Today we look at a card first released in
EX: Crystal Guardians, which was 24 sets ago! That card is
Windstorm.
Stats
Windstorm is a "plain" Trainer, the precursor to the Item. I am trying to find out where the exact cutoff point is for "plain" Trainers and Items, but failing quite a bit. I've seen suggestions that
every old Trainer without a different designation counts as an Item, but besides it being odd that something like
Professor Oak is now an Item, I can't find official word one way or the other.
If it does not count as an Item, the only way in which
Windstorm significantly differs is that cards that specifically affect Items won't affect it (like
Junk Arm). Otherwise it is just like an Item; play as many as you want and meet the effect requirements for per turn. Plain Trainers/Items are the easiest cards to play in the game, which means their effects need to be kept on the weaker side.
When the effects aren't kept in line, we get situations like that of the earliest era of the game. Back then we had two plain Trainers,
Energy Removal and
Super Energy Removal. As the names imply, both cards discarded Energy from opposing Pokemon in play; one for
Energy Removal and two for
Super Energy Removal, though the latter required you also discard an Energy card attached to one of your Pokemon in order to play it. These are on of the main reasons the format was dominated by big Basic Pokemon.
If you look at the Pokemon that were dominant, most were Basic Pokemon with good, low Energy attacks, including one that could be met with a single Energy card. This was because it was very hard to build up even another Basic Pokemon that required a lot of Energy. If it didn't have an attack that a single Energy attachment could enable, it wasn't attacking until your opponent failed to have access to an
Energy Removal,
Super Energy Removal, or card that could get one or the other.
The cards were a problem for a few reasons, and one was because breaking the "one Energy per turn" rule was pretty rare back then. You had a few overpriced attacks, but other than that the best examples were
Double Colorless Energy and
Blastoise (
Base Set 2/102). By the time something was using a "bigger" attack like most Evolutions relied on, you needed to have waited out all (or at least most) of your opponent's Energy removing cards. Factor in
Gust of Wind making sure nothing could be safely built on the Bench, and you can see the harm of overly potent Items (plain Trainers).
Yes, this is going somewhere. :lol:
Effect
The effect of
Windstorm is to discard up to two (in any combination) of Pokemon Tools and Stadium cards. The wording is such that if they ever created a scenario where you could have two Stadium cards in play, it could even hit both.
Stadium cards could already be discarded by simply playing another Stadium. Pokemon Tools could only be discarded by the effects of attacks (and possibly some non-attack Pokemon effect I am forgetting). Both could be discarded by some attacks (though usually not the same attack), but that required running a Pokemon and attacking with it, and of course that is ineffective, especially when removing a protective Pokemon Tool that interferes with your attack!
This is a very potent effect: while some formats Pokemon Tools haven't been as strong, normally they are a solid investment for at least some decks. While
Windstorm is targeting a Trainer sub-type and a sub-sub-Type, it easily equates to not only raw card advantage, but usually something more strategic.
Most Items function during both players turns or the opponent's turn. Only those that functioned (and functioned well) during a player's own turn were effective to use while
Windstorm was legal, with certain exceptions. Namely if a card wasn't a blatant threat, an opponent might hold off thinking you were trying to merely draw
Windstorm out.
Usage
Ruining Stadium usage for two formats, the 2006-7 (DX-On) and 2007-8 Modified Formats. This is probably why it still seems so new to me; I had to almost completely cease playing during the 2008-9 season, the first time we had "MD-On", and barely came back in time for the end of the second "MD-On" format of 2009-2010, give or take one or two false returns that I think lasted a few weeks in there.
If I am reading all my information correctly, that means we had 15 Pokemon Tools by the end of the DX-On format. In fact, I'll actually list exactly what they were and which set they came in:
- Balloon Berry (EX: Deoxys)
- Buffer Piece (EX: Dragon Frontiers)
- Cessation Crystal (EX: Crystal Guardians)
- Crystal Shard (EX: Deoxys, EX: Crystal Guardians)
- Curse Powder (EX: Unseen Forces)
- Energy Root (EX: Unseen Forces)
- Fluffy Berry (EX: Unseen Forces)
- Lum Berry (EX: Emerald)
- Memory Berry (EX: Crystal Guardians)
- Mysterious Shard (EX: Crystal Guardians)
- Oran Berry (EX: Emerald)
- Protective Orb (EX: Unseen Forces)
- Sitrus Berry (EX: Unseen Forces)
- Solid Rage (EX: Unseen Forces)
- Strength Charm (EX: Deoxys, EX: Dragon Frontiers)
If you are unfamiliar with them, feel free to look them up
here on the Researching Tower's Unlimited setting. No, I'm not going to spend time linking to each one individually. :wink:
Before getting into other details,
Cessation Crystal,
Curse Powder,
Energy Root,
Fluffy Berry,
Mysterious Shard,
Protective Orb,
Sitrus Berry, and
Solid Rage all had restrictive attachment clauses. None could be used by Pokemon ex, and several couldn't be used by Basic Pokemon at all, nor Pokemon with "
Dark" or an owner in their names.
The least affected Tools were those that you could use right away before your opponent's turn
and would have discarded themselves anyway:
Balloon Berry,
Crystal Shard,
Lum Berry,
Memory Berry,
Oran Berry,
Sitrus Berry, and
Strength Charm. You still lost out on being able to drop them on Pokemon that weren't going to use them right away to save them for later (say before using a shuffle and draw card). Note that most of these didn't see a lot of play anyway.
Ones that discarded themselves automatically at the end of your opponent's next turn (
Buffer Piece and
Mysterious Shard) would be nailed by
Windstorm if they were going to matter, or else ignored as they would have been anyway. If you bother reading them,
Buffer Piece rarely mattered (and was rarely played) because it was weak (just blocked 20 damage from an opponent's attack after Weakness/Resistance).
Mysterious Shard was quite important, and something many players would love an updated reprint of: it blocked all effects of attacks, including damage, from the old Pokemon-ex, and had a clause preventing Pokemon-ex from equipping it. One turn of protection for a single card (in a format without
Junk Arm or
Item Finder) isn't too much to ask, and in a format dominated by the new, all Basic Pokemon EX I think even with
Junk Arm it wouldn't be too much to ask, either.
Some cards had continuous effects, but could be made use of (possibly right away) on your own turn, so at least you got some return out of them if they were discarded right away:
Cessation Crystal,
Fluffy Berry, and
Solid Rage.
The remaining cards were what was really hurt.
Cessation Crystal was important as while it was attached to an Active Pokemon, it shut down both Poke-Bodies and Poke-Powers! Thing was, it hit both players
and get this, just like almost every format ever it was easy to force an Active Pokemon to the Bench. Unless a player was putting less than five Pokemon into play at a time
and could get
Cessation Crystal onto all of them, it was good but pretty well balanced.
Fluffy Berry was giving up your Pokemon Tool slot for a zeroed out Retreat Cost; that seemed fair to me then and fair to me now, unless something is printed that explicitly abuses this to the breaking point (and in the history of the game, I can't think of any). I guess if all other Pokemon Tools were so lousy that using
Fluffy Berry was a no-brainer for almost every deck, it might, might be a bit unfair for the decks that make the best use of it (like needing to retreat to reset an effect).
I don't like "come from behind cards"; it is better to create a balanced game where only those who play better (outside of the extremely rare "lucky" player) are going to get ahead. That may be a bit of an ideal, but really cards made
explicitly to come from behind have this problem. Fortunately
Solid Rage came out when decks that worked with the "come from behind" mechanic were not uncommon. +20 damage to Active Pokemon is nice, but like
PlusPower that's to all Active Pokemon, yourself included. It was seldom enough to encourage players to intentionally play from behind unless that was already the deck's strategy. Plus if it worked really well, you KOed what you hit and it shut off.
Lastly there were some cards it made almost totally pointless. They still saw some play, mostly in the hope that an opponent didn't have a lot of
Windstorm in the deck (or the deck had enough Pokemon Tools it might exhaust them before this stuff saw play).
Cursed Powder only triggered when your opponent KOed the Pokemon it was attached to and then... it placed 3 damage counters on that Pokemon.
Energy Root gave a Pokemon +20 HP (on top of their current HP and allowing them to exceed printed maximum HP). The catch is that it shuts off the
equipped Pokemon's Poke-Bodies/Poke-Powers. At the time, Pokemon lacking both weren't struggling to keep up with those that had one or both; and some Pokemon didn't mind shutting off whatever they had. Again, pretty balanced.
Protective Orb basically shut off the equipped Pokemon's Weakness; another card many wish would return! Unless TPC intentionally designs a card so that the only possible way to balance it is to hit its Weakness... no, that still wouldn't mean this was a broken card: it would mean TPC made a stupid design choice on that Pokemon. This is another card I'd like to see reprinted, especially if they updated the attachment restrictions.
The two Pokemon Tools added before the card rotated out (its like they knew it was pointless to release them) were
Amulet Coin and
Leftovers, both from
Great Expectations. Both could trigger at least once before your opponent's turn was met, and neither was a problem that required
Windstorm to deal with.
So what about Stadiums? Well it was never justified to take down Stadiums since
all you had to do was run your own Stadium card! When you have something like Stadiums in a game, it almost always wrecks them to create an easy to play card that removes them
and something else.
I saw this with Yu-Gi-Oh (and unless some major rules changes have occurred or we got some broken examples) would still see it to this day. That game has Field Spells that function almost exactly like Stadium cards. Unfortunately there have almost always been cards in a format that can take out Field Spells in addition to many other Trainer-like cards that are put into play in that game. Some of these cards can take out multiple targets at the same time, like
Windstorm, while others can be used on the opposing player's turn. :nonono:
So even if the format would have had some seriously broken Pokemon Tools that were bad for the game (like the classic
Focus Band),
Windstorm was overkill. I know
Cessation Crystal was quite powerful, and maybe its just been so long I don't remember, and I didn't review it when the rest of Pojo did. :redface: Even if it was, the others don't look too bad. Let us say even two more were. That's three cards being countered by one card, but that one card nearly ruins two whole Trainer sub-types!
Windstorm was at least a low-level staple (e.g. run at least one copy) while it was Modified legal, if memory serves, and often was played in twos or threes. In Unlimited I consider it to again be at least a low-level staple. It doesn't help first turn win decks, but anything trying to win by Prizes will find it great for taking out
Focus Band and whatever power Pokemon Tools do still see play. It was in a set with some potent Pokemon Tools as well, so I'd also consider it a must-run should you pull it in Limited.
If you didn't know we were getting something of an "update" for this card before, you do now. "
Tool Scrapper", if the translations are correct (and they don't just change the name anyway) is an Item that discards two Pokemon Tools in play (can be yours or the opponent's). I am must less bothered by this because... it doesn't hit Stadiums. That alone makes for a huge difference. It still seems a bit much, but at the same time just discarding one Pokemon Tool would seem a bit weak for an Item.
Ratings
Unlimited: 9/10
Modified: N/A
Limited: 10/10
Summary
Certainly not my least favorite card, and indeed in some ways it was very nice to have! It just hurt too many cards that didn't need to be hurt (and indeed, some that could have used help); a hatchet when a scalpel was needed.
Windstorm can rest in peace as a staple in Unlimited, and hopefully its successor
Tool Scrapper will work out better.
