Pokémon TCG: Sword and Shield—Brilliant Stars

Vintage!

T

The Oldies (a.k.a BJFR)

New Member
Well, I say all of the old cards on your shelf from back in the day need to see some sunshine, so I think the people who organize the Poke'mon tournaments should have a format in which only the old cards can be used (excluding EX series).
 
They do. Its called Unlimited, all cards are legal with the exception on Ancient Mew, and World Champion deck cards. However the combos of old and new cards are so broken, that many games either last less than 5 turns, or take over an hour. They are considered legitimate tournaments, but they do nothing to improve your rank, so most people simply don't bother anymore. They are really fun, so if you are interested in playing Unlimited tournament style, then run your own. It'll be really fun.

Sneasel- 0-140 damage T2
Slowking- Coin flip for opponents trainers, tails it doesn't work. Power is stackable
Aerodactyl/ATM Rock- Need I say more?
Baby Power Cleffa- All attacks require coin flips to use, including Collect (yes it comes up sometimes)
Energy Removal- DUH
Super Energy Removal/Recycle Energy- 2 energy go away for no cost
Computer Search/Item Finder- you have access to nearly every card, with the exception of prizes
Vileplume EX- Opponents can't use non-supporters, at all. Pokebody, its hard to deal with.


My only advice, don't try to play modified against this format.
 
They need to make sanctioned "block" tournaments, e.g. you can only play with Base/Jungle/Fossil/Rocket or something to that effect, or only with Neo sets.

You also forgot to mention the most powerful card printed in Pokémon: Professor Oak. No explanation is required for him. Oak is broke.
 
As said, there is Unlimited format where all cards printed aside from Ancient Mew and cards with a different back compared to official cards are usable. POP does not usually sanction official Unlimited tourneys though as it promotes "bad business" and it is a stale format, with fewer players making any significant change to the metagame. Once you solve those two problems (which I came up with a number of solutions...), then official Unlimited tourneys might be possible. :thumb:

IMO, "block" format is not what I exactly call effective. Broken cards will stay broken, no matter what format they are in. Sneasal and Slowking were banned during the Modified format was Neo1-on so how exactly would a "Neo block" format would work? Personally, I believe a ban/restriction list much like Yu-Gi-Oh would be much better as a power balancer. Now, before anyone complains about the flaws of Yu-Gi-Oh, I do not believe many cards deserve to be banned in Pokemon (only cards that are truly broken no matter the situation, such as DCE since all Pokemon can use it, including basics, EXs, and retreating...) but rather more on the restricted side. After all, if there was so many banned cards, then it would not be really Unlimited anymore... ;)
 
Marril said:
They need to make sanctioned "block" tournaments, e.g. you can only play with Base/Jungle/Fossil/Rocket or something to that effect, or only with Neo sets.

You also forgot to mention the most powerful card printed in Pokémon: Professor Oak. No explanation is required for him. Oak is broke.
Click to expand...

Yes and yes (actually, Oak should really be banned, or at least restricted - what a ridiculous card...). Only problem is that Pokemon isn't designed in blocks unlike M:TG, so unless the blocks are fairly large (~5 sets), it wouldn't really be very interesting.
 
Base Block (Base through Gym 2) = 7 sets, 1 reprint
Neo Block (Genesis through either Destiny or LC) = 4 sets, 1 reprint?
E-Block (LC or Expedition through Aquapolis) = 3 HUGE sets (each E-card set has over 150 cards), 1 reprint?
RS-Block (RS through HL) = 5 sets
RG-Block (RG through UF) = 5 sets
DS-Block (DS through PK) = 6 sets
DP-Block (DP through whenever)

Granted, without Core Sets, these are kinda arbitrary. The first 3 are based around card design changes. The EX series is MASSIVE, and spans over 3 years of sets. The distinctions I chose are kinda arbitrary, but leave EX series split up roughly evenly.
 
Block style playing works when the sets are designed and released in those blocks. Without them, the arbitrary lines we can draw will not be very good at splitting sets apart.

Oak is broken, so is ER, SER, DCE, Sneasel, Slowking, Vileplume EX, Goop gas attack, and the list goes on.

A non-sanctioned tournament at the local level would be awesome though, our league was planning a modified format tournament with only 1 deck condition. No Rare Candy. So if your league ran a Base-Rocket tournament, it would be a blast for all the older players that still have their cards.

One way of utilizing the old cards is 8-player pods where all the players use the same starter deck against each other. That was really fun actually. My league leaders ran a booster draft at a convention where we all got 6 packs from 6 different sets. There was no set rule on which order you had to open them in.

Skill and luck were very important. It was the most oddball deck I have ever built. It was awesome.
 
ER itself isn't broken. It's the metagame that makes it broken. Back in the day, it was more of an annoyance than something that truly ruined your fun. When combined with SER, I admit it was a hefty deck archetype, but there were distinct decks that could play around it—namely, a deck that had basically infinite energy, a deck that had no need of energy, a deck that could just recur its energy, and so on.

Oak is definitely broke, though.
 
I would like to see an EX Series only tournoment, RS-PK personally. LBS vs RAMBO, Speed Spread vs Mynx, R-Gon vs POW Block, ect. Honestly, it would be awesome to see how some of the older decks do against some of the newer ones.
 
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