Pokémon TCG: Sword and Shield—Brilliant Stars

Balancing out the First Turn

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misnos said:
One thing to consider is that after Worlds, Tyrogue and Cleffa will be a thing of the past and Cleffa will be seen in a very limited capacity. With catcher the flip factor will be diminished and therefore babies on a bench will be more vulnerable than ever. You will see a reduction in the use of Cleffa and thusly a reduction in Tyrogue.

Plus power on the other hand remains, And there is nothing you can do to avoid that until your turn with Defender. but I don't see Plus Power being a sinking force, more of a mid game tool to aid in a KO.
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Cleffa is there to refresh your hand, it gets donked now by Yanmega. You will absolutely not see a reduction in Cleffa when Catcher comes out. This is what you will see a reduction in is - Stage 2 decks.
Oddish, Cyndaquil, Vulpix and Magnemites are now free prizes with Catcher. You no longer have to rely on the Reversal flips now. There is a reason Gust of Wind trainer card made cards like Base Set Hitmonchan and electabuzz so big as BBHP (Big Basic HP) Pokemon. This will hold true in the current format, Reshiram, Zekrom, any future BBP's will not be going away anytime soon and just become stronger with Catcher. Good luck playing Reshiphlosion when your Cyndaquils get catchered out and ko'd. Thats why there needs to be a card like Pokemon Breeder since they nerfed Rare Candy so bad. Weak basics for Stage 2's will get hurt the most with Catcher.
 
JohnnyBlaze said:
Cleffa is there to refresh your hand, it gets donked now by Yanmega. You will absolutely not see a reduction in Cleffa when Catcher comes out. This is what you will see a reduction in is - Stage 2 decks.
Oddish, Cyndaquil, Vulpix and Magnemites are now free prizes with Catcher. You no longer have to rely on the Reversal flips now. There is a reason Gust of Wind trainer card made cards like Base Set Hitmonchan and electabuzz so big as BBHP (Big Basic HP) Pokemon. This will hold true in the current format, Reshiram, Zekrom, any future BBP's will not be going away anytime soon and just become stronger with Catcher. Good luck playing Reshiphlosion when your Cyndaquils get catchered out and ko'd. Thats why there needs to be a card like Pokemon Breeder since they nerfed Rare Candy so bad. Weak basics for Stage 2's will get hurt the most with Catcher.
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You realize of course that Rare Candy is now a functional reprint of Pokémon Breeder, right? And if I remember my Pokémon history correctly even with Gust of Wind out there, Pokémon Breeder made Rain Dance decks a viable deck. I don't see that being too terribly different than Emboar/Reshiram now, since you have a powerful, high-HP basic (Lapras or Articuno vs. Reshiram) given all the power it needs by a Stage 2 energy accelerator that can attack on its own if necessary.
 
Catcher won't be big threat to like Vileplume, all you gotta do is search for 2 Oddish and something else, they can kill one oddish but the other will most likely be rare candy'd into a vileplume or they will be screwed, thats my theory that multiples of the same basic will be searched so catcher doesn't do much harm.
 
MiniWade said:
Catcher won't be big threat to like Vileplume, all you gotta do is search for 2 Oddish and something else, they can kill one oddish but the other will most likely be rare candy'd into a vileplume or they will be screwed, thats my theory that multiples of the same basic will be searched so catcher doesn't do much harm.
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Thank yoooou.

Start with Yanma. Collector for two Oddish and another Yanma. Seriously, what do you do?
 
yes but there are now so many heavy hitting basics that even off the collector and the candy into vileplume hes olny most likely gonna be out there for so long and what if the candy is bounced out of your hand or of the top of the deck by something now your oddish and even if you can get to gloom are then free prizes and on top of that you will not always have the candy as where they will not always have snipe ither but with catcher coming out you wont need to snipe and i think tyrouge will start to be the olny baby in play because he can still donk most basics if you go first. So there is always a way around every card thats why you just got to play the game i think and to be honset Jonny blaze is right the day of the big basic pokemon will be here and the decks will revolve around ither big basics or trainer lock to get to the stage 2 pokemon that stand a chance that is the meta game in a nut shell after the next set
 
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Donks aren't the main problem with the first turn. The problem is this: If I go first I evolve to Donphan or Yanmega before you can do the same and I'm one or more prizes ahead the entire game. Being able to play trainers first turn is the main problem...because without those being first wouldn't be such a ridiculously huge advantage for stage 1 players (soon to be everyone)
 
ajwalker said:
Wait, since when can you evolve on either players first turn? :eek:
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You are so smart, pointing out his minor mistake. Congratulations.



Obviously he means that he can evolve to donphan/yanmega before his opponent can evolve to donphan/yanmega.
 
walrus said:
Donks aren't the main problem with the first turn. The problem is this: If I go first I evolve to Donphan or Yanmega before you can do the same and I'm one or more prizes ahead the entire game. Being able to play trainers first turn is the main problem...because without those being first wouldn't be such a ridiculously huge advantage for stage 1 players (soon to be everyone)
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This really, donks dont matter that much, the advantage of going firsts is that youre ahead all game.
 
Yoshi- said:
This really, donks dont matter that much, the advantage of going firsts is that youre ahead all game.
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In a mirror match, if you evolve to Yanmega/Donphan/Magnezone/Typhlosion (etc) first, and take the first prize, you essentially win 100% of the time.
 
Jahikoi said:
You are so smart, pointing out his minor mistake. Congratulations.



Obviously he means that he can evolve to donphan/yanmega before his opponent can evolve to donphan/yanmega.
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Actually, it wasn't so obvious (yes, I did reread it several times) otherwise I wouldn't have commented.
 
"If I go first I evolve to Donphan or Yanmega before you can do the same and I'm one or more prizes ahead the entire game."

There wasn't a mistake with what I wrote. If I go first I get to evolve before my opponent...I never said I get to evolve on my first turn.
 
I believe turn one player should not be aloud to play a energy card turn one.

The previous rule set was not bad, turn 1 player would always be up on energy while player 2 got to play big spells. it was balance

that's my 2 cents.
 
CryBulbasaurCRY said:
I believe turn one player should not be aloud to play a energy card turn one.

The previous rule set was not bad, turn 1 player would always be up on energy while player 2 got to play big spells. it was balance

that's my 2 cents.
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You don't want your opponent to announce attaching an energy card when they do so on turn 1? That's going to cause as much confusion as discarding supporters right away. (I think you meant allowed :thumb:)

Yes the previous rule was more balanced. Now there's a new rule, and as bad as it is, that's the way we have to play it. Hopefully P!P will hear our cries from the dust and change it, but like all change it'll probably take awhile. I'm betting if it does change it will happen after Japan sees the error of their ways and changes back to the gold standard of starting the Pokemon Trading Card Game.
 
So reading through this...

No one has considered upping the required amount of opening Basics in your hand or adding an optional mulligan a la Magic into the game? In the case of the latter, perhaps only if you go second.

Going first seems to be too powerful right now but most of the suggestions

1) Complicate the game
2) Seem to be overreactions to specific cards
3) Forget that some "negative" aspects are a part of game balance.

Remember "donking" is supposed to keep players from "breaking" the game with decks that, for example, run super-lower basic and Energy counts and spam Trainers like you wouldn't believe. I don't know how strong such a deck would be in the current format, but even a Stage one focused deck using a relatively low Pokemon Count and spamming Trainers would be pretty annoying from a balanced format perspective, so the idea that you simply cannot be penalized for running too few of Pokemon (barring the token extra draws you might get if your opponent doesn't pull a Basic in their opening hand) doesn't sit well with me.
 
In order to fix the game, they need to stop printing cards like Pokemon Collector. Reason is if your opponent starts with 1 or 2 and you don't, you lose. That effect needs to go back to a Pokemon's attack. Remember how much fun it way to use Call for Family to start your setup and how much skill was needed to figure out to stop your setup and start skillful attacks? PC takes all of that away and just promotes very aggressive starts. The game needs to go back to a state where opening hands or opening coin flips don't pick the winner.

The player going first can not use an attack that would damage or knockout a Pokemon. That being said, it would force people to run starter Pokemon in their decks because they could only use setup attacks.

Optional mulligan. Shuffle your hand into your deck if you don't like it up to 2 or 3 times and your opponent draws a card or 2 if you do. Thats fair enough.

Or better yet, just allow both players to play their first turn at the same time with no attacks.


The real issue here is not the player going first but a way to balance out 'both' players first turn. Put in something like a grace period or something to where both players have 2 turns to setup something before attacks can start.
 
The thing is if we go too crazy, we do make the game hard to learn but more importantly it has unintentional balance issues to deal with: fast Pokemon are held in check, but yiou basically just made slow Pokemon you're supposed to have to suffer through effectively fast.
 
I PINE for the days when a deck that could, at best, turn 3 setup was considered one of the fastest decks in the format...
 
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