Base-Fossil Tier List (Fully Evolved)

 

Today's post is a just-for-fun tier list of all the fully evolved 'mons in the Base-Fossil sets. I didn't think too deeply about this, so some placements may contradict my own grades from the card-by-card review series.

Cards did not go up a tier for having powerful pre-evolutions (IE. Fossil Gengar), since you can play the pre-evolution without the final evolution. But a card can go down a tier for having a bad Basic (IE. Gyarados), since that can affect the card's usefulness.

S-Tier - Reserved for cards that either define the metagame or that are fundamentally broken in some way. The existence of these cards can gatekeep other cards out of the game entirely.

• Blastoise was the closest to dropping a tier, but Rain Dance completely reshapes an entire type's identity, so it didn't feel right to put it any lower than S-tier.

A-Tier - These are powerful cards that often come with more deck-building restrictions or weaknesses than the S-Tier cards, but are still amazingly powerful.

• Muk and Aerodactyl are hard to place. They ended up here but can be argued to be anywhere from S to C depending on the exact format.

B-Tier - These are cards that see regular play in at least one major format. They have more obvious shortcomings than the highest tiers, but are impactful in their own right.

• Snorlax looks out of place, but it got a bigger boost out of later formats than any other card. Dark Gloom single-handedly drags this guy up several tiers.

C-Tier - These cards have some important role in at least one metagame. Some of them don't look good in a vacuum, but they all do something meaningful.

• Golduck, Tauros, and Nidoqueen represent some of the best cards in rogue decks. They're good in a vacuum, but the decks they represent don't match up very well into any metagame.

D-Tier - This is largely the "hear me out" tier. This tier is full of cards that work conceptually but don't work in practice, for various reasons.

• Pidgeot and Hypno look like powerful control cards, but the mechanics they introduce to the game aren't really supported by any other cards.

F-Tier - These are cards you can only really make bad faith arguments for. There are some half-usable cards here, like Golem and Rhydon, but the real reason to use these in a deck is because you're desperately trying to be different.

• Promo Dragonite's power level is comparable to cards much higher up, but it actively reduces the number of Jungle Dragonite you can play in your deck, which is a much, much stronger card.