Pokémon TCG: Sword and Shield—Brilliant Stars

2007-2008 Modified Format Announced! Major Changes!

ya know, it just wouldn't be rotation without foundation-less decks at the begining of each rotation. thou the loss of cursed stone will only make power heavy decks dominant next season
 
So is it hard for the new guy or is it easy?

If it's hard, then it's kind of like what you said -- all the person has to do is take the time to read up on the format a bit. But without the format change, the Holon Engine is still one of the hardest-to-get trainer sets ever. I'm glad you were able to stick around for a couple of months until you got the Holon Engine, but some people aren't so patient. If they're losing tournament after tournament not because of their Pokemon but their trainers, I can see their patience running very low. This is where money becomes a factor, and many people don't want to pull out the big bucks for uncommon trainers.

Things I had to learn as a nOOb

1. The basics of how to play the game. Things like what basic and evolution cards were. How to attach energy and attack.

2. What the different sets were. This included finding out which sets were legal and which were not. I spent a lot of time here and on the beach reading up on this.

3. How to build a real deck & use it properly. Things like what the pokemon lines should look like. What trainers to use in given decks. The beach and the forums here were super helpful for me in learning to build.

4. What was actually in the different sets so that I could learn more about other decks and how they worked.

5. How to acquire cards so that I could actually build some of the decks I wanted. This included learning where to buy packs and starter decks, getting an eBay account, and learning about community trading.

6. More advanced gameplay. Mostly playing more, especially at tournaments, and reading all the strategy articles I could find. Some of the more detailed tournament reports were actually very helpful here too.

7. More advanced deckbuilding.

I’ll freely admit that I still have a long way to go especially on the last two.

Anyway the most difficult early steps are finding out about the modified format. I see it all the time at my league. Kids who have old cards and neither they nor their parents have a clue what “modified” means, which is fine for casual play. But I still remember their shock when we had our first league tournament & it was modified. I was spared some of that because I took the initiative and found as much stuff online as I could. But not everyone is tech savvy.

Like I said, the old packs & singles are all over the place. They are at Wal-Mart, Target, game stores, eBay, etc. It’s almost impossible for a n00b to know what they should and should not get. The more sets that are legal the less of a problem this is. The tighter the modified format gets the more difficult it is.

And this is where I think that the “elite” part ways with the vast majority of parents and kids I see playing the game. The “elite” think in terms of winning events and that in turn requires the best deck possible. From that perspective shrinking the format makes sense. It makes it easier to just buy the cards needed. But the average Poke-parent is usually just happy for their kid to have a reasonably competitive deck and while the kids like to win they are more about playing for fun IMHO. The wider the format the easier it is for them to get the pokemon that they like and the less they have to worry about finding “legal” sets.

That’s my view on how shrinking the format makes things harder on your n00b poke-player or parent.

My other statement was that finding older cards isn’t really that hard IMHO.

This actually goes along with what I said above. The old cards are everywhere. Granted, not in the numbers that the newer sets are, but I actually have a hard time buying some big store bundles WITHOUT having an older pack in the mix and I know what the heck I’m doing.

Sure, some of the more desirable individual older cards will be harder to find. That’s a given. But the dedicated players usually manage to find a way. My personal experience with Transceivers was my example. I see lots of moaning about how hard they are to get, especially for n00bs, but it was anything but for me. I kept my eyes open for deals on eBay, and made sure that when my kids wanted to buy blister packs that there was usually a DS pack in the mix. In just 2 months we had 2 engines that way. A little persistence, patience, and time were the keys.

So I think that it’s false to say that keeping some older sets in creates too high a barrier for the new player. It’s apparently not a problem in Japan. I don’t see that it would be here either.
 
Should I trade off all my stuff while I still have the chance or do you think they may get reprinted or their value will barely drop?

>_< Most of my stuff is from DX/DS, darn, don't want my money to go wasted...

Still, this is good news... can't wait to see what decks pop up :)

Hmmm, I wonder how easy it will be to obtain a Jirachi DX, Lati@s star and Rayquaza star, I've always wanted those cards for their cool artwork lol...

And, I'm pretty sure the packs are cheaper in Japan... Korean Pokemon packs are less than $1 a booster, much cheaper than nearly $4 >_<

Peace...
 
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What peace? Everyone will be scrambling to get Scott and Castaway because Holon Engine is gone. DP2 might restore order to the world though. Good news is that everyone will probably have plenty of money to buy new cards with because they will have sold their old cards. Weird decks like DP2 Eteboth with DP2 Walrein.
 
They should have cut Deoxys, Emerald, Unseen Forces, and Legend Maker but left Delta Species in since if I recal it came out after Legend Maker in Japan. I mean no holon engine hurts Delta decks to the point were they just wont be consistent enough to be considered top tier.
 
What peace? Everyone will be scrambling to get Scott and Castaway because Holon Engine is gone. DP2 might restore order to the world though. Good news is that everyone will probably have plenty of money to buy new cards with because they will have sold their old cards. Weird decks like DP2 Eteboth with DP2 Walrein.

very funny...

Scottaway will NOT be the next engine... I dont think anyone will be scrambling to get them either
 
I'm looking forward to see how Shiftry does. Though I haven't tested, I'd say it'd do well against Infernape. But it also might be slower now.

Time will tell..
 
this rotation is horrible for players. but is great for collectors.

now that the cards are worthless, you can buy all of those exs and stars now for a dollar each to complete your collection.
 
[R]Visitor;861845 said:
Because Pokemon Organized Greed, or whatever they prefer to call themselves, are in charge here in America, and in America, big buisness = screwing over your consumers.

We're taking the bullet here so they can make a quicker buck, it's simple. I was curious why the soon-to-be legal sets were becoming more expensive, while older sets, like Delta Species, stayed the same price. POP is basically going to force you to buy new cards and at a higher price. This is why the announcement was so sudden, to make sure that the average consumer panics and buys up lots of packs at jacked up prices before thinking things through.

The rules of this game should be the same everywhere, but they're not. You think it's bad here? Try Europe. I hear things are quite a cesspool over there when it comes to how well the players are treated. This is a huge step backward from where we were, and POG/POP is turning this game into another magic.

Make up all the excuses you want, Holon Engine this and that, it's all pish posh. Most of the new DP enabled decks MURDER the holon engine. Electanite was going to completely nullify decks like Raieggs.

This is just greed at it's most predictable and understandable level. That's ALL this is folks, is greed. I'll be seeing the rest of you on ebay, selling those cards we all bought like, 3 months ago, which are suddenly illegal already.

Personally, i'd laugh in the face of the guys at PUI/POP/etc. I could run their shady buisness better than they could, in a flash, doesn't take much more than a degree in marketing. :nonono: Shameful buisness is shameful buisness.

:lol: Thanks for the laughs. I really appreciate it. Made me feel better today since am a little under the weather.
 
[R]Visitor;861845 said:
Because Pokemon Organized Greed, or whatever they prefer to call themselves, are in charge here in America, and in America, big buisness = screwing over your consumers.

We're taking the bullet here so they can make a quicker buck, it's simple. I was curious why the soon-to-be legal sets were becoming more expensive, while older sets, like Delta Species, stayed the same price.

Or perhaps older sets stayed the same price because PUI has already sold them all at the old rate. We don’t directly control the price a retailer eventually sells cards for, thus the Suggested in MSRP. Even if we could force retailers to raise the price of older sets, why would we want to?

As to the price of new sets going up, we feel that we are now priced where we should be. The previous price increase to $3.49 was long delayed compared to the rest of the industry. I am also a bit mystified that nobody has pointed out that the price per card has actually gone down. The old price was MSRP $3.49 per 9 cards or $0.387 per card. We added an uncommon to the packs and now we have MSRP $3.79 per 10 cards or $0.379 per card. The uncommon slot is where we put most of the trainers. By putting more uncommons in circulation we are hoping to make it easier for players to build functional decks.

[R]Visitor;861845 said:
POP is basically going to force you to buy new cards and at a higher price.

Here is what I feel is the meat of your complaint and the reason I am bothering to respond. While I object to the word “force”, this is otherwise true. Organized Play is a division of Marketing; our entire reason for existing is to encourage players to buy new cards. POP doesn’t make any money; we spend millions every year to provide places for people to gather to play Pokémon. The only thing we get out of it is advertising.

You act like this is some dirty secret you are revealing to the ignorant masses. It’s not a secret; it is our reason for existing. It is not a dirty scheme; it is the entire basis of organized play for every trading card or miniatures game on the market. You continue to buy our newest product and we provide a structured tournament system for that product; that’s the deal. You may not like the system we provide, and therefore choose to go elsewhere, but don’t expect some completely different basis for the relationship between POP and our player base.

What did you think the purpose of Organized Play was? Why would we be spending millions each year except to generate sales for our newest cards? The older cards are already sold. What other benefit do we provide for our company?

[R]Visitor;861845 said:
. This is why the announcement was so sudden, to make sure that the average consumer panics and buys up lots of packs at jacked up prices before thinking things through.

The announcement wasn’t sudden. It is almost three months in advance of the change. It is at roughly the same time as it was last year. We make this announcement as soon as we are able to get agreement from all the departments involved and final approval from TPC in Japan. POP would like to announce the set change sooner, but Brand, Marketing, Sales, R&D and Organized Play all have slightly different goals and requirements and we don’t have all the information we need to make this decision much earlier than we announce it.

The new legal set list should not have been any great surprise. We release four sets a year; we cut about four sets a year leaving the last eighteen months or so worth of sets legal at the beginning of the season. There are many factors that make the equation more complicated than that, thus three sets cuts last time and five this time. Players won’t know the exact cut until we announce it, but they shouldn’t be shocked by us doing the same thing we have done every year of our existence.

Your conspiracy theory about our motives for the announcement timing is both insulting and baseless.

[R]Visitor;861845 said:
The rules of this game should be the same everywhere, but they're not. You think it's bad here? Try Europe. I hear things are quite a cesspool over there when it comes to how well the players are treated.

I agree with the first sentence. However, this is both far more difficult and expensive than players seem to realize. For small markets it may be impossible. We will continue to work toward that where we can, but we often have to make practical choices about how to allocate our resources.

[R]Visitor;861845 said:
This is a huge step backward from where we were, and POG/POP is turning this game into another magic.

It will be a step back to where we were at the beginning of last season and the one before that. It will be a step back to where we will be at the beginning of the following season and the one after that and the one after that. It is business as usual in the usual way at the usual time.

[R]Visitor;861845 said:
Make up all the excuses you want, Holon Engine this and that, it's all pish posh. Most of the new DP enabled decks MURDER the holon engine. Electanite was going to completely nullify decks like Raieggs.

This is just greed at it's most predictable and understandable level. That's ALL this is folks, is greed. I'll be seeing the rest of you on ebay, selling those cards we all bought like, 3 months ago, which are suddenly illegal already.

Personally, i'd laugh in the face of the guys at PUI/POP/etc. I could run their shady buisness better than they could, in a flash, doesn't take much more than a degree in marketing. :nonono: Shameful buisness is shameful buisness.

Please do. Come laugh in my face; hurl your insults; cast your aspersions on my character and my motivation. Tell me your conspiracy theories and rant about your victimization by my evil organization. I will as calmly as possible show you the door and the game will be far better for your absence.

Or if you prefer, you can drop the hysterics and politely tell me why you don’t like this decision or that policy. Give me your reasoned suggestions. I will listen and consider, but I may still do the opposite of what you propose. My goals and yours aren’t the same. My resources are far less than most people seem to believe and my restrictions are far greater.

In the end you can choose to enjoy the service that POP provides, or not. You can provide polite feedback and at least be listened to; or you can continue to fling insults and accusations behind the safety of internet anonymity. That is your right and I suppose it makes you feel better, but it certainly doesn’t help anything.
 
I understand the business aspect of format rotations and I think that rotations keep the game from stagnating. I suspect, however, that people might not be so bitter towards format rotations if there was another officially supported format in which they could still use older cards. Supporting the Unlimited format seems implausible, but I know that I'd love an "extended" R/S-on or even FR/LG-on format with sanctioned tournaments.
 
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