TPCi (the Pokémon Company international) has yet more cards to reveal. This time, we’ve been graced with a new Tinkaton evolutionary line specifically for the Mega Brave half of this twin expansion set.
Tinkaton Line
Tinkatink
Beat: 20 damage.
Tinkatuff
Ability: Surprise Hammer
When you play this Pokémon from your hand to evolve 1 of your Pokémon during your turn, you may use this Ability. Flip a coin. If heads, discard an Energy attached to your opponent's Active Pokémon.
Light Punch: 30 damage.
Tinkaton
Large Swing: 240- damage. This attack does 60 damage less for each Energy attached to the opponent's Active Pokémon.
This particular Tinkaton line is keeping pace with all the interesting design packages TPCi has been implementing for Single-Prize Pokemon.
For one, all the Stages of this evolutionary line sport a single energy cost attack. This makes Tinkaton and all of its other stages are some of the fastest attacking Pokemon lines in the game.
Second, Tinkatuff has one of the lesser-used capabilities in the Trading Card Game (TCG). The ability to discard an energy card. It may be a little limited in scope, but given it’s done by just evolving from Tinkatink, it’s pretty much a ‘you get what you pay for’ kind of deal.
This does, however, encourage the player not to use Rare Candy when evolving the Tinkaton line, which could be more detrimental than not. If this effect were offered on a Pokemon that could synergize with Rare Candy, it would likely be a lot more viable. We are a bit disappointed, to say the least.
Tinkaton has probably one of the more unique attack types. We’ve already seen TPCi implement multiplicative damage attacks like Gholdengo ex from Paradox Rift. This time, Tinkaton is sporting the reverse of that.
Scaling down based on the amount of energy card attached to its target, Tinkaton props itself up as more of an assassin rather than a frontline fighter.
Or at the very least, it punishes any Pokemon that only needs 1 to 2 energy cards to activate their respective attack.
Unfortunately, Tinkaton suffers from the same design space that plagues Single-Prize Pokemon compared to their bigger rivals in the ex or the soon-to-come-in Mega stages. Simply put, damage output and health pools suffer greatly in comparison to their multi-prize counterparts.
We probably won't see Tinkaton used much in a standard tournament scene. It’ll take either a skilled player or some truly format-changing support for Single-prize Pokemon to truly shine again.
However, the recent reveals suggest that TPCi has been working on Single-Prize Pokemon, such as the Cinderace line. These are all good signs that the company is trying to give them support and freshen the viability of other Pokemon in the TCG.
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