Pojo's Pokemon news, tips, strategies and more!

Pokemon Home

Pokedex

Price Guide Set List

Message Board

Pokemon GO Tips

Pokemon News

Featured Articles


Trading Card Game
- Price Guide
- Price Guide
- Card of the Day
- Professional Grading
- Killer Deck Reports
- Deck Garage
- William Hung
- Jason Klaczynski
- Jeremy's Deck Garage
- Johnny Blaze's Banter
- TCG Strategies
- Rulings Help
- Apprentice & Patch
- Apprentice League
- Spoilers & Translations
- Official Rules
- Featured Event Reports
- Top of the World
- An X-Act Science
- Error Cards
- Printable Checklist
- Places to Play


Nintendo Tips
- Red/Blue
- Yellow
- Gold & Silver
- Crystal
- Ruby & Sapphire
- Fire Red & Leaf Green
- Emerald
- SNAP
- Pinball
- TCG cart
- Stadium
- PuPuzzle League
- Pinball: Ruby/Sapphire
- Pokemon Coliseum
- Pokemon Box
- Pokemon Channel


GameBoy Help
- ClownMasters Fixes
- Groudon's Den
- Pokemon of the Week

E-Card Reader FAQ's
- Expedition
- Aquapolis
- Skyridge
- Construction Action Function
- EON Ticket Manual


Deck Garage
- Pokemaster's Pit Stop
- Kyle's Garage
- Ghostly Gengar


Cartoon/Anime
- Episode Listing
- Character Bios
- Movies & Videos
- What's a Pokemon?
- Video List
- DVD List


Featured Articles

Pojo's Toy Box

Books & Videos

Downloads

Advertise With Us
- Sponsors
-
Links

Chat

About Us
Contact Us


Magic
Yu-Gi-Oh!
DBZ
Pokemon
Yu Yu Hakusho
NeoPets
HeroClix
Harry Potter
Anime
Vs. System
Megaman



Pojo's Pokémon Card of the Day

 

Bent Spoon

- Fates Collide

Date Reviewed:
May 23, 2016

Ratings & Reviews Summary

Standard: 2.13
Expanded: 2.08
Limited: 3.00

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

Back to the main COTD Page


aroramage

You know, this set has brought with it many curiosities. Not only in what ended up on the Top 10 list but even beyond that. It's not to say all of them are good, but there's a lot of niche potential to be had in a few of these cards. 

Take for instance Bent Spoon. At first, I was thinking it was to act as a Psychic-type boost of some sort, in much the same way cards like Strong Energy and Fighting Stadium boost the Fighting-types. I suppose we'll have to wait a little longer for Type-centric Tools to come back into the game, but in the meantime, we get this crazy little spoon. And what does it do exactly? 

Simple: any effect of your opponent's attacks that would affect the Pokemon Bent Spoon is attached to, doesn't work. 

There's certainly a lot of potential in an effect of this sort. Energy discards and Status Conditions notably come to mind on a general scale, but there are some other cards with effects of their own that could really mess with your strategy if they hit the Pokemon you'd want a Bent Spoon on. In a way, the spoon bends the effects around the wielder so they don't touch them! That's pretty cool! 

The problems with the card though become apparent after some thought though. First of all, it takes up your Tool slot for your Pokemon, so they can't have another one equipped. That alone is pretty vital in and of itself. It also won't stop effects that add on more damage or hit the player's hand in some form, like Seismitoad-EX's or Giratina-EX's locking attacks. On the surface it doesn't seem that bad, but since most attacks being used competitively aim more for damage than not, it's safe to assume there's not gonna be much use for Bent Spoon outside of casual play. 

Not to mention Muscle Band's still around taking up the slot anyway. 

Rating 

Standard: 2.5/5 (it's got a certain appeal that only really works if certain cases unfold) 

Expanded: 2.5/5 (but there's not a whole lot going for it otherwise) 

Limited: 3/5 (it's a tech card to say the least) 

Arora Notealus: I wonder why they didn't call it Twisted Spoon, like how it's called in the games. Seems like it'd have been a no brainer, ya know? Maybe something about Twisted things is...bad? Controversial? I don't think there is, but you never know. 

Next Time:...I could swear I've talked about this guy already


Otaku

We begin our week after our Top 10 with Bent Spoon (XY: Fates Collide 93/124).  This is a new Pokémon Tool that can be attached to any of your Pokémon that don’t already have the maximum number of Pokémon Tools permitted to them.  While equipped, that Pokémon is protected by all effects of your opponent’s attacks except damage which would otherwise be done to it.  Bent Spoon does not remove effects already on a Pokémon when it is attached, so this has to be in place beforehand to do any good. 

Many attacks do nothing but damage, which can make Bent Spoon seem almost silly to use at first glance.  After all, why do that when one could other defensive tricks like Assault Vest, Fighting Fury Belt, Float Stone, Muscle Band, Sparkling Robe, or (for Fighting Type) Focus Sash.  Obviously most of those are quite dissimilar in effect from Bent Spoon, but all are Pokémon Tools and thus in direct competition with each other as well as Bent Spoon.  Sparkling Robe is a bit similar except instead it blocks only one kind of effect (Special Conditions), works against any source of said effect (attacks, Abilities, Trainers, etc.), and because of that second thing it also is allowed to remove any present when it is attached.  To clarify that last bit, Special Conditions are denoted by card position or counters, so as long as it doesn’t matter where they come from (like with Sparkling Robe), then it makes sense for existing ones to also be cured.  With attack effects, they usually just have to be remembered and kept track of by the players; removing those already present would be difficult for some and begging for cheating in competitive play (assuming Bent Spoon proves worth running). 

So where might Bent Spoon have a reason to be used, especially in light of the competition?  Its effect is so specific and depends on your opponent, that you need to look for a card that already is protected from damage: narrow protection is much more important when it is filling in the gaps of far more broad protection.  Pokémon like Glaceon-EX, Jolteon-EX, and others have protective effects good against damage but not effects of attacks, so with Bent Spoon they are completely protected from attacks by whatever it is their respective effects specify (Evolution Pokémon for Glaceon-EX, Basics for Jolteon-EX, etc.) as well as protected against effects of attacks by stuff which they are not otherwise protected again (Basics for Glaceon-EX, Evolutions for Jolteon-EX, etc.).  Note that an effect that ignores effects on the opponent’s Active can still punch through Bent Spoon, as it is an effect on the opponent’s Active; fortunately I don’t think anything that bypasses protective effects also then inflicts another effect. 

With all that being said, I don’t see much of a use for this in Expanded or Standard play; not only do you have many decks built around attackers that are focused on just dealing damage, but to ensure Bent Spoon sticks around you’ll need another effect.  If not, expect Startling Megaphone to discard it (along with every other Tool you have in play), or Xerosic in some decks that are wary of Item lock and/or Special Energy cards, or even some Pokémon that can discard or negate the effects of Pokémon Tools.  Speaking of Item lock, while one sided Item lock can protect your Bent Spoon, if your opponent runs Item denial then it blocks it.  Sounds kind of obvious, but one of the uses I’ve seen floating around for this card was to protect a target from the damage counters placed by the “Silent Fear” attack Trevenant BREAK uses… a Pokémon that usually BREAK Evolves from Trevenant (XY 55/146) and thus prevents you from playing Items.  As such the best place for Bent Spoon seems to be Limited; while a lot of attackers still won’t have effects, or effects that apply to the hypothetically equipped Pokémon, Limited makes a lot of annoying attack effects far more effective.  Additionally your opponent will have much fewer ways to deal with it and you most likely have much fewer Pokémon Tools to run in its stead. 

Ratings 

Standard: 1.75/5 

Expanded: 1.65/5 

Limited: 3/5 

Summary: So “Twisted Spoon” from the video games becomes Bent Spoon for the TCG, and instead of boosting the damage done by Psychic Type attacks, it bears a protective effect.  A very specialized protective effect that only really matters if you already are protecting against other things or are otherwise extra vulnerable to said effects.  What this means is that if I were running something like a Jolteon-EX focused lock deck, yes I would consider including a single copy of Bent Spoon as TecH to counter my opponent’s possible TecH to bypass the protection Jolteon-EX receives from Flash Ray.  That… is about the only competitive, plausible example occurring to me.  So that is enough to keep it from a minimal score but not even enough to justify it as a full two out of five.

When we do our Top 10 lists, it is rare that all reviewers submit the exact same cards, so the site’s master Top 10 list is usually much larger.  I actually prefer us to submit more like a Top 15 or Top 20 list; sometimes it helps break ties, sometimes it causes them, but in the end I just like getting a better picture of what everyone thinks of more cards from the set.  So it isn’t surprising we ended up with a Top 27 list this time, but what might be surprising if this wasn’t its CotD, Bent Spoon ended up in 27th place with a single voting point, tied with one other card.


Copyright© 1998-2016 pojo.com
This site is not sponsored, endorsed, or otherwise affiliated with any of the companies or products featured on this site. This is not an Official Site.