Pokémon TCG 10 Best Generation 2 Cards Ranked

TheGamer

Something New

Pokémon TCG 10 Best Generation 2 Cards Ranked

Back in the days of generation 2, these were the best Pokémon cards you could find! The second generation of brought with it a lot of changes to the franchise. Two new types, Dark and Steel, were introduced, as well as shiny Pokémon. The changed a great deal as well. It made more use of Pokémon Powers, and introduced new mechanics such as the Poké-Body. Board control was often easier to manage with Pokémon Powers than with trainer cards, so decks would often be organized with active and bench specific Pokémon. This made decks more , and often much more effective. Here's a list of the top 10 Pokémon cards from the second generation. THEGAMER VIDEO OF THE DAY

Shining Gyarados

Shiny Pokémon were first introduced in this generation, and to let people know about their existence, they put a red Gyarados in the middle of the . It was a special and exciting encounter. Alongside the games, shining Pokémon made an appearance in the trading card game, and the Gyarados in the card game was just as special. Shining Gyarados allows for significant board control. With Devastate it can deal damage to all of your opponents benched Pokémon and has the possibility to remove an energy card attached to all of their Pokémon. This sort of move, when done several times, can prevent your opponent from doing anything at all the rest of the match.

Magneton

This card is really dependent on having a very specific deck build, one consisting only of Magnemite and Magneton. If you build a deck like that, you can benefit from this Magneton's Pokémon Power: Electromagnetic Power. As often as you like during your turn (before your attack), you may take 1 Energy card attached to 1 of your Magnemites, Magnetons, or Dark Magnetons and attach it to a different 1 of your Magnemites, Magnetons, or Dark Magnetons. This power can't be used if Magneton is Asleep, Confused, or Paralyzed. This particular Magneton's attack isn't particularly special, but keeping this one on your bench allows you to move energy wherever it's needed, keeping your active Pokémon battle-ready.

Unknown O

Unknown O is a special kind of utility Pokémon. It allows you to check the top five cards of your opponent's deck. With this, you could guess what kinds of strategies they would try to use, or you could play a card forcing them to discard the top few cards of their deck if you found something you didn't want them to play. You would also be able to prepare for their next cards and find other ways to counter them. The Unknown cards were pretty gimmicky, but this one was by far one of the most useful ones.

Raikou

Raikou was one of the three legendary beasts that were revived by Ho-Oh after the brass tower burned to the ground. It's said to be the embodiment of the lightning that struck the tower. It's Pokémon Power, Lightning Burst, lets you switch your opponent's active Pokémon with a benched Pokémon. This lets you fight weaker Pokémon, earning you prize cards quickly while disrupting your opponent's strategy.

Shining Tyranitar

Another shining Pokémon, this one was a secret rare card. Its first move, while not dealing much in terms of damage, allowed you to flip a coin until it came up tails. Its second move was a bit of a strange one. You would flip a coin as many times as you had fire energies attached. For each head, you would discard an energy of any type. Then you would take from your discard pile the same number of energies and attach it to your tyranitar. This might seem like a pointless action, seeing as you might discard three fire energy, only to immediately reattach them. But you could actually use this to reclaim previously discarded energies, like a double colorless or rainbow energy. Or you could search for some fighting energies to use Mountain Crush.

Light Arcanine

This is another Pokémon with great board control. It lets you switch your opponent's active Pokémon with something from their bench. However, it's attack means that it deals less damage to weaker Pokémon. The key with this Pokémon is to use its power from the bench. in particular are known for dealing a lot of damage. So with Light Arcanine on your bench, you can switch something in every turn that you can destroy in a single hit.

Mew

The Southern Islands cards were special cards. If you got three of them together, like Mew, Pidgeot, and Onyx, you could see a complete picture between the three of them. This Pokémon's attack reads: Choose a type of Energy other than Colorless attached to Mew. This attack does 20 damage to each of your opponent's Pokemon of that type (including Benched Pokemon). Don't apply Weakness and Resistance. With good planning, you could keep Mew alive despite its low health, and within a couple turns you'd be able to completely wipe out your opponents bench.

Crystal Celebi

Celebi's Crystal Type Poké-Body would let you change Celebi's type between Grass, Water, or Psychic. This provided Celebi with incredible utility. You could use the type switch with its Empathic Healing, allowing you to recover your benched . Or you could use it on offense, switching to a type that your opponent was weak against, dealing extra damage. Despite its weak appearance, this could be a challenging pokemon to get rid of unless you could knock it out in a single hit, which back then wasn't an easy thing to do. Now you regularly see moves that deal up to 200 damage, but back then 60 was pretty significant. Even Shining Tyranitar on this list only did up to 50.

Slowking

One of the few cards to be banned in tournament play, this card can be a nightmare to fight against. It's Pokémon Power reads: Whenever your opponent plays a Trainer card, you may flip a coin. If heads, that card does nothing. Put it on top of your opponent's deck. This power can't be used if Slowking is Asleep, Confused, or Paralyzed. It would have been better for players if the card had just been discarded instead. With this, you could end up drawing the exact same card seven turns in a row, try to play it, and have it sent to the top of your deck.

Sneasel

Another banned card, this time for its attack. Beat Up is an insanely strong move, having the potential to deal 120 damage, an amount that would one-shot any other card available at the time. Even if you didn't land on heads every single time, you would still deal tons of damage each turn with very little effort. Combine this with something like Light Arcanine, and you have a devastating combo. Switch in a Pokémon with about 60 health and you were almost guaranteed to defeat it in one turn.