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Pojo's Pokémon Card of the Day

aroramage	WHAT HAVE YOU DONE, POKEMON COMPANY?! YOU'VE BROKEN TIME AND SPACE!!  ...okay, maybe it's just Dialga and Palkia messing with the natural order, but still!  I'm sure if you played around in the Platinum era, you would have interacted with this card at some point, but if you're like me, you didn't, so you're not sure what exactly this is. Think of it this way: you know how Forest of Giant Plants rewrote the rules of evolution for Grass Pokemon? Now imagine that effect was spread out to affect ALL Pokemon of ANY Type. That's Broken Space-Time in a nutshell. "GEEZ, that's ridiculously broken!" you might say. "How could they stand dealing with such a card?"  Well, don't get me wrong, Broken Time-Space is a powerful card, but back in those days, you have to keep in mind that there weren't things like Pokemon-GX or EX. In fact, the most HP a Pokemon could have was 150 HP on a few Stage 2 - and nowadays, we've got upwards of 250 HP!! So it was arguably a lot tamer back then, right? It couldn't have been that bad, right?  If you know Forest of Giant Plants and how insane Grass decks have been because of it, you know better than to say it wasn't that bad.  Sure, while Lv. X Pokemon couldn't get "Leveled Up" into - which is different from evolving, like what this card allows you to do in excess - you could still conceivably play down an entire Stage 2 line-up in one turn, provided you had the Basic - Stage 1 - Stage 2 all in your hand. And this could be applied in ANY deck whatsoever. Imagine for a moment that it wasn't just Decidueye-GX that could be accessed in one turn, but even cards like Garbodor (GRI), Alolan Ninetales-GX, Primarina-GX, Incineroar-GX, Metagross-GX, ANY MEGA-EX in the ENTIRE game, BREAK Evolutions, cards like Brozong (PHF) or Eelektrik (NVI) - the list goes on and on and on.  It's probably for the best a card with this kind of effect was restricted to just one Type - otherwise, this thing would just completely break the game nowadays.  Rating  Standard: N/A (thank goodness it came out years ago)  Expanded: N/A (and has long since rotated out of any format currently)  Limited: 4.5/5 (but it's definitely a card worth recognizing)  Arora Notealus: Broken Time-Space came out in a very different time, and yet because of its broad range, it was usable in any Evolution deck imaginable. It was even rated as the 6th best card on Pojo's Best of 2009 list! Nowadays, I'm sure the card would be banned quickly, just because it would lead to a massive wipe from a bunch of different decks. Or at the very least, it might be limited in some manner.  Next Time: In the depths of the volcano, only females can thrive.
Vince	Throwback Thursdays is a curious case for me as a reviewer.  They may sometimes find a card in which I may not be able to playtest, let alone actually owning the card.  I have owned some cards from Base Set and cards from Diamond and Pearl onwards.  I’d be stuck in limbo if they chose cards from the Neo series (second generation) or the EX Ruby, Sapphire, and Emerald series (third generation).  No matter what, if that happens, I will try my best to see how the card would be used back then.   Fortunately for this week’s Throwback Thursday, this card is Broken Time Space!  You can see past reviews from Febuary 11, 2009 and the sixth best card of 2009.  I still have 5 physical copies (League Promos from way back in 2011) that I can use, and I put 4 of them in my deck (you can use up to four copies of a particular card sans basic energy).  Why did I decide to max it out?  It breaks the fundamental rule for evolving Pokemon in the TCG.  Usually, it takes couple of turns until you put your final stage down, and that makes evolution cards harder to use.  Rare Candy and Wally can help speed up evolution to some extent; Rare Candy can let you place a Stage 2 on the Basic while ignoring the Stage 1 card; Wally lets you evolve on the turn you played or evolved your Pokemon.  Both have some drawbacks such as item lock or using up your Supporter for the turn.  Broken Time Space takes only your Stadium slot.  Back then, during the DPPt series, there were still Basic, Stage 1, and Stage 2 Pokemon, but they also have Level X Pokemon, which is not the same as evolving, so even Broken Time Space cannot let you Level Up your Pokemon on the turn it was played!   So, if Broken Time Space were to reprinted, it will probably see tremendous amount of play for evolution decks!  Expansions between Black & White and whatever the latest expansion would be contains even more forms of Evolution cards.  There’s still Basic, Stage 1, and Stage 2 like usual.  Then there’s Mega Evolutions, which you evolve your Pokemon-EX to Mega Pokemon-EX.  You can mega evolve out of nowhere right away, but if you don’t have the corresponding Spirit Link, your turn will end!  Then there’s Break Evolutions, which inherits all attributes from its previous evolutions.  So, in the same turn, you could go from Froakie, then Frogadier, then Greninja, and finally Greninja BREAK, ready to launch a Giant Water Shuriken and whatever attack it has!  Finally, there’s GX Pokemon which could be Basic, Stage 1, or Stage 2.  The point is, your opponent won’t see this coming because you hold off from playing those stages until you got everything!   There is another card that also breaks the rule of evolution: Forest of Giant Plants.  This works just like Broken Time Space, but it works only for Grass Pokemon.  Both players can take advantage of Broken Time Space because you can evolve any type of Pokemon.  However, with Forest of Giant Plants restricting to just grass types, if you can take advantage of the effect but your opponent can’t (because the opponent doesn’t use grass types), then that’s a net positive for you.  Therefore, Forest of Giant Plants seems marginally better than Broken Time Space, though that doesn’t mean that players can’t use it.  It just makes sense to find a way to restrict and lower the range so that the opponent cannot benefit as much from the effect.   There may be times where such an amazing effect could get another card banned from all sanctioned tournaments.  So far, one Pokemon got banned in Expanded!  Shiftry (BW Next Destines) didn’t see as much play at first.  The attributes don’t matter even if it was a dark type, because Seedot and some Nuzleaf card were Grass types (in the case of Forest of Giant Plants; for Broken Time Space, they don’t care about the type).  The one effect text made the difference.  It’s ability, Giant Fan, is a coming-into-play ability, in which you flip a coin.  If heads, you bounce one of your opponent’s Pokemon back to his/her hand…if the opponent has no Pokemon left in play, you win.  If your opponent has more than one Pokemon in play, then use Super Scoop Up, AZ, or Scoop Up Cyclone to get Shiftry back to your hand after you used your ability, put them back in play, and use the coming-into-play ability again!  This created an unhealthy environment in which the Shiftry player going first can actually win before your opponent gets to do anything!   Overall, Broken Time Space would be a serious contender if it were to be reprinted, and it is a strong addition in Limited as well.  There’s so many applications/combos for using the stadium than I can fit into a review.  It’s just that good!   Ratings   Standard: N/A (would hypothetically be 4.5/5)   Expanded: N/A (would hypothetically be 4.5/5)   Limited: 5/5 (Lots of Stage 2 to use in the Platinum set, if you get the pieces)   Notes: As much as I love this card, I can’t bring myself to give it a perfect score.  This is a very powerful effect, but at the same time your opponent gets to experience this wonderful effect as well.  If you can’t take advantage but your opponent does, you would lose fairly quickly.  Also, decks that don’t use evolution Pokemon have no need for this card (I won’t dock points for that).   Coming up: What an interesting combination!
Otaku	It is Throwback Thursday, and we’re covering a pretty infamous card.  Some thought (and still think) it was one of the best things to happen to the Pokémon TCG… others like me point out it even has broken in its name.  That’s right, we’re re-reviewing Broken Time-Space (Platinum 104/127)!  This Stadium card has already been reviewed twice; once on February 11, 2009, and again on January 8, 2010… where we were counting down the Top 10 cards from 2009 (it secured sixth place).  You’ll notice I didn’t review it either time; though I was trying to keep up with the game at that time, work was pretty demanding (and in a few months I’d be moving to a new state), so most of what I know, I’ve learned from others, rather than first-hand experience.  So what does Broken Time-Space do?  While it is in play, a player can immediately Evolve their in play Pokémon.  Just Benched it?  S’okay.  First turn of the game?  S’okay.  Evolved it already this turn?  Go for it!  Broken Time-Space was legal for the 2008-2009, 2009-2010, and 2010-2011 Modified Formats.  For newer players, a reminder that “Modified” was just the name used for what we now call Standard.  The first two of those Formats were Diamond & Pearl and later sets, the legendary time when no sets rotated from Standard play; the latter was DP: Majestic Dawn and later releases, and it isn’t as far back as it might seem; the final expansion released during the 2010-2011 Modified Format was Black & White!  The first turn rules of the time were different: I believe during the time of Broken Time-Space you could not use Trainers if you went first but you could attack… though the release of Black & White marked the shift to the BW-era first turn rules where there were no special first turn restrictions.  So, with the release of Broken Time-Space, Evolution decks were crushing Basic decks, right?  The funny thing is, this card released in the twilight of the era when Evolutions regularly were thought of as better than Basic Pokémon.  Times were changing, though, and we had the Level-Up mechanic to allow Basic Pokémon to fake being Evolutions.  Without boring you with the details, if you’ve seen a Pokémon with “LV.X” after its name, that is a Level-Up card; it is a lot like BREAK Evolving except it could only be played to your Active, didn’t get tilted sideways, and counted as the Stage of the underlying card (so a Basic was still treated as a Basic).  So Broken Time-Space seems mostly released to combat the many strong Basic Pokémon also being released at this time, to prevent too radical a shift in the metagame and… it mostly worked.  The best of the Evolutions took advantage of it, allowing them to compete with the best of the Basic Pokémon.  Which means the rest still couldn’t compete.  Based on some grumblings I’ve been hearing (well, reading) post North American International Championship, I may have to post a bit of a PSA article about a newbie avoids using Sour Grapes to Evolve into a n00b and ultimately, into a scrub… but I won’t force you to read that here.  For now, know that not every Evolution based deck bothered with Broken Time-Space but it gets murky because this was prior to the erratum that turned Rare Candy into the modern day Pokémon Breeder: in the present Rare Candy just allows you to Evolve a Basic (already capable of manually Evolving) directly to the Stage 2 form, but back then it allowed any Basic to immediately Evolve into either its Stage 1 or Stage 2 form.  Each approach had different benefits, and some decks would use both; Rare Candy did not help your opponent and could entirely skip the Stage 1 form of a Stage 2, but Broken Time-Space could be used as often as you wished (and were able) until it was discarded.  Now, I asked myself “How much does helping your opponent really matter?” and then I both remembered what has happened with other heavily run Stadium cards, plus to re-read those old reviews and World Championship Decklists.  Sure enough, players eventually learned that if they were not heavily reliant upon the speedy Evolution, they could just count on their opponent to run it in most situations and just run Rare Candy themselves.  So only two of the four 2009 World Championship decks include it, though one belonged to the winner of the Masters Division.  It shows up in two of the 2010 World Championship decks as well, skipped by a deck lacking Evolutions and another with them but favoring Rare Candy.  It probably would have been a big deal in the 2011 World Championship, except the World Championship which occurred just after the emergency early rotation to HeartGold/SoulSilver and later releases (which included Black & White as the then newest set).  There is, of course, Forest of Giant Plants to give us a taste of what Broken Time-Space would be like in modern Standard and Expanded play.  Some have claimed that working only for a single Type makes it “balanced”, and I struggle not to demand they stop lying or learn the game.  Snarky, but the core rules of the game were designed in such a manner that speeding up Evolution almost inevitably breaks cards; if you’re new and don’t know the jargon yet, I mean it makes them too good, to the point it upsets game balance and/or reduces enjoyment.  Remember, Pokémon is a 2-player where the designers want and intend for both players to have fun… even the losing player!  At least, I thought that was the case, but maybe the last few years proves I was wrong.  An Evolution is designed to be balanced as an Evolution, needing an extra turn or two or even three (certain BREAK Evolutions) to hit the field.  While I bear no ill will, at least while I am conducting myself properly, towards someone running a deck like Decidueye-GX/Vileplume (XY: Ancient Origins 3/98), you see what happens when pretty balanced effects like a little bonus damage counter placement or Item lock that hits both players can suddenly be spammed, even hitting the field on the (overall) first turn, before your opponent actually gets to play.  There’s a reason someone else came up with the nickname “Broken Vine-Space” for Forest of Giant Plants, and a formerly joke card like Shiftry (BW: Next Destinies 72/99); its Ability (that triggered when you Evolved something into it) just was not competitive before you could spam it to the field over and over again first turn.  So… imagine that across the board.  So many old favorites and new faces suddenly gain the speed to be competitive, or so you’d think.  The reality is, while we would see some new (or returning old) blood for competitive play, dealing with things like a T1 Garbodor (XY: BREAKpoint 57/122), still allowing its player to abuse cards like Shaymin-EX (XY: Roaring Skies 77/108,106/108) and Tapu Lele-GX.  We’d probably get more examples like Shiftry (BW: Next Destinies 72/99), banned because Forest of Giant Plants was brand new so the powers-that-be didn’t want to ban the real problem.  A hypothetically re-released Broken Time-Space would probably add to the Ban List, and maybe the net result would still be positive, but it wouldn’t really fix the problems we have with balancing out the different Stages of Evolution.  Rare Candy isn’t quite the speed boost it once was, so were Broken Time-Space re-released, it would become a staple for several competitive, Evolution-focused decks but would again fall prey to some decks being capable of some such decks running fewer copies or skipping it entirely, counting on an opponent’s copies to do the job or else both can just be slow.  Some decks would also skip it because they lacked Evolutions, had an alternate shortcut, or really need a different Stadium card.  Limited play for this card is pricey and unsanctioned; you’d need Platinum packs or some of the various techniques for reusing product for this kind of event.  If it somehow happened, it’d be a good pull; odds are low you’ll get a fleshed out Evolution line, but for the bits you have, it will help.  Just remember it will help your opponent as well.  This is another card where I can comment on its Unlimited usage.  You see, it enables a lot of the first turn win/lock decks.  Even without those, it would still be quite the force!  I apologize for not going into detail, but if you’re not already familiar with the decks in question, I’ve basically got to write another Card of the Day for each of them.  Except for Slowking (Neo Genesis 14/111), because we just did that one not long ago.  I didn’t score it because the combo heavy decks are often better than dropping a Stage 1 with a Pokémon Power (similar to an Ability) that allows you to make your opponent flip a coin with each Trainer card he or she plays, and if they get “tails”, negates the effect and sends it to the top of your deck.  Oh, and this Pokémon Power works from the Bench and stacks.  Yet that probably isn’t strong enough to be competitive in Unlimited.  Eep.  Ratings  Standard: N/A (4/5 if suddenly reprinted)  Expanded: N/A (4.5/5 if suddenly reprinted)  Limited: 3.75/5  Unlimited: 4.75/5 (Reliable first turn win if Player 1)  Conclusion  The best way to help Evolutions is for the powers-that-be to stop designing Basic Pokémon (big or small) that can fill multiple roles (opener, closer, main attacker, Bench-sitter, etc.) and do so as soon as they hit the field.  Beef up Evolving Pokémon so they contribute to the success of the line and aren’t so easy to OHKO early game.  Don’t turn to insane Evolution acceleration like Broken Time-Space; while it will help all Evolutions, the one’s not properly nerfed (like various ones released when it wasn’t legal) will take the metagame and snap it like a twig.  Which is what it has done to the Unlimited Format, though things would still be kind of crazy even without it.