The year of the Pokemon

[MegaWowEXwithAtomBomb]

Howdy y'all, I've been semi-seriously playing Pokemon TCG with my two young boys since last summer. We've really been getting into it, as far as keeping our cards organized (Boundaries Crossed through Roaring Skies) and building new decks and doing Saturday night tournaments at the local gamer store. It's been a fun year!

But I wonder whether "real" Pokemon TCG players feel the same way I do about the nonstop release of bigger and better cards. Especially the recent releases, where now there are Pokemon that can attack twice or attach two energies etc. It's kind of annoying to have built a nice big beautiful collection of cards for the 2015 season and now most of them are fast becoming worthless because every three months they come out with stronger cards. Am I the only one that feels this way?

As a practical question, I'd really appreciate the feedback of long-time players on this one. Let's say I decide to "close the binders" for the 2015 season. The question is how to best define the 2015 season. I see three basic options:

1) Use the 2015 legal list, Boundaries Crossed through Roaring Skies.
2) Use the 2015 extended season, Black and White through Roaring Skies.
3) Stop a little earlier than Roaring Skies, like maybe at Furious Fists. Idea being, the "weird crap" like the now-illegal Lysandre's Trump card really seemed to get going with Phantom Forces and beyond.

Thanks!

 

[MegaWowEXwithAtomBomb]

Wow, all those views and no replies! I guess what I'm discovering is nobody really senses any sharp, natural "borders" between expansion sets, as though Set A through set J is a good system but set D through set M would be a bad system. Like the changes between expansion sets are gradual enough that it doesn't really matter where I start and end my "house set"?

But it still seems to me like (1) the TCG is an inflationary system, where someone playing newer cards will beat someone playing older cards, and (2) there's a major shift in card power happening right now. Like when I was able to start using PCL's Swampert with Diving Search, it really changed the feel of the game for me. It was actually a bit of a downer, because it just didn't seem as "sporting" to be able to search my deck for whatever card I wanted and put it on top for next turn, over and over. Maybe my one-year perspective is just to narrow to judge such things correctly?

 

[AdamN]

But I wonder whether "real" Pokemon TCG players feel the same way I do about the nonstop release of bigger and better cards. Especially the recent releases, where now there are Pokemon that can attack twice or attach two energies etc. It's kind of annoying to have built a nice big beautiful collection of cards for the 2015 season and now most of them are fast becoming worthless because every three months they come out with stronger cards. Am I the only one that feels this way?

I don't think anyone deeply loves bigger and better cards from a gameplay perspective, but if they didn't do it and all cards were equal and balanced, they wouldn't sell any new ones they produced and would go out of buisness pretty quick.

Personally, I would rather compete with baseset cards any day.

As a practical question, I'd really appreciate the feedback of long-time players on this one. Let's say I decide to "close the binders" for the 2015 season. The question is how to best define the 2015 season. I see three basic options:

1) Use the 2015 legal list, Boundaries Crossed through Roaring Skies.
2) Use the 2015 extended season, Black and White through Roaring Skies.
3) Stop a little earlier than Roaring Skies, like maybe at Furious Fists. Idea being, the "weird crap" like the now-illegal Lysandre's Trump card really seemed to get going with Phantom Forces and beyond.

Thanks!

I don't understand what you're asking on this bit ^ first time I read this thread I thought you were asking how best to organize your binders.

 

[donavannj]

Wow, all those views and no replies! I guess what I'm discovering is nobody really senses any sharp, natural "borders" between expansion sets, as though Set A through set J is a good system but set D through set M would be a bad system. Like the changes between expansion sets are gradual enough that it doesn't really matter where I start and end my "house set"?

But it still seems to me like (1) the TCG is an inflationary system, where someone playing newer cards will beat someone playing older cards, and (2) there's a major shift in card power happening right now. Like when I was able to start using PCL's Swampert with Diving Search, it really changed the feel of the game for me. It was actually a bit of a downer, because it just didn't seem as "sporting" to be able to search my deck for whatever card I wanted and put it on top for next turn, over and over. Maybe my one-year perspective is just to narrow to judge such things correctly?

Well, HP and attack strength have shot up over the years.

However, what really defines a format is the Trainers/Supporters/Stadiums/Abilities within it. Those are really what control what has success. Early Trainers were broken to the point that they broke another two card types out of them over the next few years of the TCG (Stadiums debuted in the Gym Sets, while Supporters debuted with Expedition in 2001/2002). Early Abilities/PokePowers/PokeBodies were also mostly broken, and there was a card specifically banned for is PokePower. PokePowers were split off into PokeBodies (always active) and PokePowers (need to be manually activated) in order to make some balance and easier rulings for the specific types of Powers. That was somewhere around ex:Ruby & Sapphire, iirc, but it might have been as early as Expedition. PokePowers and PokeBodies got merged back together into Abilities in Black & White for reasons I'm not entirely sure of.

I'll go into more detail on the above later if I remember to. There's a lot to go into detail on if you'd like me to explain more.

You can pretty cleanly cut off the TCG eras based on what cards are the rarest cards in each set, so the first set with Mega Evolutions (marked with a stylized "M" at the beginning of the card name) in it would be a good starting point for a set based on current cards, for instance. Alternatively, the blocks can be blocked off based on what each "parent" set for that set is, though that doesn't always create great competitive balance.

You can also define it based off of what "subtype" of card was dominant or if there was a "deck engine" consisting of cards with a shared gimmick that worked together well.

The issue is that there are a lot of ways to define them.

 

[MegaWowEXwithAtomBomb]

Great info, thanks!! I wonder what you would think of a house set that went from Next Destinies through Flashfire?

How'd I come up with that, you might wonder. Well I like your idea of looking for when certain types of cards first showed up. Someone had already suggested to me that Next Destinies might be a better place to start than Boundaries Crossed, and checking databases I see this is where the first EX (capital EX) cards showed up.

Closer to the present, I notice Furious Fists was the first expansion with any of the new type-specific special energies, i.e. Herbal Energy. They've since come out with special energies for fight, psychic, fairy, and metal, but not yet for lightning, dark, or fire. So it doesn't really seem "fair" to close the set after Roaring Skies; I can either close out after Flashfire or go forward until the lightning/dark/fire special energies come out…

 

[donavannj]

Great info, thanks!! I wonder what you would think of a house set that went from Next Destinies through Flashfire?

How'd I come up with that, you might wonder. Well I like your idea of looking for when certain types of cards first showed up. Someone had already suggested to me that Next Destinies might be a better place to start than Boundaries Crossed, and checking databases I see this is where the first EX (capital EX) cards showed up.

Closer to the present, I notice Furious Fists was the first expansion with any of the new type-specific special energies, i.e. Herbal Energy. They've since come out with special energies for fight, psychic, fairy, and metal, but not yet for lightning, dark, or fire. So it doesn't really seem "fair" to close the set after Roaring Skies; I can either close out after Flashfire or go forward until the lightning/dark/fire special energies come out…

Didn't Mega evolutions debut in Flashfire? Or was that right away in XY? I can't remember and don't really feel like looking it up this late at night.

 

[MegaWowEXwithAtomBomb]

Yes, the Megas started in one of the early XY sets. The EX (capital EX) started in Next Destinies.

I've since noticed that both the 2015 and 2016 expanded legals start with the Black and White, so I decided I might as well "back up a little" and start there. My house set will end with Legendary Treasures, so it will have some EX but no megas (and no alpha/beta/gamma/delta stuff, and no type-specific special energies like Herbal and Strong, no spirit links, etc.) Pretty boring for serious competitors nowadays I suppose but hey, "old Dad" was having more fun with last year's cards than this year's.

The boys, of course, are thrilled that I'm willing to trade them all my XY & later cards for all their LTR & earlier cards :-)