Here's hoping Chandelure EX is a fake as well.
To reiterate what has been said... this defeats the purpose of the Pokémon-EX mechanic.
Why did they start releasing Pokémon-EX the way they did? As far as I can tell, so that Legendary Pokémon could be as powerful as they were in the video games... with the two Prize penalty expected to balance them out. We've done "powered-up Pokémon" mechanic how many times by now? That is all Pokémon-EX will be if non-Legendary Pokémon start sporting the gimmick.
Evolution is pretty much the defining mechanic of Pokémon, both in the TCG and the video games. If the card designers wanted to dump it that bad... they just need to start from scratch. Part of why I am hoping this is a fake. If they want to make Evolutions equally viable to Basic Pokémon, stop making Basic Pokémon (EX or otherwise) that can hit for great damage first/second turn, and stop releasing so many support cards where the primary usage is just that; upping damage fast.
1) Easiest (but slow) way to do it is to just stop printing Basic Pokémon (at all) with damaging attacks that can be powered-up (e.g. take Energy acceleration into account) on a player's first turn and hit for damage... at all. Because there are too many "boosters" right now so that even a little damage can get out of hand.
2) Start printing lower Stages worth using. Start "front loading" HP scores; we already aren't representing HP the same as the video games, might as well put most of a cards HP on its Basic form. Start giving worthwhile attacks and Abilities to Evolving Pokémon, preferably ones useful for transition (e.g. not something that will just make people play the lower Stage and ignore the rest). I am thinking mostly attacks and Abilities that are a one-shot aid in setting up... and remember that they have to be good enough to basically replace an Item, as that is what most Basic Pokémon focused decks will run in place of an Evolution.
Do these two things hopefully and when we go to X&Y-On, players can choose to run a mono-Basic Pokémon deck stuffed with Trainers, but their non-Evolving Basic Pokémon won't set-up super fast and be jack-of-all-trades (you know, useful attacker and Ability Bench-sitter). They'll have uses, but just not being balance-threateningly over efficient. Then Stage 2 Pokémon will have the set-up time they need.
Because in the end, don't we want fully Evolved Pokémon (be they Basic, Stage 1, or Stage 2) that are meant to fill a similar role (attacker, Bench-sitter, opener, closer, whatever) to end up being roughly equal? Thus balancing them out has to come through making Evolving a benefit, and one on par with extra space destined to mostly be filled by Trainers.
