necronzero
New Member
Hello everyone,
I've been playing the game since it's very early years, but have never been an active online community member until today at the prompting of one of my professor friends who I was discussing rulings with. There are several rulings I personally disagree with, but for the sack of keeping things simple I will just talk about one here.
The "ruling" I am curious about what other people think of is, banning Wally entirely from the expanded format. As far as I am aware, the "problem" with Wally as it is, is that Trevenant can effectively lock an opponent out of items before they ever get a chance to play any, if the Trev player goes first, which I agree is something that shouldn't be possible, and in a sense am happy that the abuse is being dealt with, I just disagree with how it is.
My friends and I were discussing how best to deal with the problem, in the absence of straight up banning Wally. The reason I feel like a total ban of Wally isn't the right path to achieve the goal of removing Trevenant's or anyone "lock" pokemon (Alolan Muk, etc) whose ability to lock an opponent on the first turn of a game is because of the fact that banning a card removes the possibility of any player from using it entirely, rather than just the one/few card(s) that is/are abusing it to cause a problem.
I would like to posit the a better way of addressing the problem without overreaching and affecting every other player would be an errata of the card instead of a complete ban, after all cards like Pokemon Catcher were errata'd and not banned. I have two ideas so far on errata's and would like to have a discussion on whether or not these seem feasible and if they would indeed create a similar impact of prevent the problem posed by T1 locks based on theorycrafting.
The first idea, and simplest idea, for an errata that my friends and I came up with during our discussion at dinner was to errata Wally so that it couldn't be used on the first turn of the game. This seems at face value to address the problem of Trevenant locking a player out of items on the first turn of the game, and seemingly doesn't affect anything else. I feel as though this errata is simple, addresses the problem, and still leaves the card playable by anything not lock-based.
The second idea we came up with is a bit more convoluted, and ultimately less likely to happen due to the nature of it being confusing much harder to remember as being an errata. Let me explain...
One of the people in the discussion thought that the previously mentioned possible errata defeated the purpose of playing the card, which I disagree with, but I digress, this second errata possibility is the one he liked better and in a way I can definitely understand why, but I think it's not as feasible. So here's the second errata...
The errata would be that Wally could still be played on T1, but your pokemon's abilities would be turned off during your opponent's next turn. This would still give your opponent one turn of items, or whatever before the lock takes effect, which would address the problem of a T1 lock and your opponent never being able to play a portion of their deck. The reason I think this errata isn't as feasible or a good solution is the complexity. If you imagined having to add all that text to the card it would look like a brick wall, whereas adding the previous errata to the card would be much less text.
Anyways, I'm sure there are things I am not considering so please let me know if you think there is something I am not considering, but I want this game to be diverse and interesting, and in pursuit of that goal I believe that outright banning a card just because a very few select cards can abuse them, when other cards can still use them to interesting or fun effect isn't the right move.
I've been playing the game since it's very early years, but have never been an active online community member until today at the prompting of one of my professor friends who I was discussing rulings with. There are several rulings I personally disagree with, but for the sack of keeping things simple I will just talk about one here.
The "ruling" I am curious about what other people think of is, banning Wally entirely from the expanded format. As far as I am aware, the "problem" with Wally as it is, is that Trevenant can effectively lock an opponent out of items before they ever get a chance to play any, if the Trev player goes first, which I agree is something that shouldn't be possible, and in a sense am happy that the abuse is being dealt with, I just disagree with how it is.
My friends and I were discussing how best to deal with the problem, in the absence of straight up banning Wally. The reason I feel like a total ban of Wally isn't the right path to achieve the goal of removing Trevenant's or anyone "lock" pokemon (Alolan Muk, etc) whose ability to lock an opponent on the first turn of a game is because of the fact that banning a card removes the possibility of any player from using it entirely, rather than just the one/few card(s) that is/are abusing it to cause a problem.
I would like to posit the a better way of addressing the problem without overreaching and affecting every other player would be an errata of the card instead of a complete ban, after all cards like Pokemon Catcher were errata'd and not banned. I have two ideas so far on errata's and would like to have a discussion on whether or not these seem feasible and if they would indeed create a similar impact of prevent the problem posed by T1 locks based on theorycrafting.
The first idea, and simplest idea, for an errata that my friends and I came up with during our discussion at dinner was to errata Wally so that it couldn't be used on the first turn of the game. This seems at face value to address the problem of Trevenant locking a player out of items on the first turn of the game, and seemingly doesn't affect anything else. I feel as though this errata is simple, addresses the problem, and still leaves the card playable by anything not lock-based.
The second idea we came up with is a bit more convoluted, and ultimately less likely to happen due to the nature of it being confusing much harder to remember as being an errata. Let me explain...
One of the people in the discussion thought that the previously mentioned possible errata defeated the purpose of playing the card, which I disagree with, but I digress, this second errata possibility is the one he liked better and in a way I can definitely understand why, but I think it's not as feasible. So here's the second errata...
The errata would be that Wally could still be played on T1, but your pokemon's abilities would be turned off during your opponent's next turn. This would still give your opponent one turn of items, or whatever before the lock takes effect, which would address the problem of a T1 lock and your opponent never being able to play a portion of their deck. The reason I think this errata isn't as feasible or a good solution is the complexity. If you imagined having to add all that text to the card it would look like a brick wall, whereas adding the previous errata to the card would be much less text.
Anyways, I'm sure there are things I am not considering so please let me know if you think there is something I am not considering, but I want this game to be diverse and interesting, and in pursuit of that goal I believe that outright banning a card just because a very few select cards can abuse them, when other cards can still use them to interesting or fun effect isn't the right move.
