Pokémon TCG: Sword and Shield—Brilliant Stars

Junk Arm plain english ruling?

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JUNK ARM - Discard 2 cards from your hand. Search your discard pile for a Trainer card, show it to your opponent, and put it into your hand. you can't choose Junk Arm with the effect of this card.
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Discussion of proper rulings as worded in plain english. Absent of rulings, majority of Pokemon cards can be figured out by reading the card. I am somewhat frustrated that the rules teams hasn't been able to get answers back on this. (I am sure the Rules team are frustrated also)

Anyhow, going back to my READ THE FREAKING CARD (RTFC) principle.

SENTENCE 1 /ACTION 1 Discard 2 cards from your hand. <PERIOD>
SENTENCE 2 /ACTION 2 Search your discard pile for a Trainer card, show it to your opponent, and put it into your hand,...
SENTENCE 2 /QUALIFIER ... you can't choose Junk Arm with the effect of this card.

Can you discard without trainers in your discard pile?
[DEL]Yes, this is the first action listed in the text, and is a separate statement from Action 2. ALA Search your deck is an action for search cards. There is no qualifier like Regi-Rock needing Fighting Energy in the discard pile already, where as Regice has no qualifier. Playing card for no effect doesn't apply because discarding is an effect, just like we are allowed to use REGICE, discarding. There is no QUALIFIER to the first part of this effect, which is separated by a sentence. [/DEL] (Note per No Poke, the Japanese translation indicates that there would need to be a trainer card in discard pile)

Can you take a trainer card you just discarded out of discard pile?
Yes, there is no qualifier other than you can't choose Junk Arm with this effect. The first action of discarding is also a seperate action, thus the discard pile would contain the discarded trainer.

Can you choose to take a different Junk Arm that is already in your discard pile?
NO, there is qualifier that says you can't choose Junk Arm with this effect of this card. Assumed universal. It would have been clearer if there had been the word "a" in front of Junk Arm.

Can you discard a different Junk Arm, for any of your cards to discard?
[DEL]NO, there is qualifier that says you can't choose Junk Arm with this effect of this card. Assumed universal applies to the selection of card to retrieve and cards to discard.[/DEL] Per my local head judge ruling, you CAN discard Junk Arm.

Again, these are not my, I HOPE THE RULING WILL BE, but what are we to do given the wording on the card. Can someone please confirm/correct that these would be your rulings on these questions on Junk Arm as WORDED? I just haven't seen any advisement on this yet. Judges, please feel free to correct me. I am applying the RTFC approach UNTIL rulings are released.

I suggest no one quote my interpretation of this until we start to get a consensus on this issue, and as always, Compendium is law, absent that it is whatever the head judge at the event chooses to rule is law.
 
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If only English text was LAW .

There is a translation of a JP FAQ on pokebeach. Which if it becomes the English ruling as might be expected requires a trainer to be in the discard pile prior to the use of Junk Arm. This is what we have not yet been told officially...
Q: Can I use the Trainer card “Junk Arm” when I have no Trainer cards in my discard pile?
A: No, you can’t.
​
Currently there is no official ruling on Junk Arm

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EDIT: personal opinion follows. Judges and players are in an awkward position: the 'beach translation of a JP FAQ exists yet the English card would have you expect that you do not require a trainer to be present in the discard prior to the use of Junk Arm. To add further complication the JP FAQ doesn't quite go far enough in that the case where Junk Arm is the only trainer in the discard is not explicitly covered by the FAQ: maybe it is obvioius in the original Japanese language, I don't know. If the pokebeach translation did not exist then I expect that we would have a more consistent (even if incorrect) handling of Junk Arm. That isn't pokebeach's problem and I would not advocate that they should not translate JP FAQs.

There is a thread on the official forums where staff are trying to get to a consensus so that travelling players don't experience alternate rulings at each event they attend. Even if staff can't prevent the problem completely there are efforts in the background to minimise the problems that playing a translated game causes.
 
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I completely agree with that interpretation of the card, even if it's a little weird.

tl;dr: You can play Junk Arm without trainers in the discard. You may get a trainer you discard with the first effect. You cannot discard Junk Arm, nor can you get it back.
 
You cannot play Junk Arm without trainers in the discard pile. My local PTO said this was the current ruling, and he's a reliable source.

He also told me that you could take a trainer that you discarded, but he just said that this is how he would rule it, and he's not certain if it's official.
 
Thing is though, until we get an official ruling? I too would rule it "You CAN play without trainers in your discard pile by virtue of sharing its wording with Regice/Registeel"
 
As far as I know (and I could be wrong), it's not that there's not an official ruling, but that they're waiting for complete confirmation, and that for know, it should be ruled that you can't use a Junk Arm without a trainer in the pile.

I also believe that the Regice/Registeel comparison is invalid, as Powers aren't treated the same as Trainers.
 
kwisdumb said:
I also believe that the Regice/Registeel comparison is invalid, as Powers aren't treated the same as Trainers.
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Quoted for truth. Powers can be completed as much as possible whereas trainers generally require you to fulfill all of the conditions in order to use it.
 
^ That's true, can't you declare Cosmic Power when you have no cards in hand or deck?
 
Is it Pokemon or another card game that says that you have to have a valid target to use a card? Because if so, if there's no target, you can't play the card in the first place to get the discard effect. You would, in essence, be able to just discard 3 cards for no reason. The discard pile is public knowledge, therefore you shouldn't be able to play a card that targets something residing there if it's simply not there.

I could see the argument of discarding a trainer to pull the trainer, but it still presents the problem that you can't play the card if there's no valid target. The discarding would happen before the picking, true, but you can't pick something that wasn't there prior to the card getting discarded.

Second... The wording for Junk Arm doesn't indicate that it's a universal ban on using Junk Arm to fulfill its requirements. Only that you can't use Junk Arm to pick up Junk Arm. I couldn't tell you for sure if it were "the same junk arm" or "any junk arm" as the target, but you should be able to discard junk arm for sure.

Last, Kayle... lol@ your tl;dr was longer then your post.
 
Today at my BR they ruled there must be a trainer in your discard pile, but it can be paid with Junk Arm's dicarding. But that was just the ruling there so I dunno if it means anything. I don't think it ever came up.
 
Yeah, I was told today it goes something like this.

I have no trainers in my discard pile at begining of turn. Right away, I junk arm and pitch an SSU and something else. If I do that, I can pick up the SSU. But you can't use junk arm if you don't pitch a trainer to at least pick up
 
kwisdumb said:
As far as I know (and I could be wrong), it's not that there's not an official ruling, but that they're waiting for complete confirmation, and that for know, it should be ruled that you can't use a Junk Arm without a trainer in the pile.
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There is no such thing as there being a semi official ruling that's waiting for confirmation.
Until we get the official ruling, there is only opinion.
That opinion may be from rules team members and therefore have a high likelihood of being correct, but it's not official until it is official.
 
My thoughts would be that similar to situations like being unable to play Level Max on a pokemon that cannot possibly level up, you can't play Junk Arm if, at the time you play it, the card would effectively "do nothing". Thus, when you play the card, there are no Trainers in your discard pile, so it would "do nothing".

Of course, it wouldn't actually do nothing but I look at it from a cost vs. effect perspective.... however Pokemon doesn't technically have "costs" on Trainers. So I dunno.
 
PokePop said:
There is no such thing as there being a semi official ruling that's waiting for confirmation.
Until we get the official ruling, there is only opinion.
That opinion may be from rules team members and therefore have a high likelihood of being correct, but it's not official until it is official.
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Doesn't this by default mean that you can play Junk Arm withoout any Trainers in your discard so long as you discard and then recover a Trainer:

PokePop said:
You can get one of the cards you just discarded if you want.
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Not at all.
A ruling from 2000 means nothing.
WotC allowed cards to be played for no effect when they ran the game.

That changed when PUI took over in 2003 and we got a lot closer to playing everything as it is played in Japan.
 
Guys i find too much argument about the effect of this card why cant we just follow the japanese ruling? just out of curiosity was there any ruling that we were on the opposite/different with the japanese rulings?

too much over analysis of things i believe that if we stop and think what the real purpose of the card is then we can make a ruling

The cards purpose is to exchange 2 cards in your hand for 1 trainer in the discard pile. If there was no trainer in the discard pile (prior to discarding 2 cards as requirement/payment) then there would be no exchange that would occur due to the fact that we cannot use cards that has no effect.

@ Pokepop
wouldnt it be better if we had tentative ruling on cases like this? wouldnt it be a lot easier to update rulings than have no rulings for the meantime what if two different CCs rule differently woudnt that be unfair?
 
The rules team doesn't do tentative.

'beach translations are NOT OFFICIAL. This isn't about accuracy it is about where they come from. Official rulings come from POP.

Our game is governed by POP.

Declaring that the purpose of Junk Arm is to exchange cards is OPINION.
 
The Rules Team (Team Compendium, specifically) is entrusted by Pokemon Organized Play to give official rulings because we have proven over the years that we will act with caution and with respect for the trust that they place in us.

I have lots of opinions on rulings that we haven't gotten official responses to and quite often those opinions are strong.

However, whenever we encounter a new effect or interaction that we haven't seen before and that isn't easily transposed from other existing rulings, we demur to Pokemon R&D to make the call on what the ruling should be.

Sometimes this means that we go without an official ruling longer than we would like, but overall it serves the community better.

If Pokemon ever felt that we were making up rulings on the fly without regard for their primacy, they would be right to strip the function from us and then ALL official rulings would take a lot longer to get out to the community.

I think it's a fair trade off for the few issues that pop up with the arrangement.
 
Yeah...I've been waiting for this for a while. I can't wait until we get an official ruling on Junk Arm. I would think you can't play the card because your discard pile is public knowledge and you don't meet the requirements of grabbing a trainer out of the discard but at the same time it doesn't have the wording like the aformentioned Regirock.(Even though powers really don't compare in this situation). And also in pokemon we have the good ol' mantra "Do as much as you can".

Yeah...can't wait for you guys to get back to us on this officially. Thanks.
 
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