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This week we are covering the cards that made at least one
individual reviewer’s Top 10 list but not the shared
Pojo Top 10 list: in short its “Runners Up” Week. The
cards are not being reviewed in the order in which they
placed but in the order that seemed best for review
purposes.
Head Ringer Team Flare Hyper Gear
(XY: Phantom Forces 97/119) is the next-to-last
runner up we’ll be covering this week, and I’ll simply
be referring to it as just “Head Ringer” for the
rest of the review, though the text write-up in the Card
Database of the official Pokémon website does indeed
include “Team Flare Hyper Gear” as part of the name.
I’ll be doing the same with Robo Substitute Team
Flare Hyper Gear (XY: Phantom Forces 102/119)
and Jamming Net Team Flare Hyper Gear (XY:
Phantom Forces 98/119) when they come up. Of
course, the main reason to mention Robo Substitute
is that it is one of the three Team Flare
Hyper Gear cards we have received.
Head Ringer and Jamming
Net are our only Pokémon Tool F cards, Pokémon Tools
that can only be attached to an opposing
Pokémon-EX. This is a bit exciting because it’s a novel
mechanic for the Pokémon TCG, though somewhat common for
TCGs in general. Attaching to an opponent’s Pokémon
makes removing the cards difficult: the only direct
options I am aware of are Masquerain (BW:
Plasma Blast 2/101) (a Stage 1 line), Tool
Retriever (mostly useful for this purpose), Tool
Scrapper (which isn’t Standard legal) and Xerosic
(which is Standard legal, but a Supporter). Indirect
tricks are an option because Pokémon Tool F cards are
discarded if an effect removes them from the field (this
is to effects like that of Tool Retriever from
putting your opponent’s cards into your own hand).
Both Pokémon Tool F cards take up the lone Tool slot a Pokémon has:
your opponent can’t attach their own Pokémon Tool to
something you’ve nailed with Head Ringer or
Jamming Net but that also means that you can’t stack
multiple copies onto the same Pokémon-EX. Why does that
matter? Just like Jamming Net, Head Ringer
has a negative effect on the Pokémon equipped with it:
Head Ringer increase the Energy costs of attacks
on the equipped Pokémon by [C] while Jamming Net
dropped the damage from the attacks of the equipped
Pokémon by 20 against the opponent’s Pokémon (note that
in that last instance, “Pokémon” is plural: damage to
Benched Pokémon also goes down). Stacking these with
each other or multiple copies of themselves would be a
pricey but possibly worthwhile way to render a
Pokémon-EX dead weight. So what is it like with single
copies?
Still very hit or miss. Obviously if a non-Pokémon-EX is
attacking, it isn’t vulnerable. If it is a Pokémon-EX
that already has a Pokémon Tool attached, it isn’t
vulnerable unless you use a Startling Megaphone
or Tool Scrapper on it first. The final hurdle
is… actually affecting the match-up. Obviously if your
opponent was planning on slapping a Muscle Band,
Float Stone, etc. onto the Pokémon you instead
equipped with a Pokémon Tool F, that too is a bonus. My
first hand experience is that while players usually want
to attach a Tool to their Pokémon, they often don’t draw
it at the right time or it quickly gets discarded
anyway. Just as I’ll credit attaching a Jamming Net
on a Pokémon that would have received a Muscle Band
as a -40 damage swing, if you had to discard the
Muscle Band with your own card effect first, that
first -20 (due to the discarded Muscle Band) is
credited to the effect doing the discarding, and if no
Muscle Band was ever going to be attached,
Jamming Net doesn’t get credit for that either.
Yes, this means you often you won’t know the exact
benefit of using these cards! There is also the
question of whether the reduced damage matters; just as
a Muscle Band can be a waste because you would
have scored the KO without it, Jamming Net means
little if the opponent scores a KO with the same number
of attacks using the same attacker they would have
anyway or a different attacker they already had ready.
Again, it can get quite confusing as if a backup
attacker is already ready, calling it into service isn’t
much of a loss until the back-up attacker is needed and
no longer available… such as being forced into the
position of primary attacker early and thus being KOed
sooner than another backup attacker can be readied.
What does this have to do with Head Ringer? It is in much
the same situation. Increasing the Energy cost of
attacks by [C] only matters if it ultimately impacts
your opponent. If you slap Head Ringer onto a
Yveltal-EX that was already going to attack using
Evil Ball, fueled by a Darkness Energy and
Double Colorless Energy but that was not
going to equip a Muscle Band, you’re not ahead.
Sure the opponent couldn’t use Y Cyclone, but removing
that option only matters if it would have been the best
option to pick. If you are able to (in the example)
discard the Double Colorless Energy and your
opponent can’t drop another one right away, again now it
has mattered but if they can afford to replace it, then
Head Ringer didn’t ultimately do anything but
take of space in your deck and offer a false sense of
security. It can be even worse if a deck simply can
afford to overpay; technically you are making the attack
cost them more, but if they can afford it then in the
long run it does you no good; the “wasted” Energy and
attachment have to ultimately have been needed elsewhere
or its like discarding a Energy card on something that
ended up never needing the Energy in the first place.
Despite how terrible I’ve made these cards out to be, they really
are good. I just encounter people that don’t quite
grasp things… which includes myself. The Pokémon Tool F
cards are proving themselves not as general
anti-Pokémon-EX cards, but as part of specific combos,
such as ensuring Manectric-EX can score 120
points of damage with its Assault Laser or providing
hard-to-discard Pokémon Tools for Trubbish (BW:
Plasma Storm 65/135) and its Tool Drop attack to
count. My rather negative reading comments are also to
explain why I actually prefer Head Ringer to
Jamming Net: at a glance Head Ringer seems
like much more of a gamble but with most cards
Jamming Net isn’t much better. Well, unless your
experience is constantly having Pokémon KOed with no
more than 10 points of overkill. I would rather take my
chances on an opponent being unable to quickly supply
the extra Energy needed for Head Ringer and
missing an entire attack or suffering because
they needed that Energy (and/or Energy attachment) for
something else later but had to “waste it” on whatever I
equipped with Head Ringer.
The cards have solid general usage but then we have to look at the
niche they fill: disruption. I could, for example, be
running Enhanced Hammer, another Startling
Megaphone, etc. I could dedicate the space to
simply improving my overall offense, such as with
(another copy of) Hypnotoxic Laser or Muscle
Band. Its deck specific usage might be part of what
revives an old deck and helps birth a new one (or two),
but I’m not sure those will be lasting decks. At least
if they rely on Pokémon Tool F cards, it just takes the
metagame shifting back to big, Basic non-Pokémon-EX in
enough decks that its no longer a reliable enough trick.
For general usage, where the deck isn’t dependent on
the Pokémon Tool F card… it isn’t dependent on them. It
is probably a great deck that just got a little better:
for example Seismitoad-EX control decks.
Ratings
Standard: 3.25/5 - The same
score I gave Jamming Net, I give to Head
Ringer. For a few key decks it is great and it has
decent general utility… but in an area where it has such
huge competition.
Expanded: 3.25/5 - Also the
same score I gave Jamming Net, I’m not seeing
anything in particular that really differentiates it
here.
Limited: 3.25/5 - You guessed it; same score I gave Jamming Net and
with almost identical justification as well. In Limited
you won’t often encounter a Pokémon-EX but when you do,
you might not have this card handy but you should have
enough space in your deck to include it anyway since
when it is good, it is very good.
Summary: I’m just not that impressed by Pokémon Tool F cards. Part of me
liked how Pokémon made sure you didn’t have to
worry about your opponent’s cards being attached to your
opponent’s cards (and thus decreasing the risk of one
player walking away with another’s cards). I suspect
the excitement over this new (to the Pokémon TCG)
mechanic might coloring impressions of the cards… or
maybe it is just people overestimating what Head
Ringer (and Jamming Net) can actually add to
a deck. For most, its just another alternative to
several cards, all of which make a great deck just a
little bit better… decks that probably didn’t need the
help. The few where it makes a real difference, I’m not
sure they’ll last. As usual, if I’m wrong about these
things: good for the game.
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