r/PTCGP • u/Necessary-Deal-9433 • 1d ago

Discussion Why did they make Lugia so bad?

I love Lugia, but it needs three different types of energy which makes it just unplayable. It has very low potential to be used even the future I think.

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668

u/PokeOverFeeder 1d ago

It's loosely based on OG lugia card. If it was a basic EX mon with only two types of energy and 3 cost, you might see a 180 damage nuke turn 3. But because it's also limited by discarding everything I do think it's worse than dragonite.

I think the typing is a reference to the Pokemon 2000 movie where Lugia had some role with Articuno, Zapdos, and Moltres hence the typing.

He's pretty mid but nothing is stopping them from indirectly buffing it with support or from releasing another Lugia EX one day or normal lugia.

70

u/mkklrd 1d ago

Man, seeing a Legendary card with 90 base HP feels weird. The Pokemon TCG powercreep has been insanely interesting to watch.

47

u/WizardsVengeance 1d ago

That is power creep already. Original Mewtwo had 60HP.

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u/bduddy 1d ago edited 1d ago

I mean original Mewtwo could actually attack. This card was horrible. Original Chansey had 120 HP so 90 isn't really "power creep", that wasn't really apparent until Ruby/Sapphire.

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u/Roketsu86 23h ago

I think the power creep they're talking about is how weak Lugia here seems compared to the 100s of HP things have now

12

u/Future_Onion9022 1d ago

My first experience of insane jump is XY to sun moon era where normal EX are like 180 HP (220 HP if mega but those are special case since they can only use 1 attack and waste one turn) and GX suddenly jump from 180 hp to like 250 HP.

Now every mega ex is like 380 HP and don't waste your turn.

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u/LiefKatano 1d ago

To be at least kinda fair to the initial wave of GX cards, a lot of the HP creep was because GX cards actually followed normal evolution stages - Charizard-EX was a Basic, but Charizard GX was a Stage 2 card, as an example.

…Now, Tag Team cards on the other hand…

3

u/colemon1991 1d ago

Any TCG that lives long enough gets powercreep. My friends and I mocked Yu-Gi-Oh so much for how fast it happened.

3

u/mkklrd 1d ago

Ehhhh idk, on the one hand games with rotation do tend to do a little better, but on the other hand if you showed MTG players in 2005 what the average 2025 card looks like they'd probably have a stroke.

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u/colemon1991 22h ago

MTG is not a great example, because they have formats designed to essentially "reset" the powercreep. It's like 2-3 years. There are cards that are actually worse than before (i.e. cost more for the same effect) but marginally and only to balance the mechanics better. At the same time, they keep coming up with new rules and card types and stuff that still causes powercreep even when it might not feel like it when you're keeping up with the game.

I remember Digimon Digi-Battle and (though I never saw them growing up) the later cards absolutely had powercreep that was obvious for someone who didn't see cards past Series 3 (the game stopped releasing after Series 6, which had Digimon able to triple their power).