Pokémon TCG: Sword and Shield—Brilliant Stars

Are Pokémon-EX ruining the game?

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djpmart

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This is something that's been bugging me a bit pretty much since Next Destinies was released, and more so since Legendary Treasures. I feel like the game has changed drastically with these new Pokémon. Granted, the idea of EX isn't new; they existed entirely throughout the Third Generation of cards. However, they were different; focusing more on evolution, heavy attacks, and time to set up. The Idea of Pokémon-EX isn't bad. It promotes collections with Ultra Rare varieties, generating appeal to the younger crowd, and ultimately pushes product to keep the game running. I believe it's draining the fun out of casual and competitive play.

One of the unique mechanics of the Pokémon Trading Card Game is the aspect of evolution. Having a single creature become more powerful over time is not something that other major TCG's and CCG's have currently. Buying time, building up energies, doing quick attacks, playing Trainer cards, all of that, to get your amazing Swampert or Pidgeot out and doing heavy attacks creates excitement. They're cool. They're big. They don't put up with sass.

During the first introduction of the new Pokémon-EX, they drastically changed the competitive scene. We got Mewtwo-EX in the first wave, which is arguably the best Pokémon-EX ever printed. Competitive decks revolved around this one single card. Obviously, powerful decks will consist of powerful cards, but it created a slight disparity, being that this card was so good, that it's best counter was itself. Since Mewtwo-EX could also be played in every single deck, it was nonsense if you entered a tournament without Mewtwo-EX.

Now, even throughout the lifespan of the Fifth Generation of cards, things were still a mix of Evolutions and EX's. A powerful deck consisting of Empoleon, Milktank, and Dusknoir even made it to the World Championships. Since then, however, even utility Stage 2 Pokémon have simply vanished from competitve play. Why? Because EX's are just better. They're Basic Pokémon, can be played instantly, you can start with them, have high HP, and potentially heavy attacks and/or disruption. Even Stage 1 Pokémon are generally used for utility purposes only, like Phantom Forces's Bronzong and XY's Aromatisse.

An influx of Pyroar usage was seen, because it was a consistent way of stopping EX Pokémon from dominating everything, along with "Safeguarders", like Suicune and Sigilyph. Even so, EX's were given tools to nullify even these Pokémon, like Genesect's Red Signal, and the Supporter Lysandre. With all of these tools for EX's, Stage 2's are virtually unplayable.

Every set of Pokémon releases some neat, and sometimes unique, Pokémon that have a lot of potential. Examples are XY Greninja, Delphox, Primal Clash's Swampert, Rhyperior, and many others, but will most likely fail to see play, because even with Rare Candy, it's just not enough. Granted, every card set needs cards that shine to a broad range of people, like casual players, collectors, and just even having filler cards is needed, to help keep things fresh, and adding value to rarer cards. However, we are reaching the point to where if you are not running mostly EX Pokémon in your deck, you're losing.

This is not meant to come off as looking into the nostalgic days of Rain Dance Blastoise, or Fire Spin Charizard. This is more to highlight a problem that can cause stagnation to a unique aspect of this card game that made it unique to all others. If I wanted to just slap down big creatures and win games, I'd rather play Yu-Gi-Oh.
 
One key difference between 5th gen EXes and 3rd gen EXes is that in 3rd gen a number of support cards were prohibited (on the card) from being used in conjunction with EXes. By comparison, in 5th gen EXes had pretty much everything at their disposal.
 
This is exactly what I think, yes the Ex cards are making it not fun to play.
In fact I am seriously thinking about just giving away all my cards to my local league.

This is the 2nd time the game has made me consider quitting, the other was during Platinum with the SP cards.
Which were just as annoying/powerful, and there was not much to counter them.

I actually kind of did give up (mostly due to lack of $) during the HeartGold/SoulSilver stuff.
 
djpmart said:
Why? Because EX's are just better.
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No, it's because our current standard format provides little to no stage 2 support and lots of stage 2 hate cards.

Level Ball and Tropical Beach were essential for stage 2 decks, both rotated without any replacement. There definitely should have been one in Legendary Treasures. In addition, cards like Seismitoad-EX can block any Rare Candy based setup, and many Pokémon are able to easily OHKO prevolutions from T1 on.

There is no problem in keeping Pokémon-EX, as long as support for evolutions will come back. What the game needs is one or more of the following.

a) Revert of the Rare Candy rule to what it was in generation 4. With the player going first being no longer able to attack T1, there is absolutely no point in blocking Rare Candy T1 or delaying the evolution. This rule has been put in place to stop the likes of Kingdra and Machamp, but with basic Pokémon becoming more powerful at the same time, it was pretty obsolete since its first days.
b) Reprint of or similar card to Broken Time Space. This could make stage 2 decks more competitive, as they are able to build up during trainer lock can be ready faster.
c) Similar card to Spiritomb AR. This was one of the best setup Pokémon ever printed, giving stage 2 decks the time they need to set up. Although the mechanics would have to be reworked to prevent abuse by the likes of Donphan, a card like this could really any help evolution and setup decks.
d) More powerful consistancy cards. While cards with battlefield strenght are power creeping very fast (see Pokémon-EX, Muscle Band), any cards providing consistancy actually get weaker. A good example is that we now have Shauna instead of PONT. You can also try to compare Revive (which even has been rotated by now) with Pokémon Rescue or even Pokémon Retrieval. I don't see any reason for this, since consistancy means that games are more often decided by actual plays, not by draw. Back in the old days, we also got some reliable staple Pokémon to boost consistancy, like Pidgeot, Claydol or Uxie. Today we have to stack our deck with 10+ draw supporters and therefore no space for evolution lines. For the last 2 years, the only viable stage 2 mainhitters were those that needed 1 energy or less to do something. The last deck focused around a stage 2 deck that needed more than 1 energy to attack was Gothitelle/Reuniclus more than 2 years ago. Just a matter of deck space.
e) Print better prevolutions. Why do basic Pokémon that can't evolve have like 100+ HP and those that can evolve only 60? Most of the prevolutions can't even do anything by themselves. Looking back at Trapinch SW, which got two useful, but balanced attacks, I'm really disappointed from almost anything we got now. They should at least have Omega Barrier or something.
 
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Solid points that I would have liked to make. Thank you for that. One of the more fun decks I had built was DRX Garchomp a while back, and that had some decent support with DRX Gabite's Dragon Call. We get close to good enough support, like Training Center, but we still have 40-60HP Basics that are just begging to be Lysandre'd and Hammerhead for KO. WHile Power Creep is a thing, and the numbers aren't exactly ridiculous, but it's just the whole shifting to non-evolution basics getting all of the power creep, while the evolutions just remain a bit weak.

I'd be more happy with Pokémon-EX just being utility based. Jirachi-EX is a fun card to use. Darkrai-EX's Ability is a good thing, along with Keldeo-EX. If they become more utility-based, maybe that could promote more usage of Evolutions. Having the old Uxie's Power on an EX currently would be nice.
 
I agree they are making the game bad. The biggest offender of this IMP is the Black and White sets and the lack of good rotations. I was hoping XY would change things up but, it ends up being extended BW. XY even reprints one of the best attacks in the game with the support of darkness behind it. I don't mind the new EX Pokemon but some are just too good. Some are made better through support of broken stage 1 and 2 Pokemon. Current stage 2 Pokemon have to have really good abilities AND attack cost that dont cost more than 1 energy or a DCE. Running stage 25 Pokemon often means you're also at a deck building disadvantage since your opponent can run 11+ more cards than you. That means you dont have laser, switches and other cards your opponent will have against you. You also have to run heavy pokemon lines which means more dead draws.

ShadowGuard said:
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The problem with going back to old rare candy and older support heavy cards is EX Pokemon are too powerful. Do you really want to see Yveltal EX with Dusknoir? These big basic use these cards much better than normal stage 2 or even weaker EX Pokemon. Even with good stage 2 support, the big basics have Garbodor, which makes them better. What we need are the old school hard counters like Battle Tower. Something to target the problem cards, since not all attacking Pokemon EX are bad for the meta.
 
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One other thing that I think should happen is that instead of making cards like Memory Berry, Celebi EX, and Shrine of Memories they should just make being able to use pre-evolution's attacks a game rule. Most of the time you wouldn't want to, but it would give evolutions a slight edge in some cases.
 
yoshi1001 said:
One other thing that I think should happen is that instead of making cards like Memory Berry, Celebi EX, and Shrine of Memories they should just make being able to use pre-evolution's attacks a game rule. Most of the time you wouldn't want to, but it would give evolutions a slight edge in some cases.
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Thats a really good idea.
 
vaporeon said:
What we need are the old school hard counters like Battle Tower. Something to target the problem cards, since not all attacking Pokemon EX are bad for the meta.
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Desert Ruins is probably the only thing that would hurt EX really hard without touching evolutions. It even fits the ORAS theme. However this would be an extreme change for the meta and we don't have a "beta test" enviroment for the Pokémon TCG yet.

yoshi1001 said:
One other thing that I think should happen is that instead of making cards like Memory Berry, Celebi EX, and Shrine of Memories they should just make being able to use pre-evolution's attacks a game rule. Most of the time you wouldn't want to, but it would give evolutions a slight edge in some cases.
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I'd rather see pre-evolutions who have consistantly useful attacks before that change would make sense.
 
ShadowGuard said:
Desert Ruins is probably the only thing that would hurt EX really hard without touching evolutions. It even fits the ORAS theme. However this would be an extreme change for the meta and we don't have a "beta test" enviroment for the Pokémon TCG yet.
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In order for Desert Ruins to work, it would have to to deal 20 or 30 damage in between turns but even at 10 between turns, which I think would still work, all it would do is add to the damage EX Pokemon can do. We would need a card that can hard counter the problem cards. While EX Pokemon are the biggest offenders, there are evolved Pokemon that contribute to the issue.

I would love to sit in the testing room for some of these cards though. I would prevent and change a lot of them from coming out.
 
Are Pokémon-EX ruining the game? No, though I'm not sure about the-powers-that-be and their current direction with the game; that might be ruining it. Before we had them, we had the same kind of broken cards, its just they weren't Pokémon-EX. The original Zekrom once dominated the format. Before them it was "Pokémon Prime". Even the period of the game I think was the best and most balanced was like a video game that had a lot of bad code but had been patched to make it functional; it works for a while but eventually you've got too many patches and a whole new set of problems... possibly on top of the old.

Evolution is an iconic mechanic in this game... but if it requires "help" (like Rare Candy) then its really being done wrong.

Steam-lined game play that avoids rules that only apply at a certain time are as well; instead of fixing the real problem (overly fast, overly powerful and reliable attackers) lost the "set-up and see" aspect of the game for a speed-bump instead of actual paced, potentially nuanced game play.

So again, the Pokémon-EX aren't the problem; there are plenty that have no hope when competing against the best regular big, Basic Pokémon and Evolutions. Instead we need the final Stages of Evolution to be balanced against each other, which means that they should look a lot alike as you balance out the extra time and resources of being an Evolution by making the lower Stages better. You don't make big, Basic Pokémon have less HP or do less damage, you make sure that big, Basic Pokémon aren't "Supermon" that can cover all the bases of a deck; if its a great main attacker, it should be a lousy opener. Until the real "maximum safe damage" for early game can be deduced, the designers just need to stop designing cards that can attack for damage (probably a few other effects) on a player's first turn (yeah, both players). That gives everyone time to build without adding a rule to remember (for the player's; the design team are professionals, after all).

Balancing going first versus going second comes from following the above design guidelines, patiently waiting for the current stuff to rotate and then stream lining the Evolution rules; make it so that you can only manually Evolve a Pokémon that was in play during your opponent's last turn. That means Player 1 can't Evolve on his first turn, but player 2 can. Yes, that means that Stage 1 Pokémon also need to avoid having good, damaging attacks they can access that turn.

It is a lot of stuff, and I've tried to simplify it (for one thing, the box is doing this weird thing where I'll be typing and suddenly the cursor jumps back several lines... its always been a problem for me on this site).
 
It would be nice to see a lot more evolution played, that's for sure. And since they are the focal point of the meta, it seems that games are a lot shorter than they used to be (A blessing to TO's I'm sure).
 
I think a better way to shorten the game would have been to convert to a 4-prize structure with 40-card decks (also reducing the limit of copies of a card to 3-this was more or less a core idea behind my "mini-modified" format). Technically, you would have less space for evolutions as well, but I still think it would have worked out better than EXes.
 
yoshi1001 said:
I think a better way to shorten the game would have been to convert to a 4-prize structure with 40-card decks (also reducing the limit of copies of a card to 3-this was more or less a core idea behind my "mini-modified" format). Technically, you would have less space for evolutions as well, but I still think it would have worked out better than EXes.
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What... exactly... would this accomplish? Besides making Juniper hilariously overpowered, that is.
 
Tagrineth said:
What... exactly... would this accomplish? Besides making Juniper hilariously overpowered, that is.
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I guess I should have linked to the blog post I made about my format a while back to give you a rough idea of how different I think the format should have been. In my alternate-universe gen 5, Juniper would likely not exist as a card.
 
with the increase in power of legendaries (reshiram, zekrom) and Ex I think the basic part of evo lines need a buff, as an example if you look at the starter poke basics for BW, XY and Primal clash we see usually at least one that has the standard 1 energy 10 dam, 2 energy 20 dam, and its been that way more or less sense base set. so how to go about buffing that, first bring back zero energy attacks and make them do 10 then make the one energy do 20 and the 2 energy do 30 with adjustments for added effects.

another thing to do to help evos would be to bring back poke with attacks like Spiritomb arceus or the technical machine with the evolutor attack, more tools that give extra attacks in general would be good too, maybe put restrictions on them so only evolved poke can use them
 
I think if we changed the rare candy ruling to being able to auto evolve via rare candy, the game would be much more balanced. a turn 2 stage 2 attacker with 140-160hp can compete with an EX card. the game frame designers for some reason are stubborn.
 
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