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Tying things up in a neat little
bow for #9 is the Trainer card that made most Mega decks
playable - Mega Turbo! Mega Turbo came out in Roaring
Skies back in May, and its advent was just as impactful
then as the arrival of the Spirit Link cards was just
the November prior with Phantom Forces!
Since their inception back in the
XY Base Set, Mega Evolutions were already some of the
most powerful Pokemon to ever be in the game...at least
in terms of HP score and general power. Of course, we
didn't have too many of them back then - at their
release, it was only M Venasaur-EX and M Blastoise-EX,
but they highlighted just how powerful these cards could
be. Having over 200 HP apiece and wielding attacks like
Crisis Vine and Hydro Bombard, they demonstrated what
Megas could have been like. The trend continued into
Flashfire, with two versions of M Charizard-EX being
able to deal 300 damage!! But alas, none of these Megas
were particularly competitive for a couple of major
reasons: the attacks were ungodly expensive, and they
were all affected by the new Mega Rule that ended your
turn the moment you evolved one.
Even M Kangaskhan-EX, one of the
first successful attempts at bringing Megas to the meta,
isn't even used nowadays because of the Mega Rule!! And
that gal's in Ubers in the video games!!
Fast forward a bit to Phantom
Forces, in which a few more Megas have been released but
aren't getting played. And then two cards appear that
brought out a whole new style of play: Manectric Spirit
Link and Gengar Spirit Link. These were the first cards
that circumvented the Spirit Link rule and actually made
the Megas playable! M Manectric-EX is still played to
this very day, and it's still very popular thanks to the
combination of its Spirit Link card and its cheap attack
with Energy acceleration. M Gengar-EX?...well, not so
much.
So the trend continued with any
Mega released after that, and with more Megas released
in each set, they started to become really popular. You
had Primal Kyogre-EX, Primal Groudon-EX, M Aggron-EX and
even M Gardevoir-EX in the very next set, and each
proved formidable in their own right...some more than
others. But there was a seed planted in their release, a
seed that would germinate and spring forth into the next
set in an even bigger and more explosive way!
...and no, I don't mean the Ancient
Traits with Delta Evolution, but that would work too.
Primal Kyogre-EX became a powerful
deck thanks to its focus on Alpha Growth, an Ancient
Trait that allowed the player to accelerate the Energy
out of their hand and onto Primal Kyogre-EX, making his
4-cost attack easily doable in a mere two turns.
Certainly M Manectric-EX could accelerate Energy quickly
out of the discard pile, but both of these forms were
fairly limited to their own deck. If only there was a
way to give that acceleration to every Mega-BAM!!
MEGA TURBO GOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
So yeah, Mega Turbo, alongside
every Spirit Link card, solved the two main problems
most Megas had: their own Mega Rule, and of course the
expensive attacks. With that, many Mega decks have risen
in popularity. Of course, that's not to say all Mega
decks are equal - based on whatever Mega Evolution
you're running, there are some that will be better or
worse. But if it weren't for Mega Turbo, most of these
decks would never see the light of day.
Rating
Standard: 3.5/5 (an absolute must
in Mega decks, no matter what you're running)
Expanded: 3.5/5 (I mean, let's face
it, Energy acceleration is an important aspect of the
game, am I right?)
Limited: 3/5 (if you do end up
getting the pieces to a Mega Evo, this can be useful)
Arora Notealus: MEEEEEEEEGA
TURRRRRRBOOOOOOOOOOO
Next Time: This is one crazy
Supporter, man...seriously, she's crazy!!
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