fossil is slightly better in
Limited than it is in Modified, but is still difficult
to use. With a smaller deck size, it is easier to find
an Archen in your seven bottom cards, but there are no
bottom-stacking cards in Noble Victories, so you are
pretty much stuck with the random configuration in this
format. Archeops can be pretty good here, though, so if
you pull an Archeops and a few Plume Fossil, it could be
worth running, though there are generally better, more
consistent options.
Combos With: Research Record
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Mad Mattezhion
Professor Bathurst League Australia |
Plume Fossil (Noble Victories)
Hey Pojo fans, we start the week with the other Fossil
Trainer, Plume Fossil! I'd say we covered the pros and
cons (mostly cons) of the new Fossil mechanic, so the
only question we have to answer today is if Achen and
Archeops can rise above the drawbacks.
Suprisingly, I think Archeops could see play but I won't
go into further detail until we review that card further
down the line. For now, I'm going to say that if you run
Plume Fossil then you had also better run a full set of
Poke'mon Communication, so you can put Archen back into
your deck if it ever winds up in your hand. I'd
recommend Research Record as well to increase your odds,
but you have to ask yourself if the cost in deck space
is really worth it.
Although I think Fossils have been getting the short end
of the stick for some time now, I can understand why
they've changed the rules. Having Item cards that are
also Poke'mon when they are in play (but not when they
are in the deck, hand or discard pile) is always
confusing for the newer players. However, I think it
could have been handled better by simply allowing
players to search their deck and/or discard pile for
Archen and then putting into play immediately,
completely avoiding the roasting we've given the Fossil
cards.
It's been a lousy year for Fossils and I fear it is only
going to get worse. Oh well, maybe they will be reworded
to be even marginally playable?
Modified: 2 (Archeops could be playable, but if there
was a way to avoid using Plume Fossil then you can bet
that everyone would take it)
Limited: 1.5 (smaller deck sizes make your odds better
but you still need a decent number of Plume Fossil and
Archen to make it work and Archeops is nothing special
in Limited)
Combos with: an apology to the Fossils and a major
rewrite.
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