Alternate Format Ideas (Past and Self Thought)

[rileysill32]

So I want to start a thread that accumulates all different ideas for alternative formats, playing league modified gets boring after a while, that's why not everybody takes the time to go to leagues every week anymore.
So I am bored at working trying to think about alternative formats to share at all the leagues around the country/world to start new trending of ways to play the game. There doesn't have to be any specific rules to your match play so long as you state all the rules, or the main idea behind it so others can add their thoughts to your format. I will start with a couple examples that have already been done in the past.

- Everybody pays a flat rate for 1 starter deck of their choosing and 4 boosters of their choosing, make decks and play it out tournament style.
- You can only use a certain type of pokemon in your decks.
- You can play 1 pokemon, but unlimited amounts of that pokemon in your deck (60 cards)
- You can only play commons/uncommons.

Those are just different types of ideas/rules within the modified league sets of cards.

 

[yoshi1001]

I've actually been testing out the following format:

“Mini-Modified”
Rules:
40-Card Deck
Limit of 3 of each card (except basic energy)
4-Prize Game
3 Bench Spots
Next-Destinies on
No basic Pokémon over 90 HP (evolved Pokémon not limited)
No Ace Specs

The following cards are not allowed:
Pokémon Catcher
Hypnotoxic Laser
Enhanced Hammer
Professor Juniper
N
Tropical Beach
Champions Festival (Yes, I’m aware this card is worthless since you only have 3 bench spots.)

The basic goals were:

-Provide an experience that was substantially different than standard modified.
-Be able to build a deck using relatively inexpensive cards so it can be built with spare cards and not take away from tournament decks.
-Limit the power of bench sitters (as a counterbalance to no Catcher).

So far I've built a Garchomp/Altaria and a Ninetales/Amoongus deck (building at least two decks is really critical so you can test with people who've never tried the format). I'm trying to think of something to pair with Garbodor. In any case, the results seem pretty good-this is the most I've enjoyed playing in a long time.

 

[Tim17]

So I want to start a thread that accumulates all different ideas for alternative formats, playing league modified gets boring after a while, that's why not everybody takes the time to go to leagues every week anymore.

1) does anyone in your league try the "challenges" presented on the point cards?

2) school could be a reason why your league has suffered attendance.....

that aside, we've tried once in the past to do a mutant format. The basis here is that if the type matches [like grass] then you can evolve into it. A proper example would be Bulbasaur evolving into Yanmega. The Yanmega can then evolve into Serperior. The issue we had was the lack of follow up on it [both in attendance and people willing to try it]

 

[Otaku]

I've done some testing trying to find the most cards I could allow for Base Set through Fossil while still enjoying decent deck diversity. Probably not a good match for this idea because most probably won't have the older cards, but I found that just cutting Energy Removal and Super Energy Removal left the three or four real decks (Haymaker, Rain Dance, Toxic Gas, and Do The Wave) still on top, but the differences between them shrank, while several other decks became viable.

A self-imposed "Ban List", while scary to some, can open up quite a few options with the current cards... in theory (I haven't exactly had time to test this idea =P). My other suggestion would be, if enough players have access to older cards, revisit older formats.