Hi everyone, I’d like some clarification on the correct functioning of this Pokémon power.
If I have benched Pokémon plus Brock’s Rhydon (Gym Heroes 2) on the bench with Metal Energy attached, and I attack with my active Pokémon Graveler (Neo Revelation 30), how do I handle the damage to the benched Pokémon? Assuming I have 3 Pokémon on the bench, is all the damage absorbed by Brock’s Rhydon (Gym Heroes 2) and then reduced by 10 by the Metal Energy, resulting in 20 final damage, or is each damage transferred to Brock’s Rhydon reduced by 10, bringing the damage to 0?
You make a separate decision for each benched Pokemon, if you would like the damage to be given to Rhydon (and thus reduced to 0 with Metal energy)
Thank you for your response.
I played a match with my brother and noticed that the damage is not reduced with Metal Energy. The only damage that gets reduced is the one taken directly by Brock’s Rhydon.
At this point, I don’t know how to use it and which version is correct.
This is a little tricky. I think TCG ONE isn’t reducing the damage that is redirected to Brock’s Rhydon because it’s treating that damage as the effect of a Pokémon Power, to which Metal Energy’s effect wouldn’t apply. However, the way the power is worded makes it seem to me like the damage is still being done to Brock’s Rhyhorn by the attack, and therefore should still be reduced by Metal Energy as Jamie described above. I’m not 100% confident about this, though.
Thanks for the response, I interpret it the same way.
If that’s really the case, then I hope they release a fix to resolve the issue during matches.
Could anyone test this on https://dev.tcgone.net and come back with an update? @Testers I recently deployed some fixes but not sure whether they resolved this for good.
Testing the scenario described in the OP, the result is 20 damage to Brock’s Rhydon.
The question is deeper than that, though, because there is another thing that has been overlooked: the order of effects when calculating damage. In WotC-era games, effects of Energy on the mon being damaged occur before effects of Pokémon Powers on the mon being damaged. With this in mind, Metal Energy would only reduce the damage Brock’s Rhydon takes by 10 (once only), and only if Brock’s Rhydon was slated to receive damage before any Bench Guard triggers.
As an example, suppose you have Brock’s Rhydon (with one Metal Energy attached) and two Geodudes on your Bench, and the opponent’s Brock’s Onix uses Tunneling. If they choose to hit Brock’s Rhydon and one Geodude, Metal Energy will reduce the 20 damage done to Brock’s Rhydon to 10, then you can choose to use Bench Guard to make Brock’s Rhydon take 10 for Geodude (which CANNOT be reduced by Metal Energy).
If they choose to hit both Geodudes instead, then the window to use Metal Energy’s effect is gone by the time Bench Guard triggers. No matter how you split it, you’re going to end up with 40 damage total between Brock’s Rhydon and both Geodudes (0-20-20, 10-10-20, or 20-10-10).
(The second case currently works incorrectly on TCG ONE: if you choose to use Bench Guard at least once, Metal Energy will reduce the damage by 10 even though Brock’s Rhydon wasn’t initially targeted.)
Posting this message as a placeholder because I want to come back to this one later. I talked about it with some Japanese players and there’s no clear-cut right answer.
The rules in the Silver Bible explicitly state “a benched Pokemon’s Powers” happen in the step before Energy effects are applied as a clarification of the step in damage calculation.
Alright, I checked it and you’re right. So the split would be 10-10-10 if you decided to redirect the damage from the other mons. That is what happens right now, so no changes are necessary.
TCG ONE already plays this the way you describe, so the engine needed no change:
- It is now covered by a regression test and written into the errata of Brock’s Rhydon (Gym Heroes 2) and Metal Energy (Neo Genesis 19). The errata will show on the card pages with the next release.
- Also fixed: Bench Guard no longer asks whether to move Brock’s Rhydon’s own damage to itself.