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Pojo's Pokémon Card of the Day

 

Top 10 Cards Lost To Rotation

#7 - Float Stone  

- Plasma Freeze

Date Reviewed:
July 30, 2015

Ratings & Reviews Summary

Standard: 3.88
Expanded: 4.00
Limited: 4.95

Ratings are based on a 1 to 5 scale.
1 being horrible.  3 ... average.  5 is awesome.

Back to the main COTD Page


aroramage

Every once in a while, a card comes out that everyone can find a use for, no matter how large or small. Sycaper of course comes to mind, but then you've got stuff like Muscle Band, Lysandre, Max Potion - and then there's Float Stone. 

Float Stone here is a Pokemon Tool that made itself known due to its Ability to give a Pokemon Free Retreat! Retreat Costs, while not a major part of the game, are still very important; they're the tax that it takes to get a Pokemon out of danger if need be, making sure they don't end up  KO'd by your opponent's attack while at the same time dealing with the ordeal of not being able to send them back out as soon as you're able. 

Float Stone allowed you to forego that "tax" of sorts, letting you switch Pokemon out freely. This could be useful for Bench-sitters that get dragged out by Pokemon Catcher, Lysandre, or even Genesect-EX's Ability; such Pokemon could include stuff like Blastoise, who has a hefty Retreat Cost of 4 Energy, but there are two notable examples of Pokemon that worked well with Float Stone: Keldeo-EX and Garbodor. 

With Keldeo-EX, he could Rush-In to protect your Pokemon from Status effects, and then with Float Stone he could swap out once again to let them go right back into attacking again. With Garbodor, it was a way of shutting down Abilities while also not worrying about getting swapped out to the front lines save for if there was a one-turn KO waiting to happen when it gets swapped out.  

That does bring up one small note about Float Stone: since it does take up your Tool slot, you have to be careful with what Pokemon you use it with - attackers won't want it most of the time, since they prefer Muscle Band for extra damage, and Megas usually keep to their Spirit Link cards for the quick efficiency they provide in relieving the huge drawback. And with that in mind, Expanded should be an interesting format with Float Stone and Megas around. 

But here in Standard, we've lost a quick and powerful Tool. 

Rating 

Standard: 4/5 (not for every Pokemon, but definitely a great utility card to use)

Expanded: 4/5 (about the same here, all things considered) 

Limited: 5/5 (unless you had Rock Guard, this was the only Tool you could use, but it's still a nice card to have!) 

Arora Notealus: Ah Float Stone, you make my Pokemon come back fast, you lock Abilities while equipped to Garbodor, and you make Statuses nonexistent with Keldeo-EX. Clearly you were good at what you did. 

Next Time: And now please direct your attention to your local "totally not evil" evil scientist.


Otaku

Our seventh place card is… Float Stone (BW: Plasma Freeze 99/116)!  What makes this Tool so special?  A combination of timing and the card pool it was released into and has persisted in so far.  So as all but the greenest of players know, Float Stone if a Pokémon Tool that zeroes out the Retreat Cost of the Pokémon to which it is attached.  We first looked at it here when it was the four place pick for our Top 10 BW: Plasma Freeze cards and then again here when it took second place for our Top 10 for that year! 

Why did Float Stone prove so good?  Decks were often already using cards like Darkrai-EX and Rainbow Energy to gain a free Retreat Cost, such as to enable Keldeo-EX to use its “Rush In” Ability promote itself and then to retreat (which Darkrai-EX and Rainbow Energy would make free) so you could then promote what you really wanted Active (including your original Active, now free of Special Conditions and with attack effects on it reset).  Replacing two of those cards with a Pokémon Tool was usually a good deal.  Attackers like Accelgor (BW: Dark Explorers 11/108) wouldn’t attach Float Stone itself, but rather whatever Pokémon was partnered up with it and of course there is Garbodor (BW: Dragons Exalted 54/124; BW: Plasma Freeze 119/116; BW: Legendary Treasures 68/113), which loves having a means of triggering its “Garbotoxin” Ability while also allowing it to scoot back to the Bench if it is made Active.  Even though we got more competition (at least for attacking Pokémon-EX to sport), even though we got stronger counters (Tool Scrapper was a natural enemy to Float Stone… and then we got Startling Megaphone!), the main power combos have held strong, as well as the fall back use of “Well, don’t have another Tool on my attacker and I need to retreat so… Float Stone!”. 

Float Stone isn’t a must run card; generally if I’m not shooting for a specific combo running it, I’m not going to run Float Stone.  That isn’t because it has no general use, it is just its up against steep competition: in general Muscle Band or Silver Bangle for most attackers, Hard Charm for most Bench-sitters, Spirit Link cards and likely others that I’m forgetting or which are even more specialized.  For a card that has to deal with being countered by an Item that can discard all of its kind in play, that’s pretty amazing.  I will add that at least some of its former and current adherents will be able to fall back on alternatives, those said alternatives aren’t as universal, such as Mystery Energy for Psychic-Types.  Honestly if it stuck around, it would be diminished; two of its big combos (Keldeo-EX and Garbodor) are also on the chopping block.  In Expanded it will remain a strong play unless we get something amazing in a future set that somehow changes things… otherwise it is even better than in Standard due to some of the older combos returning.  In Limited it is an amazing pull as having a free retreater is often even more important there, as the role of “pivot Pokémon” once again becomes a great calling… though if you’re running a +39 deck it’s useless because you won’t be retreating due to your lack of Bench. 

Ratings 

Standard: 3.75/5 

Expanded: 4/5 

Limited: 4.9/5 

Summary: Float Stone works in nearly every deck, it just isn’t an optimal pick.  It is a must run for multiple combo oriented decks, with the net result being a nice, high score… though a bit lower than the last time we looked at it.  This actually took third place on my personal list, which was mainly calculated by looking at both how many decks ran a card and how many copies of said card they ran, so I’m thinking that finishing in seventh place is a bit low, though not terrible.


Emma Starr

Float Stone was a really nice card due to the fact that it could become something like a re-usable Switch. Have an active Pokémon who’s about to faint, but has a terribly high Retreat Cost? No worries, just attach a Float Stone to said Pokémon, and retreat them easily! Using this, you can have something very comparable to Darkrai EX’s Dark Cloak ability, but in most cases, is even better than that, since you obviously don’t need to run a Dark deck with this, you aren’t constantly relying on getting Energies spread out for it to work, and of course, it doesn’t have the vulnerability that Abilities can have (don’t worry Garbodor, we’ll be getting to you soon). In fact, I would even say this card is an upgrade to Switch, since you can retreat a certain Pokémon multiple times using this card, if you had to, whereas Switch only lets you do this once. Due to these reasons, Float Stone became a deck stable for a long time, but as we say good-bye to Unova, will we ever be able to find a replacement for our floating stones?

Standard: 4.3/5

Expanded: 4.3/5

Limited: 5/5 (You can’t go wrong including as many of these things as you pull!)


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