I've been around since Base Set. Don't you know? All Magic players are 40 year old virgins! :wink:
(Actually, describing myself as a Magic player is a misnomer. One demographic difference between Pokemon and Magic players I've noticed is that Magic players have usually played a lot of different TCGs.)
Funny, I've noticed most older
TCG Players play multiple games. Doesn't matter what they started with, they eventually pick up another. Pokemon wa the first TCG I took seriously (I made a small effort at Overpower, but I was in sixth grade and all I remember now is after reading the rules book I still didn't know how to play :lol
. I then picked up Yu-Gi-Oh, Mega Man, and Duel Masters. If you can afford it, I recommend playing multiple games because it gives you a better sense of each games' strengths and weaknesses.
Drawing and search are not novel game mechanics. Magic has draw and Magic has search.
My post was long and rambling, so I can understand how you got that out of it, but now that I am directly responding,
please understand that is not what I said.
I'll quote myself, with emphasis added to the parts that did not stand out enough for you to catch:
Complaining Pokemon lacks Creature removal is like complaining Magic lacks affordable draw/search cards.
So maybe affordable didn't convey my point. I wasn't talking about the value of cards expressed in currency. I should have said something along the lines of "ample" or "abundant". Magic has draw and search effects, but it will of course have a mana cost like pretty much everything else in the game and will often be focused on a specific mana "color". Contrast that with Pokemon where of course there is no mana cost, but to the point where draw and search cards are usually Supporters or Trainers that any deck may play. Of course some formats likely have been different, but you'll have to let me know since I never actually followed the game.
Bounce, counter, and destroy are completely absent from Pokemon.
No, they are not. Bounce is rare but flat out exists in the world of Pokemon. Probably the most famous example would be
Ancient Technical Machine [Stone]. This card was at least a loose (if not true) staple during the time it was legal, because it was inexpensive mass bounce. The earliest bounce card I am aware of is
Pidgeot, dating all the way back to the first expansion set of
Jungle! As for right now,
Seeker is quite potent, quite popular, and indeed quite "bouncy".
Now being unfamiliar with Magic, I am assuming by "counter" you don't just mean a counter-strategy (which if course Pokemon has) or a card designed to balance out another card (again, Pokemon has long had this), but a card designed to negate an opponent's card or action on your opponent's turn.
The earliest counter effect I can find is
Slowking of
Neo Genesis fame, a card that came out just over 10 years ago! I did not count effects that required an action to set them up (such as Crosscounter on
Rocket's Hitmonchan, released two sets earlier in
Gym Heroes), or effects that were not optional like
Chaos Gym (released one set earlier in
Gym Challenge). Plus some such effects didn't negate anything, so again "counter" might be too generous a term.
Slowking was blatantly a counter effect: whenever your opponent played a Trainer, you had the option of activating Mind Games, the Pokemon Power of
Slowking. If you chose to, you flipped a coin. It the result was "tails", your opponent was able to play that Trainer's effect resolved as normal, but if you got "heads", the effects of the Trainer "did nothing" and your opponent was forced to topdeck it. Later rulings confirmed costs (such as discarding two cards for
Computer Search) were paid before the check for Mind Games occurred.
Later examples include
Alakazam from
Mysterious Treasures and its Power Cancel and the most recent,
Team Galactic's Invention G-103 Power Spray.So what about removal?
Base Set gave us
Energy Removal and
Super Energy Removal. The latest example would be
Lost Remover. One can reasonably argue any effects that place damage counters (especially if it does not require attacking) is in essence a representative of both burn and monster removal in other TCGs, since your "creatures" (Pokemon) also represent your "Life" (in the form of your opponent taking a Prize for a KO and winning when they have taken six Prizes).
Keep in mind, all these mechanics have proven either incredibly potent or horribly weak in the game of Pokemon, because adapting them to the basic mechanics of Pokemon requires just that: adapting. It is like translating text from one language to another: some things convert directly, but sometimes you must be indirect because a transliteration will not convey the idea of the original language to the new.
Removal effects are quite potent in Pokemon. That is really an understatement: there are few TCGs where such effects are not potent, but in Pokemon any removal effect has the added potential of being a game winning effect. Not through further play, but I mean
literally winning the game from the effect being played. So destruction and bounce can't be as effective as in other games, because the rewards are greater here. Negation is a separate issue, and is lacking because the game's designers wish to keep it accessible to younger players. While somewhat regrettable, from Yu-Gi-Oh, Duel Masters, and Mega Man I have learned that resolving effects tends to create much complexity for little advancement (or elevation) in the strategy of a game. A game will be more advanced for having it, but the painful complexity it adds is disproportionately high.
The criticism of Pokemon is to another level because it is lacking in mechanics. How does the Attack/Damage system make up for the mechanics lost?
Try playing with the full rules and not just the beginner rules that are meant to simplify things. The beginner rules have you ignore the effects of attacks. Even in our current format, in a real tournament the effects of attacks will matter quite a bit. A Pokemon may seem like a no-effect creature at a glance because it lacks an Ability, but it's attacks make it behave like a creature with an effect triggered by attacking in a game like Magic. Plus most Pokemon have multiple attacks, so even if both attacks are straight-forward, you'd need an effect in Magic to obtain a similar result.
All this is before Abilities. All this is before Trainers.
Furthermore, I did not bring up Pokemon's draw or search as a positive aspect of the game. It isn't. As I've explained, there is a trainer/attack disparity so the value of a Trainer drawn is greatly disproportionate relative to that of an Energy. Drawing an excessive number of cards at a time exposes the game significantly to this problem and other flaws such as easy donks.
You must understand that this is a difference of opinion. Most players would argue that the HP and damage-to-energy outputs of recent Pokemon are simply too high. Have you play-tested without the normal draw/search of Pokemon? I haven't intentionally, but have experienced it "accidentally" all those games where both mine and my opponent's decks have failed to set-up. Pokemon is a much, much more lopsided game when you gut its draw/search power. It was very clearly designed for it. That is why creatures have dedicated, personal mana pools. You do not seem to grasp this.
Ultimately if you do convince me you understand but merely disagree, realize
you merely disagree. You have much work required to show your opinion is founded upon facts and not just personal preference. My own experience means that I find games that lack something approaching Pokemon's level of draw power to feel artificially slow, like the designers couldn't figure out that final trick to balancing things out. This is extra true of games that require you "discard down" your hand to some arbitrary cap at some point during your turn.
I will end by making a request: please double check your facts more thoroughly. If you've been playing this game since the beginning,
none of the cards I mentioned should have been a surprise. Only if you dabbled in the Base Set and avoided other players the entire time (or simply ignored the game entirely) until recently does your ignorance make sense, and even then it tells me I might want to simply be quiet and let you discredit yourself.
