On the matter of
M Scizor-EX:
Why is it every card has to be blatantly broken or else it is dismissed? I'd laugh except I worry this mentality spreads so easily, to the point where the-powers-that-be can't miss it and mistake it as what "the customers" want, instead of people that make guys like me appear competent at card critiquing. With the current card pool give or take new additions, this seems like a satisfactory Mega Evolution. Do I think its going to be the star of the next big deck? No, but that is okay as not only is that something almost
no cards manage but the ones that do have a nasty habit of making me hate the game lately.
Looking at
M Scizor-EX you get something designed for 2HKOs. As impressive as OHKOs? Nope. Strong enough to still be viable for competitive play? Possibly (and "possibly" is about as good as something can do this soon before it is released). The Metal Typing grants it a few tricks to edge up its durability; not in a major way (well, at least not with effective deck design and strategy) but enough that it mostly just has to worry about the universal threats, the decks that OHKO everything and the decks that can exploit its Weakness.
It won't be able to OHKO many things, but we need to consider it not only against what "is" but what "might be"
and for both Standard and Expanded play.
Hypothetically (again it is too far out to know for certain),
M Scizor-EX is
fast for a Mega Evolution: you don't even have to rely on
Bronzong (PHF) if you would prefer to use
Mega Turbo, but if you do use the former then you probably can use
Max Potion so that damage that isn't a OHKO gets wasted. Throw in the durability and when something isn't able to OHKO it, it has a strong likelihood of securing the exchange for 2HKOs. Now if your opponent is awfully reliant on Special Energy cards or Stadiums, then I anticipate things swinging in favor of
M Scizor-EX. Remember that smaller targets are OHKOed, and not just by this but
Scizor-EX; if you don't need to Mega Evolve, then you don't. XP You are really only out of luck when facing Fire-Types (though you may run something else to deal with those) and when facing decks that don't rely (or rely heavily) on either Stadiums or Special Energy. That does
not mean every other match-up is easy (they don't need to be), just that they should have something going for them so that they either are slightly in favor of, neutral towards or against
M Scizor-EX.
Oh come on, Pokémon Yellow was created with this purpose, but it was just a slightly modified version of the original Pokémon Red and Blue!
You say that like it somehow invalidates the point.
The initial question was whether or not the animation could influence the TCG. There are two ways to demonstrate that it can: show something from the animation that directly transitioned to the TCG or something from the animation that made the jump to the video games (as something can go Other Source => Video games => TCG). You kind of need a good justification for
why things like this "don't count". Though not relevant to the TCG, even though it was simply another tweaked version of the Gen 1 Pokémon game,
Pokémon Yellow took something from the animation (Pikachu following Ash around) and turned it into a mechanic the video games would eventually embrace... or did they cut that after finally making progress towards it again (I kind of gave up on the video games with Pearl).
Of course it is not always a one-way street, but anime characters simply don't appear in the TCG... We have never seen Ash, as a prime example, and I'm happy with that
...but we actually have, they just never were released outside of Japan as far as I know. Plus there is the matter of Jesse and James and Duplica still. Jesse and James have also appeared in TCG artwork, even though the characters are native to the animation. Once again I am
asking; I realize they are based originally off of male and female Team Rocket Grunts, but they don't look like the original sprites that I remember or could quickly Google Search.
Copycat's card artwork could be inspired by Duplica (or, at least, her hair color) only because there is no trainer battle sprite, since you can't battle her
Thank you for letting me know you can't battle her; I haven't played through Pokémon Red, Blue or Yellow since High School (for me, that would be at least 15 years ago) so I didn't remember if you did or did not. Although Duplica is hardly some
Jojo's Bizarre Adventure character with a unique and iconic outfit, hair style and flair for poses, she's not so generic that Occam's Razor doesn't tell us that looking at the original in game sprite, the original card art and then the later card art that said original art wasn't using Duplica.
Likewise, unless I've missed the correct sprite art from which they were derived, then Jesse and James also made the jump from the animation to the TCG. While not named,
Here Comes Team Rocket! (
Team Rocket 15/82, 71/82;
EX: Team Rocket Returns 111/109) features James and James quite prominently; the older version has them in black but with Meowth, while the newer features them in their white Team Rocket uniforms. There are other characters that don't look like them on different cards. The preconstructed theme decks for
EX: Team Rocket Returns were the "Jesse" and the "James" decks. Not fan names either; instead of a Pokémon and the kind of deck name, the boxes the decks were sold in were clearly labeled with these character's names and had them for the art (in their white uniforms). There is also
Team Rocket's Meowth (
WotC Black Star Promos 18). This should not be mistaken as a coincidence; later a card named
Rocket's Meowth was released, but in homage to this earlier card and following the typical naming conventions of the time. Other Team Rocket affiliated Pokémon at the time it was released needed to be fully Evolved and were known as "
Dark" Pokémon or were non-Evolving Basics denoted as "
Rocket's [Insert Pokémon name/]" with an image of a generic Team Rocket's Grunt where the other similarly "owned" Pokémon had a Gym Leader's face.
Now as this has gone on so long, just a reminder; yeah, this is all a tangent from discussing something else where we more or less agreed. XD