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I feel like Charizard, while probably the worst example, is a good showcase of an issue that's plagued the game since...wwell, always, but has only gotten worse over time. The evolution gimmick of the game is pretty intensive and the payoff is not necessarily better at all. There';s usually a suite of single stage Basics that take less deck space, get up faster and do better energy:damage:turn ratios while tytpically having more HP. Usually if you see evolutions, it'll be a few stage 1s to help support the better pokemon while a stage 2 will probably be a 2/2/1 one off (or whatever) to help support another pokemon (Venusaur/Exeggutor comes to mind immediately). Thankfully the cpus are dummies with purposely gimmicky decks so you can use about anything you want here but it's never not been A Thing in the game and it's even worse when we have oh say I don't know let me just dig around a few years ago  Like is it necessarily fair to compare one of the best EXes in the game as a pillar to the problems with the TCG? Probably not. But yet, here I am, 7 years later, still mad. Also a few fun facts: Hitmonchan was one of the "secret rare" reprints back in Platinum  Unlike the later anniversary set (evolutions) that reprinted and updated a ton of different Base Set cards, it wasn't changed at all Charizard was also reprinted, with new artwork by the same artist   But he was of course reprinted in the Evolutions set, this time given a slight touch up for hte modern era. I feel like you can kind of tell the level of power creep that happened in the intervening like 20 years helixchamber had a whole article on beta pokemon cards (https://helixchamber.com/2019/04/08/proto-tcg/ we've seen most of these by now) and i'll point out that Porygon was...always bad, sadly  60 HP originally and Converstion 2 was Tri Attack. Flip two (not three...) coins, 10x each. Evolutions decided to just merge the 2 effects and give it 60 HP. Sure
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Oct 26, 2019 23:15
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Do most serious games between people get decided based on prizes or the lack of an eligible Pokemon?
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Oct 27, 2019 00:10
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Kikas posted:Is there a Showdown for the TCG or something like that? Here's the thing. There are lots of stores that open tons of packs looking for singles, so they bulk sell the codes to websites that resell them for $0.50 to $1.00 per code, depending on how valuable the pack is considered. If you decide you wanna get into it, I have a stack of like ten code cards on my desk that I never used that I'd be willing to give you. Sorites posted:Do most serious games between people get decided based on prizes or the lack of an eligible Pokemon? girl dick energy fucked around with this message at 00:42 on Oct 27, 2019 |
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Oct 27, 2019 00:34
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It's a shame that Porygon sucks because its weakness-changing attack sounds pretty cool. Practical, probably not (though I guess it can force your opponent's Pokemon out, maybe, if they don't want to get nailed with a weakness), but cool.
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Oct 27, 2019 01:43
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Sorites posted:Do most serious games between people get decided based on prizes or the lack of an eligible Pokemon? It's always a danger to not have the cards you need to form a bench in your opening hand, but between the rule added where the first player to take a turn can't attack on that turn and power creep making everyone a little more durable, I'd say there's less danger to losing by lack-of-eligibles these days. It was more likely back in the base-fossil era this game's based on, however. I seem to remember a very min/maxed Haymaker variant posted around forums of that day whose creator dubbed it "Insanity". Its idea was to go extremely lean on everything that wasn't a Trainer card. So a split of something like 8 pokemon, 12 energy, and 40 trainers. The idea would be to control the board and get exactly the card you need when you need it with your trainers. A lot of the Trainers required you to discard stuff, and you only had energy to power 2-3 'mons total (after factoring in removals), 'mons you drew beyond that were dead weight and therefore viable sacrifices. So if you could somehow get that deck on the back foot, it'd likely end with prizes still on the board. Also notable: a double-pluspowered Hitmonchan could take down a lone Jigglypuff on turn 1.
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Oct 27, 2019 02:54
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I went to my first and only Pokemon TCG tournament around 2004, I remember seeing a kid sobbing because his Weedle deck lost a game on the first turn. If this Gameboy game can be romhacked, it would be interesting to give the Club Leaders some elite decklists and see if they're smart enough to pose a greater challenge. As a kid I loved the idea of Pokemon card battles but never really got the chance to play.
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Oct 27, 2019 05:30
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Pokemon TCG is one that never really grabbed me despite having played this game a ton, but getting back into it now is almost as wild to me as my first attempt to get back into Yugioh (where I jumped from GX era to late Pendulum era). At least in this case the game hasn't changed nearly as drastically, the numbers are just all way bigger. Either way, this is a TCG that I more enjoy watching than actually playing. Still go back to the Gameboy game on occasion though.
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Oct 27, 2019 05:53
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Are there (still) strategies based around stalling so the opponent empties their deck? How much do you get beaten up afterwards if you use one of those in a competition?
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Oct 27, 2019 07:30
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Carbon dioxide posted:Are there (still) strategies based around stalling so the opponent empties their deck? That being said, even with all the card draw and digging you can do with Trainers, this can take a while.
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Oct 27, 2019 08:08
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Carbon dioxide posted:Are there (still) strategies based around stalling so the opponent empties their deck? There was a Durant that milled equal to the copies of itself in play, an legit deck out strategy until they printed a supporter (Lysander's Trump Card) that shuffled the discard pile back into the deck. More recent is just straight up stalling with Wailord GX (250 HP) or Magikarp & Wailord Tag Team GX (300), stealers of Blissey's VG title of beefiest HP. Also makes use of other stallers like Shuckle GX and Xurkitree GX. anilEhilated posted:You can actually build an early one in this game - it was based on the combo of Alakazam (who can distribute damage counters among your pokemon) and Chansey (120 HP basic) along with several other pokemon good at stalling (Mr Mime, Snorlax, Mewtwo - although the last one suffers from a crippling weakness to a very common trainer card). If you want a self healer without relying on trainers, Tentacool. Its Pokemon Power lets it bounce back to the hand. 30 HP so have Zam transfer 20 damage to it, bounce it and do it again next turn. 4 Tentas = potential 80 damage healed each turn. Level Seven fucked around with this message at 08:23 on Oct 27, 2019 |
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Oct 27, 2019 08:15
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Level Seven posted:Until they printed a supporter (Lysander's Trump Card) that shuffled the discard pile back into the deck. Unfortunately, by that point, Durant's best support cards had rotated out, so the deck was dead. It's still a fun casual deck, though it's not quite as budget as it once was, since this was 6-7 years ago.
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Oct 27, 2019 08:46
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I remember having an OG Charizard... no clue where my cards are these days...
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Oct 27, 2019 13:38
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Wait there was a Japan-only sequel?! I played this a shitton back in the day and I've never heard about that  If you're still taking suggestions, I miss the ol' one-two punch  of Hitmonchan and Mewtworannum posted:I feel like Charizard, while probably the worst example, is a good showcase of an issue that's plagued the game since...wwell, always, but has only gotten worse over time. What the hell is this  Is there any point that's not doing 80+ damage on turn 2?!
Bellmaker fucked around with this message at 15:35 on Oct 27, 2019 |
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Oct 27, 2019 15:33
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Yes. If you go first it's only 60 damage on turn 2. See? Balanced.
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Oct 27, 2019 16:16
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I just remembered my one and only time playing the TCG with cards. I used the old Mulligan Mewtwo deck in the window when the Mulligan draw was mandatory. Nobody liked me. For those who don't know: There was a time when, if your opening hand had no basic Pokemon, your opponent HAD to draw a card as compensation for you getting to Mulligan. It was mandatory. So you could run a deck with only psychic energy and one copy of Mewtwo. By the time you drew to it, your opponent would have drawn a fair amount of their deck. You could then take advantage of Mewtwo having an attack which prevented all damage next turn in exchange for discarding one energy card, of which you had a million. They changed that rule. Sorites fucked around with this message at 17:01 on Oct 27, 2019 |
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Oct 27, 2019 16:58
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FoolyCharged posted:Yes. If you go first it's only 60 damage on turn 2. See? Balanced. and they ketp reprinting this drat card so it never left rotation for years And I'm pretty sure when it did we got  The same attack but hey now you can't do SE damage then again  I haven't kept up with the meta in SM era so maybe this isn't as obnoxious as it was during the time I actively played, but causally Mewtwo was a nightmare and I'm pretty sure a number of competitive decks had it at least as a one-off
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Oct 27, 2019 17:29
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Bellmaker posted:What the hell is this It's important to consider that this particular Mewtwo belongs to a class of Pokemon called EX that the game introduced somewhere later in its lifecycle. EX cards have a few balancing factors. First, they're worth two prize cards if they're KOed, so there's risk balancing out the reward when using cards this powerful. Second, there are a number of Pokemon that specifically counter EX cards. Some are hard-counters like "ignore damage from EX cards", and others are soft-counters with attacks that deal a boatload of additional damage to EX cards. Finally, other big basic-level Pokemon looked like this when I dabbled with Pokemon TCG Online a few years ago. A far cry from the 70 HP powerhouses of yore  I'm not a huge fan of EX cards, but that might just be a bit of saltiness from a booster draft I played where I pulled none and all of my opponents managed to find one to build a deck around.
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Oct 27, 2019 19:39
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So for GX attacks, do you only get to use one category of GX moves (e.g. using tapu cure and nothing else) or is a complete one-off move (i.e. you can use tapu cure once and then no more GX moves period for the rest of the game)?
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Oct 27, 2019 20:24
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Leraika posted:So for GX attacks, do you only get to use one category of GX moves (e.g. using tapu cure and nothing else) or is a complete one-off move (i.e. you can use tapu cure once and then no more GX moves period for the rest of the game)? One GX move PERIOD. Which means once you use it, any other GX Moves you might have in your deck are automatically unusable. Kinda like how you can only use one Mega Stone based Evolution (gotta have that qualifier there because of Mega Rayquay and Primal Reversion Kyogre and Groudon) per battle in the Gen 6 and 7 games.
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Oct 27, 2019 20:51
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I'd say a GX Attack is more akin to a Z-Move, especially since they came out at around the same time. (Hell, they printed a couple Z Crystal item cards that give Pokemon with specific attacks a GX Attack.)
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Oct 27, 2019 20:57
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Yeah GX attacks are the one-move-per game super attack. Gotta choose carefully when and how you use it. Though I think there was some Item or Power that let you use two in a game. They are...wildly all over the place in terms of usefulness. Like Tapu Cure is pretty cool, but Mewtwo GX is just dealing 200 damage. Zoroark GX lets you use another opponent's attack (ignoring cost beyond the 2 dark to use the GX move). Promos in particular tend to have pretty poo poo GX moves. But most are pretty interesting. Oh but speaking of: remember the Computer Search that crosspiece is using in a few decks? Discard 2 cards and search out any card from your deck? That was brought back years later in the Gen 5 era with "Ace Specs"  These go beyond once per game, you can only have one Ace Spec in your deck. So not, say, 1 Computer Search, 1 Ice WAll, 1 Gold Potion etc in your deck. Just one, single ace spec.
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Oct 27, 2019 22:03
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I started playing the Pokemon TCG when it first came out and stopped with Ruby and Sapphire; this all makes me feel very, very old.
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Oct 27, 2019 22:38
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I'll be honest. I gave up on getting back into pokemon cards when I heard they'd gone the route of disallowing old card sets.
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Oct 27, 2019 23:20
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MightyPretenders posted:I'll be honest. I gave up on getting back into pokemon cards when I heard they'd gone the route of disallowing old card sets. It was always like that, same as MtG having their rotation blocks. Power creep would eventually call for buying new cards to stay competitive anyway. Nothing stops people from using old cards in casual play. Yugioh went the route of everything in rotation and the ever changing ban/limited list has words about the pros/cons of that style. Power creep still there too.
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Oct 27, 2019 23:26
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Quote =/= edit
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Oct 27, 2019 23:27
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Also set rotation is good, imo. Even ignoring power creep making old cards irrelevant, it's a good way to shuffle out the big powerful but not explicitly broken to be banned cards. & now new players can just focus on getting the X number of sets cards. That said if you have a bunch of older cards there is the "Expanded" ruleset. It was introduced in 2014 and allows for any cards made since Black & White to be legal. It's ruleset that sees use in actual tournaments. the TCG Online allows you to play in any of Standard, Expanded or Unlimited (literally everything not on the universal ban list is legal). Though, to use older stuff (ESPECIALY the stuff earlier than BW) there you need to buy the packs and such with the free currency.
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Oct 27, 2019 23:42
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MightyPretenders posted:I'll be honest. I gave up on getting back into pokemon cards when I heard they'd gone the route of disallowing old card sets.
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Oct 28, 2019 01:54
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I just want to keep playing my dark Charizard deck. He can do 50-100 damage for only 2 energy!
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Oct 28, 2019 02:26
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My wife and I dipped into the TCG for a bit just before the start of the Team Up mechanics. In honor of that, I'm going to suggest an Eevee/Snorlax deck because that was her favorite team up card. I would have asked for my favorite team up, but while Gengar is in the game, I'm pretty sure Mimikyu isn't.
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Oct 28, 2019 16:11
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drat, this brings back memories. I remember when I was a kid, I beat the game with a deck of only Nidorans, just evolve them and beat the crap out of the opponent before they fight back.
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Oct 29, 2019 17:15
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I just played this game for the first time in many years, and it's much easier than I remembered. I battled everybody only once and finished the entire game without losing a single battle. The AI just sucks and tends to squander its energy cards, also any deck with fewer than four Bill and Professor Oak is a mistake.
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Oct 29, 2019 23:30
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Part 3: Competitive Splash Water Club  What better place to use a Blastoise deck than by the pool? But let's trade one good card for a kind of alright one.   Looks badass, but is it bad? Well, under the right conditions you discard 2 Fire energy for 100 damage, which sounds familiar, but if you can't keep the upkeep then it's a discount Charizard you can only have 1 of per deck until postgame. It was available through official TCG leagues in March 2000, while the JP release was through a Toyota auto campaign in Oct 1997, with a rerelease in 1999 through the Pokemon Song Best Collection.   Isn't it wonderful to duel in a place like this? OK, we'll play with 3 prizes. It'll be a 1-match duel!  Let's start with a splash, Water Gun is a very common TCG attack that deals more damage the more Water energy you attach, so it can get pretty strong pretty fast.   Squirtle has some slight stall with Bubble paralyzing, but I wasn't getting very lucky.     Oh hey, good way to knock these both out at once. They're bench fillers, which is useful for certain strats, but the Mysterious Fossil is needed to then "evolve" into the 3 fossils, making those stage 1 cards in a way. It's a shame they're not that good considering the extra work you put into them, but whatever, wonder why she has both?    Oh. Ohhhhhhhhhh. poo poo. Amanda has a nasty little combination, keeping you from evolving with Aerodactyl, so she one shots you with Wigglytuff with a full bench. Thankfully I don't take much stock in my lead mon, so I've got a Wartortle in the back.   This can get very quickly out of hand. Thankfully Wartortle is like the other 1st stage starters in having consistent damage and Aero doesn't really do much when it's out.     Despite her Potions and waves, since we kept her bench low, it wasn't a big deal.   Do you want to take a swim? Or would you rather duel? There will be 2 prizes. The duel will be 1 match. OK, let's start!  Mirror match! Due to lower prizes compared to other clubs, it seems like this was intended to be your first club. But having a Wigglytuff and Aerodactyl deck as your first seems a little mean, so I dunno. Oh yeah, she also had Scyther, because of course she did.   But of course, paralysis aside, this isn't just the Squirtle show, we have a second friend that works very well with what we've got. But first:    Like come the gently caress on, how could this card not be completely ridiculous? Slowly charging up Pokemon with one energy a turn is a big part of this game and stops you rolling over your opponents. Well this lets you attach as many energy as you want each turn, which also lets you then charge it up and attack at full power the turn it comes out, as well as making any Water deck shoot up in viability. Of course, as a stage 2 it's slow, but you'll zoom past when you get it set up, especially with a Breeder.   It's so stupid how quickly we can charge everything up. This is on turn THREE with me burning through the entire deck for the heck of it. And while I could put in basically any Water mon, like Sara does for her deck, it's nearly all Pokemon, legendaries are just random cards you can pull, so let's use some!    Put any Water type here and it'll be the same result, but I chose Articuno since paralysis is really good, and its heavy energy costs are but a drop in the ocean. Heh, get it? Well, the million water puns aside, it's a pretty dependable card, and while the Blizzard damage can go either way, if you've got Blastoise set up, there's really not much your opponent can do, even if it is slightly damaged.  swimming so much. I guess I have to practice more to improve my Pokemon Card Game.  As promised, I'll test your skills. If you win, I will introduce you to Amy... OK, this will be a 1-match duel with 4 prizes!  Alright, how quickly can we obliterate this guy? Call for Family pops up every now and then, and it's pretty useful early game for specific builds. Not that we're gonna see it work out.   It really is that loving easy.   I didn't need to build up another Blastoise, but I could, and that's what matters. Joshua has a lot of Water mons and a lot of energy, using the ones Sara didn't get round to, since there's a lot. The fact each deck we're facing have like 10+ different lines to them shows how bloody awful they are.  Well, since I promised... I'll introduce you to Amy. Don't think you're that good just because you defeated me. We still have Amy here at the Water Club. Amy! Please wake up!! Huh? What's going on? I was enjoying my little nap... Well, um... (psst, psst, psst) What? You lost? How could you!?!  I, Amy, the master of the Water Club! OK! A 1-match duel with 6 prizes! Let's do it! Club Master Duel   Marco, it's me, Doctor Mason. I have some information for you about Amy's deck - she's the Master of the Water Club. Her deck uses Rain Dance - Blastoise's Pokemon Power. This deck allows her to keep attaching Water Energy to her Water Pokemon to power them up. Her deck's weakness is Lightning Pokemon! I suggest you duel her using the deck from the Psychic Medal Deck Machine. Here's a booster pack for you. Marco! Keep at it, and don't give up! Mason Laboratory Doctor Mason    Yep, of course Amy uses Blastoise as well. But since I have 2 Breeders and 4 Blastoise, it's much easier to get it out compared to 1 and 2, respectively. And of course knocking out Squirtle helps a lot, the AI won't retreat their main Pokemon unless it's the specific card they've been told to protect. So they'll do a lot more to protect their Scyther compared to a Wartortle.   She has some disruption in a variety of other Pokemon and Energy Removal, diluting her pool even more. She even uses Seaking as her backup attacker, as well as a couple Lapras, but you find out in the tutorial how weak Seaking is.   But I guess if she keeps removing Blastoise's energy, we'll use something else instead. Using this deck is just cheating, let's never touch it again.   Well, since I lost, you can have this Water Medal. This should get you a step closer to inheriting the Legendary Cards! Here, you can also have these! They should come in handy! Come see me again! I'd love to duel you again sometime! TCG Island  We've gotten into the swing of things, so since we're done with the starters, let's see what tools the game has for doing different decks. In the side room where we fought Tech Aaron, each of the machines is activated when you get a specific medal, the one in the top corner is something for later.   Each give you a selection of decks you can build, with the different symbols indicating how much of your current deck you can put towards it? I guess? Well we won't be bothering with any of these archetypes, there's some interesting ideas, sure. But this game thinks a good deck consists of 25 different Pokemon, 2 Bill and split energy. loving trash!   In the bottom corner is a machine that lets you save all the different decks you've made. I'll only use each deck once, but I'll store them here for posterity. After all, I'll be using decks chosen by YOU! Or at least, you guys chose the two Pokemon you wanted to see, I picked any I liked the sound of and filled in the rest. Toyatasomi no Miko first suggested a Nido deck and a fair few people agreed, so let's give it a run!  LASS: Pikachu's cute, but I prefer Clefairy! I'll give you this Pikachu if you give me a Clefairy! OK then let's trade! Pikachu for Clefairy.    God this card is so loving freaky... I've been forgetting to clear out all the lounges of interesting stuff for clubs we've already been to. But I have no idea which ones these are looking at the screenshots lol Anyway, Pikachu has a few different Promos, because of course it has, and this is the least interesting one. It's just bad. No Promo Raichu, the savages, so it's just stuck like this. Yikes. This was the other Promo card with Jigglypuff in the Oct 1996 CoroCoro and was also rereleased with much better artwork by Sugimori for the Toyota campaign along with Arcanine. It was released in the west through official TCG leagues in July 1999, woo.  LAD: cards. Please give me all your energy cards! Give me all the energy cards that aren't in your deck!!! Gimme, gimme! Gimme all of 'em!!!   LAD: Since you were so nice, I'll tell you a secret! Check the wall 2 tiles left of the bookcase... you'll probably find something really nice! Thanks again. Bye!  ...yeah. I did this to really illustrate that any energy not in your decks is completely gone. It's not a big deal for me, I can get a lot more very quickly, but if you say no without knowing what's going on, he gets upset and leaves, never to return. Pretty lovely, gotta say.    Headbutt Amnesia: Choose 1 of the Defending Pokémon's attacks. That Pokémon can't use that attack during your opponent's next turn. Well that was incredibly not worth it, but the story behind the card is always better. This card was first released in May 1997 along with official playmats in Japan, and was never physically released in English, its only appearance being this game. Due to its rarity, no one's really felt like scanning it, but it was reprinted in a future Japan only expansion.  WOMAN: It's the talk of the town that Ishihara wishes to trade a very rare card. Maybe I'll visit him myself!    I'm thinking about trading my Surfing Pikachu for it. Do you have Clefable? Oh wonderful! Then without delay...   Of course we've got lots of Pikachu to collect! The only interesting thing is it uses Water energy, but whatever. This is the first appearance of Surfing Pikachu, available in Japan from Aug 1997 CoroCoro, with the English version from the TCG Leagues in Aug 2001. And so began the many, many different forms of Pikachu. May it never end. Oh right, uh, an NPC will tell you if Ishihara wants to trade something, but it's a different NPC each time, so good luck. With all that done, it's on to something a little different. Challenge Cup  CLERK: opponents here, and you shall be presented with a wonderful gift! Please join in the competition!   I'm the one who's going to defeat 3 opponents! The prize, Lv60 Mewtwo, belongs to me! You just sit tight and watch me win! See ya! Ha ha ha ha ha ha! CLERK: Defeat 3 opponents to win the wonderful prize of Lv60 Mewtwo! The game will be a 1-match duel with 4 prizes! We are now accepting entrants here. Wouldn't you like to enter? Then please proceed to the stage!  Heh, our character doesn't know what to do since he's never been on a stage before.  HOST: Presently, Marco is still a contender! Marco is the new challenger! There will be 4 prizes! OK!! Let the duel begin!   So the Challenge Cup is interesting, but not too great, win 3 matches in a row that you can save and edit your deck inbetween to get a single Promo card! The tricky part is actually going to one of these, the first one is after we get the third medal and we only have that window to do it. If we get our fourth medal, then the Challenge Cup ends and Ronald wins the Promo card, which he never uses. You don't get another chance, so don't miss it! Or do, it doesn't really matter. In any case, this is how you get missed Promo cards in the postgame, but we'll get to that later.   Our opponents can be any of the regular Club members, even if we've never met them, not like they have any dialogue for this. It's a bit risky starting off with Nidoran M, since Horn Hazard only deals damage if you get heads, but I specifically have less Nidoran F for the strategy. And, uh, Energy Removal, uh, does the thing. You know, one from an opponent's Pokemon. It's cool, I guess.   We wanna start with Nido F since she has Call for Family, which includes both Nido, which is nice. But this Persian is a problem, so let's reach the final form.     A simple enough combo that can deal huge damage and is also something I never completely pull off. Evolving stuff in the right order is hard yo. Even with a couple of Nidoking, Boyfriends does great damage, so it's not really necessary to get 4 Nidoking, even though I do have that many. And Nidoking is no slouch when it comes to attacking, let's see, shall we?   Jesus christ, Toxic's animation is loving brutal.   HOST: Marco has defeated 1 opponent!!! Most unfortunate, Chris. Have a safe trip home! Let's meet our next challenger!     You can access your menu, so there's no worry. Always make sure to save, RNG will gently caress you if it can and if you lose, you cannot attempt this again.   Alright, Heather's deck, if you remember, was a bit weird, but- oh wait, she doesn't have any bench Pokemon.   HOST: One more opponent to go before winning the Challenge Cup! The third opponent is Ronald!   HOST: Well, Marco, let the third, and final, match begin! Rival Duel  Huh, never had that happen before.   Thanks coinflips. The AI likes leading with Kangaskhan to draw cards with Fetch. For all Challenge Cup matches against him, Ronald uses the same deck, standard basic stages monsters that are a pain to get around, as well as Muk and Graveler. But we should be fine, how hard can it be?   Still, despite hurting us Thrash is some real nice damage. Grimer is less fun, since paralysis is such a pain, but we won't need to deal with it for long.   It's the power of love!   Hrmmmmm, Pokeballs are so loving bad, but you need them!!!   Oh of course he drew a DCE and a Pluspower at the same time, giving him just enough to OHKO me. Well at least he's using the bad Magmar.    Or at least it should be the bad one. It just lets him get Scyther fully set up. Sigh. It's definitely a lategame card for Haymaker, but its main draw is high HP and resistance to the main Haymaker fighter, Hitmonchan. Swords Dance is only useful if you're not able to damage the opponent, or you're able to start using Slash next turn. Very dangerous card, but is a little slow.   Oh of course I get all tails for my Thrashes so I don't knock out Scyther and it puts Nidoking in range of Rock Throw, which does 40 damage. I still have a Nidoran M, and Graveler is weak to Grass, so if I get heads, I win.   gently caress off game, jesus. If any of those coinflips had been heads, I would've won, the only reason I lost was because I got all tails all in a row. But that's why you save. And also don't use coinflips, they're garbage.  HOST: It was close, but Marco was defeated by the third opponent! You see! I'm the better player? Two more opponents to win the Challenge Cup!!  Let's try that again, I get 3 heads in a row for max Double Kick damage, great.   But there we go, a single heads so I can 2HKO a Scyther, christ.   He had another set up, which is quick to do, but I just keep landing those heads! Hell yeah! I'm not mad at this game! Please don't post in the thread that I was mad!   HOST: Most unfortunate, Ronald. Do try again in the next Challenge Cup. That was luck! But a loss is a loss... MARCO! I won't lose next time!     Of course Mewtwo gets some promos, and it's not bad, getting it set up in one turn if you discard some energy beforehand, preferably from a Computer Search that resulted in the Mewtwo. This card was first available as an insert with the Pocket Monster Fan Book in April 1997, while the English version was one of four promos you could get from buying a theatrical ticket to the first movie. Then they ruined the artwork by putting a dumb gold stamp in the corner.  Next time, more medals, and the rest of the game features decks chosen by you guys!
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Nov 1, 2019 03:53
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It's funny, they keep printing Pokeball, and keep putting it in starter decks, but they also keep printing other, better Ball cards, too. Great Ball lets you check the top 7 cards of your deck for a Pokemon, Ultra Ball is a Pokemon-specific Computer Search, Nest Ball grabs a Basic and drops it straight down on the bench... even the closest analogue, Timer Ball, lets you flip two coins and gives you an evolved Pokemon card for each heads. They improved Potion a while ago (even though it's still bad), but I guess they've never come up with any clean way to make Pokeball better and still stay loyal to the old design. And they can't exactly not have Pokeballs in the Pokemon game, so kids and players who don't know better are just stuck playing with cards that do nothing 50% of the time. Pokemon TCG in general is a very flippy, luck-heavy game. It probably comes as no surprise that the best cards and the best decks are generally the ones that remove or mitigate the luck aspect as much as possible. Edit: The only counter-example I can think of was in the early 2010s, when there was a Victini in print that let you retry a coin flip (or series of coin flips) for your Pokemon's attack once per turn. The deck, fittingly called Fliptini, was a fun gimmick, but it never took off because even using Victini didn't guarantee you'd always get heads. It did, however, guarantee that you had a weak, frail Pokemon on your bench just asking to get dragged out and punched in the face and destroying your strategy, leaving your primary attacker back to being completely dependent on luck. So even the card designed to make luck-based decks good... wasn't actually good. girl dick energy fucked around with this message at 05:32 on Nov 1, 2019 |
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Nov 1, 2019 05:22
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Is there a reason not to combine the giant water turtle with the eggpalm? If I don't miss anything that combo would give you am arbitrary amount of coin tosses.
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Nov 1, 2019 06:08
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I absolutely cannot parse Hydro Pump. Is it limiting how much energy you can put towards powering it up further?
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Nov 1, 2019 06:16
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cant cook creole bream posted:Is there a reason not to combine the giant water turtle with the eggpalm? If I don't miss anything that combo would give you am arbitrary amount of coin tosses. Blastoise's ability only works on Water Pokemon. Solumin posted:I absolutely cannot parse Hydro Pump. Yes. The maximum damage is 60. Like early Magic cards, a lot of early Pokemon cards had weird and inconsistent phrasing.
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Nov 1, 2019 06:19
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Chamale posted:Blastoise's ability only works on Water Pokemon. It's not that Rain Dance only works on Water Pokemon, per se, but that you can only place Water Energy through its effect. Water Pokemon aren't the only ones who can use Water Energy, after all...
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Nov 1, 2019 07:46
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Nope it's only water pokemon. It says in the ability text using the water symbol instead of actually saying "water."
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Nov 1, 2019 08:21
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Crosspeice posted:
I played this game far too much.
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Nov 1, 2019 15:26
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Solumin posted:I absolutely cannot parse Hydro Pump. "If this card has exactly four attached Water Energy, Hydro Pump does 10 extra damage. If this card has five or more attached Water Energy, Hydro Pump does 20 extra damage."
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Nov 1, 2019 15:59
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