Guest Review: Pokemon TCG Heart Gold/ Soul Silver Set
Reviewed by Case aka Metric Inchworm
Check out his other work at http://metric-inchworm.deviantart.com/
Remember when all Pokemon took double damage when hit by its weakness? This all changed when the Diamond and Pearl sets rolled around, giving pokemon set weaknesses, such as +10, +20, or even the rare, but classic, x2 weakness. Later, in the Platinum sets, new Pokemon SP, a new version of trainers’ Pokemon, all had a double weakness, giving them a slight disadvantage to all the cards featuring minimal weaknesses. Where am I going with this? The answer is the new HeartGold and SoulSilver TCG sets. These cards have a retro feel, and they try to bring back some of the classic elements of the Pokemon card game. One notable feature of the pokemon in the HS sets is that they all have a weakness of x2, just like the originals. The lineup in this set is also composed exclusively pokemon from the first two generations, but that’s not a surprise considering that this set’s based off of those games.
That said, this set does introduce new types of cards to the TCG. The first are “Legends”. As their name might suggest, they are legendary pokemon, but with a twist. They cover two cards, and both are needed to play. Legends in the current set are Ho-oh and Lugia, but Entei, Raikou, and Suicune will make an appearance in future sets. Considering all the hype behind the legends, and the fact that you’d need two cards to play them, they’re not really the greatest of weapons. Ho-oh requires four energy cards to use its only attack which can only do 100 damage and requires a discard. Lugia’s attack requires three different types of energy which are discarded to deal 200 damage. Their attacks sound like they could be pretty destructive, but they take much too long to set up. Only being able to attack once every three turns with Lugia and having to wait four turns to attack, then using your one energy per turn to keep attacking with Ho-oh are too big of drawbacks to make hunting down these rare cards worthwhile. Add in the fact that it’ll be hard to draw both halves of the card you want, and you can consider these cards useless.
Just like 43, 7, and 31 some of the best pokemon in this set are primes. Pokemon “prime” are sparkly, shiny foil cards with no real special effect. They’re just normal evolution cards, but with an excessive amount of foil and an extreme zoom shot of a pokemon‘s eye. Many have abilities or attacks that are above average, but most are really nothing special. Level X cards, which are not in this set, and will not be in future sets, still outpower these new primes, since X’s can rely on their attacks along with the attacks of their previous level and have devastating powers or attacks.
At this point, I’d also like to review Jumpluff, which is apparently the best card in the set, according to some. Since it didn’t sparkle, I traded two away for an Alph Lithograph, found in less than 1% of all HS packs, at the prerelease. Notice how I said I’d LIKE to review Jumpluff. Honestly, I don’t really care about it, so I’ll just skip it since I know nothing about it.
Some of the best cards in this set are trainers, energies, and supporters. It doesn’t quite make sense that the most sought-after pieces of a pokemon set aren’t even pokemon. Remember that one energy from the base set? Well, technically it wasn’t one, but two. Double colorless energy makes a return in the HeartGold and SoulSilver set, making the base set version tournament legal again. It provides two energies in one card. Since plenty of pocket monsters in today’s metagame require extensive amounts of colorless energy, every trainer wants to get four sets of two grey energies in their sixty-card decks. What are the other cards everyone wants? Pokemon Collector and Pokemon Communication. One is used to obtain three basic pokemon from your deck, the other lets you swap a pokemon in your hand for one in your deck. Since every player needs to be able to get the pokemon they need, these cards are crucial for setting up their playing field.
Overall, this set is very lackluster, and contains few cards worth noting. With a double weakness, none of the pokemon in these sets have a chance of standing up to their Diamond, Pearl, and Platinum counterparts. Not even the best of the HS pokemon are staples in any deck. The new Legends are flawed, and the Primes are nothing special. Instead of wasting your time buying packs and getting useless junk, go to eBay, buy some double colorless energy, pokemon collectors, and pokemon communication. You’ll save money, save time, and save thousands of trees that were put to waste by some of these trash cards, and you‘ll end up getting the best bits of the HGSS set.
Got a question, comment, or want to be the next guest reviewer? Email me at Ecomicsinc@gmail.com
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I promise I’ll be done with Pokemon for awhile now.
