Pokémon Cube

[Pringlesman]

While I was home over spring break, a friend and I bought a set of pokemon starter decks. We had a ton of fun playing them, and I'm slightly interested in playing Pokémon.

I'm a long time Magic the Gathering player. I really love playing limited formats like sealed or draft. I don't want to be condescending, but limited is a format where you open sealed product and build your deck based off of what you open.

Limited is a huge past time for me. So much so that I built a Magic the Gathering Cube. I assume most of you don't know what a cube is. But it's a collection of cards with the express purpose of desigining a highpowered but balanced limited format.

Things I'm wondering.

1. Is there a Pokémon analogue to limited?
2. Does anyone have anything similar to a Pokémon cube?
3. If so, could you post a list?

ALso I figured I would post a picture of some of my cube's cooler cards.


These are cards that I've been cubing with for years. But I used acrylic paint to alter them to have pokemon on them.

 

[donavannj]

1. The only equivalent to Limited is set prereleases for the sets, which usually happen every 3 or 4 months.

2. I haven't even tried to build a cube, not in Magic or Pokemon. It's more difficult to buld a cube for the Pokemon TCG, I'd assume, because you'd have to modify the cube to accommodate for a couple more Pokemon types.

 

[Airride_Master]

I really like the art you did, but I still didn't get the cubes?

 

[Pringlesman]

It's a little difficult to explain.

In magic the gathering, one of the most popular ways to play is called drafting.

When you draft each player buys three booster packs. It's best to do this with 8 people. When you start each person opens a pack and picks one card from the pack and puts it in there pile. THey then pass the pack to the next person who in turn takes one card from the pack. This goes on until you have gone through all three packs and each player has 45 cards. Each player then builds a deck from the cards they opened. They are also allowed to use basic lands, which is kind of like energy cards in Pokemon. Using the deck that they build they then play a tournament with them.

A cube is a specially selected 400-600 (normally each card is limited to a one of) collection of cards that you use to draft from. Normally the cards are selected on the basis of their relative power.

The format is loved due to it's high power and it's variance from game to game. I'm wondering if there is a Pokemon analogue to it. But it seems like the rules of pokemon are counter productive to a limited enviroment.

 

[donavannj]

The format is loved due to it's high power and it's variance from game to game. I'm wondering if there is a Pokemon analogue to it. But it seems like the rules of pokemon are counter productive to a limited enviroment.

Most Pokemon decks require evolutions to get most of their power, and they need a pyramid evolution tree to keep the game moving fast enough. You'd have to scour sets for high powered standard basic Pokemon or just make cubes out of SP-centric cards and SP Pokemon, since SP Pokemon don't evolve, though there isn't a very wide selection of these across all the sets. And then there's the mandatory 60 card deck rule. Cubes just don't agree with Pokemon. Though you could still do the prereleases for sets.

The Modified format for Pokemon is actually far cheaper than the Limited format for Magic, from personal experience, unless you sell back all your Limited rares in Magic after the matches. All Pokemon events are in fact free.

 

[Airride_Master]

It's a little difficult to explain.

In magic the gathering, one of the most popular ways to play is called drafting.

When you draft each player buys three booster packs. It's best to do this with 8 people. When you start each person opens a pack and picks one card from the pack and puts it in there pile. THey then pass the pack to the next person who in turn takes one card from the pack. This goes on until you have gone through all three packs and each player has 45 cards. Each player then builds a deck from the cards they opened. They are also allowed to use basic lands, which is kind of like energy cards in Pokemon. Using the deck that they build they then play a tournament with them.

A cube is a specially selected 400-600 (normally each card is limited to a one of) collection of cards that you use to draft from. Normally the cards are selected on the basis of their relative power.

The format is loved due to it's high power and it's variance from game to game. I'm wondering if there is a Pokemon analogue to it. But it seems like the rules of pokemon are counter productive to a limited enviroment.

The bolded sentence is all you needed. I know what magic is and how to play it.

 

[FurretFTW!!1!]

Prerelease events are the only kind of drafting Pokemon officially sponsors. You could find a group of Pokemon players who would draft for fun at a lot of tournaments. You'd have to organize the drafts yourself most of the time.