Ruling Slugma VS Rainbow Energy

[Kecleon-X]

Heya!

So I was looking at scans just now and I noticed this guy:

Spoiler: Slugma

Now, Slugma's Grass Fire (an attack that should have been named "Brushfire") states: "Discard a [Grass] Energy attached to your opponent's active Pokemon." which kinda trolls the heck out of Virizion EX. But anyway, I suppose that got me thinking: What about Rainbow Energy?

Spoiler: Rainbow Energy

Now, Rainbow Energy provides every type of Energy including Grass Energy, so my question is this:

If Slugma used Grass Fire on an opponent's Pokemon that has a Rainbow Energy attached to it, would it discard the Rainbow Energy?

I would assume that this attack also applies to Herbal Energy.

 

[Mora]

Yes. In the same way that Landorus's Land's Judgment attack discards Rainbow Energy attached. This should work the same way.

It also would discard Herbal Energy because Herbal Energy counts as a Grass Energy while attached to a Grass Pokemon.

Also, I'm going to ninja My Little Keldeo real hard in about 5 seconds.

 

[My Little Keldeo]

Yep, it certainly would! Rainbow Energy counts as every type of energy while it's in play, so it would indeed be subject to Slugma's Grass Fire since it's providing [G] energy. The same applies for Herbal, and in Expanded play Blend FRPG and Prism if it's attached to a Basic Pokemon. Look out for this if your opponent's active Pokemon has a Rainbow Energy attached!

In a similar vein, Jigglypuff XY's Heartfelt Song and Psyduck BCR's Firefighting do the same thing for [D] and [R} energy, respectively. Rainbow, or any other Special Energy that also provides the appropriate type is subject to discard to these attacks as well. And with any of these guys, if your opponent had a Rainbow Energy in addition to a basic energy or another special energy of the appropriate type on their active Pokemon, as the attacker you would get to choose which one to discard.

Edit: We'll just make a game out of this. xD

Edit #2 In response to Seafan13's Private Message, because this user has Private Messaging disabled:

I actually get asked this a lot. The short answer is that Rainbow Energy doesn't discriminate about what type it is.

The longer explanation is that while attached to a Pokemon, Rainbow Energy counts as every type of energy all at once, but only provides one "unit" of energy at a time. It's type never changes to whatever its owner wants- it just counts as everything all of the time. That said, it's subject to anything that targets a specific type. This is also why if you use an attack that requires you to discard a specific type of energy, like Dialga-EX's Full Metal Impact, if the only cards providing Metal energy are Rainbow Energy, then you have to discard them. You can't simply say they're no longer providing Metal after you declare the attack and not discard. That would be broken. xD