There are a wide variety of Item Cards that have lots of different effects, but even with this vast array of effects there are some cards that don’t seem to have much function at all at first glance; Fossils. A type of Item Card that works in a similar way to the Pokémon video games, they can evolve into more powerful Pokémon. However, these Fossils don’t have the respective Evolutions listed, leading to confusion on which Fossils evolve into which Pokémon. That’s where this article comes in! We’ll go through each of the Fossils and which Pokémon they evolve into!
But to start with, let’s go over the Fossil cards generally. Each Fossil card works the exact same way, where each card has 40 HP and are treated like a Basic Colorless Type Pokémon. The main differences between Fossils and actual Basic Pokémon are that Fossils can neither attack or retreat and you can discard the Fossil cards at any time. It’s vital that you keep these Fossil cards on your bench while you wait for your Evolution to appear since if you’re caught with a Fossil card in your Active Spot it’s basically gone unless you get lucky. With that done, let’s look at a couple of Evolutions for Fossils!
Helix Fossil: This fossil evolves into Omanyte which is a very simple Stage 1 Water Type Pokémon. It simply does 40 damage for 1 Energy. Nothing super special here but it can do a decent amount of damage for low Energy cost which can come in handy. But the Evolution line doesn’t finish there! Omanyte can then evolve into Omastar which is a little more interesting. This Pokémon can do 70 damage for 3 Energy but when this attack hits the Defending Pokémon can’t attack for their next turn. This can be extremely useful if you want to prevent a powerful attack from hitting you although this can be countered by either using a Pokémon’s ability to retreat the Active Pokémon before putting it back in the Active Spot, or by simply evolving your Pokémon to remove the effect. But if you use this ability wisely this can be an annoying situation for your opponent to be placed in.
Dome Fossil: This fossil evolves into Kabuto which, similarly to the Helix Fossil evolution is a simple Stage 1 Fighting Type Pokémon that also does 40 damage for 1 Energy. And also like Omanyte, Kabuto can evolve into Kabutops which is also a more interesting Pokémon than its prior evolutions. While Kabutops might not be as powerful as Omastar, it can do 50 damage for much less Energy cost, requiring only 1 Energy! It also has a move that looks more powerful than it originally looks; when you hit this attack it heals up Kabutops for however much damage it did to your opponent’s Active Pokémon. If your deck has a lot of healing items you can keep Kabutops alive for a long time! And while it might not be as powerful as other State 2 Pokémon, its longevity can be frustrating for any opponent to deal with!
Skull Fossil: The final fossil we’ll look at in this article is the Skull Fossil which can evolve into another Fighting Type Pokémon in Cranidos. The main difference between this fossil and the other fossils we’ve looked at so far is that the Pokémon that evolve from the Skull Fossil are a lot more powerful. Cranidos works in a similar way to Omanyte and Kabuto; it does 50 damage for 1 Energy so it’s slightly more powerful than its Stage 1 counterparts. But its Stage 2 Evolution is when it gets really powerful. Rampardos does a staggering 130 damage for 1 Energy! But there is an important drawback; if your opponent’s Active Pokémon is knocked out by this attack it does 50 recoil damage on Rampardos. This could possibly make it a bit of a glass cannon but with some good strategy you can recover from the damage. We recommend putting this Pokémon against a Mega EX Pokémon that has a lot of health since you can whittle it down without doing the recoil damage back to yourself!
We’ll look at more Fossil evolutions in our next article since there are still a few to go through but these Fossil evolutions can all be useful in your decks if you play them correctly and can capitalize on their abilities!