Calling all Judges and Professors: R&S Chansey ex

[Prof. Douglas Zuver]

To all my Professor Friends,

I found another problem to deal with.
This one is much easier, I think.

Thanks for any response in the matter and
in the last post as well, your answers will be
put to use in an upcoming tournament.

We seem to be in a transition period where
the Professors will have to debate the rules
amoung ourselves and apply what we know.

Chansey ex (Ruby and Sapphire card # 96)

Healing Egg
Remove 2 damage counters (1 if there is only 1)
from each of your Pokemon. Remove no damage
counters from Chansey ex.

Double-edge 80
Chansey ex does 60 damage to itself.

Things are fine if we only have one Chansey ex on
the table. Healing Egg heals everyone but the active
Chansey ex.

But where there is one Chansey ex, there is bound to
be another in the deck somewhere.
And sooner or later somebody will put the hurt Chansey ex
on the bench, and move a new one out front and use
Healing Egg. Then the opponent will raise their hand,
call Doug over and say "Chansey ex can't heal Chansey ex."

(At that point Doug will roll his eyes and ask for a Lava Cookie)

Anyway, there are at least two ways to look at this:

First, that the words Chansey ex is the self referencing rule,
and it would have been better written as:

Healing Egg
Remove 2 damage counters (1 if there is only 1)
from each of your Pokemon. Remove no damage
counters from THIS Chansey ex.

.........................................

Second, that Chansey ex simply is unsocial and cannot
heal ANY Chansey ex on the table.

Thanks,
Doug

PS I like to use this Chansey with Gardevoir's
Poke-Power "Psy Shadow"

[PokePop]

This definately falls under the self referencing rule.
If it meant any Chansey EX, it would include an article like "a" or "any". By just saying "Chansey EX", it means the card itself.

It would have been a good opportunity for Pokemon USA to change the phrasing to be like the Japanese where they actually do say "this Pokemon".

[ukpokemonpro]

Gotta agree with PokePop it's self referencing (this Pokemon) and therefore 2 or more would mean one can heal the other(s) but not itself.

[dkates]

In that case, they could have saved space by writing it as, "Remove 2 damage counters (1 if there is only one) from each of your other Pokemon." Just another example of wording that could have been much simpler.

[Noah121]

I agree that this falls under the "Self-Reference Rule". This is a little different, since this can cause confusion on whether it means only the user or all "Chansey ex". However, the attack could be worded like so if it was meant to not heal ANY Chansey ex:
"Remove 2 damage counters from all your Pokémon in play not named "Chansey ex"."

Here is how I think it should be:
"Remove 2 damage counters from each of your Pokémon in play other than the Pokémon that used this attack." (This takes care of the Metronome/Copy problems too!)