Pokémon TCG: Sword and Shield—Brilliant Stars

Counterproposal: Errata Blaziken ex

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Broken Lizard

Broken Lizard

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I agree with T-tar and the others who are calling for measures to be taken to mitigate the overwhelming power of Blaziken ex and the damage it is doing to the format.

I think that a ban is unwise for a number of reasons, all of which others have pointed out. But what about changing Blaziken ex?

Volcanic Ash now reads:

Discard 2 R energy attached to Blaziken ex then choose 1 of your opponent's Pokemon. This attack does 100 damage to that Pokemon.

Here is a proposed rewording:

Discard 2 R energy attached to Blaziken ex then choose 1 of your opponent's Pokemon. This attack does 100 damage to that Pokemon. If you chose a benched Pokémon, discard all remaining energy attached to Blaziken ex.

This simple change would prohibit the unlimited continuous use of Blaziken ex to wreck the bench. It would still be a very powerful card, however. If the user had a large stockpile of energy on her bench, then Blaziken ex could still attack the bench for several turns running (assuming Ampharos is in play).

There are other rewordings that are possible, but this one is simple, and I believe it would bring the card back in line somewhat.

I think PUI might be more likely to entertain the idea of an errata over a ban. My proposal is certainly not the only possible wording for an errata, and there may be a better one.

What does everyone else think about this?
 
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I intend to not run Blaziken ex in any deck during State Championships, but I think that it should be allowed to stay around. If that was the original Japanese text, then it should be changed to that, but otherwise, I like the challenge we're put in: either cave into a card not seen in quality since Sneasel or Feraligatr, or build a solid counter. Sneasel had energy removal, Feraligatr had Dark Muk and Crobat, and Blaziken ex has a whole slew of Psychic and Water Pokemon to deal with, some of which can even handle a benched Rayquaza, should it be out there.

So, in short, it's lazy to remove the problem. I say we stand, take it, and see what happens.
 
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Sneasel: we removed the problem, remember?

G8r: It was powerful, but not quite what Bex is right now. Bex is a definite 100 damage to anything. G8r was merely a variable amount of damage that people found inventive ways to exploit.

Slowking (remember him?): we removed the problem.

Bex: I'm not all that sure that *removing* him will be the best choice. I'd be happy with a 2 discard for the active and a 4 discard for the bench, or a 3 discard all the time. Errata is the best choice for this card.
 
If the "discard all energies for Benched" proposal doesnt work, i might have a good idea for this problem:

Add a GBA Hyper Beam effect. This means that it cant use the attack during your next turn.
 
Arthas_Zero said:
If the "discard all energies for Benched" proposal doesnt work, i might have a good idea for this problem:

Add a GBA Hyper Beam effect. This means that it cant use the attack during your next turn.
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Even simpler! Probably better.

I like it!
 
Making it unable to attack is like trashing the card. How about rewording it like slowking's attack? blaziken ex can't use volcanic ash during your opponent's next turn unless it goes to the bench.
 
Interesting. I would enter that the card be reprinted with the change and distributed somehow. This would reduce the card's value, but would get the word out faster.
 
The problem is that having to retreat is a minor annoyance. The retreat cost is only 2 which isn't that big of a deal in a Blaziken deck. It may prevent the constant 100 per turn barrage, but the card needs to be weakened further to be balanced.

Having to discard all the energy cards to attack the bench isn't enough of a penalty either. Blaziken EX doesn't have to attack the bench all the time anyway and the extra discard (which would be expensive in other decks) just causes a minor slowdown.

Any card that can do 100 to a benched Pokemon without risks or serious drawbacks is overpowered.

Try to evaluate the attack if it just did 100 to the active Pokemon (=base Charizard). This would probably not be tournament worthy, but it wouldn't be horrible either when evaluated in a Blaziken deck where discards are relatively painless (I could imagine having one in a Blaziken deck as a good attacker when opponent isn't playing psycic or water). Compare such a card to Sceptile EX which also does 100 but takes 5 energy and cannot use it next turn, it really isn't much worse.

So you would have to errata the ability to 100 straight bench damage away. You could reduce the damage to 50 if he attack was on a benched Pokemon (probable my preference) or introduce a flip with some kind of penalty. Reduce the bench damage to 10 if the flip is tails or do some self damage on tails (probably not proper for a fire Pokemon).

Dro~, going to the bench would allow the attack to be used again because the effect would go away. Look at rulings for Slaking.
 
Typholsion had a flip to get an energy card from the discard.. Blazipest EX is overpowered because of the reliability of Blaziken at recovering energy. Rayquazza will be horrid too once we loose Crystal Shard.

Changing the 'pestEXs attack to a Slaking like cant attack next turn would reduce its impact somewhat. But it seem s that the real issue is the normal Blazikens ability to pull energy out of the discard so reliably.

Of course if we do manage to turn down the BAR deck does that just leave the field wide open for Guardevoir?

Another vieew might be that the difficulty is caused by PUI not using the Japanese sets but rather making up composites. I have no idea if the Japanese set that contains BlazipestEX also contains its antidote as well. Maybe someone can comment.
 
Dro~, going to the bench would allow the attack to be used again because the effect would go away. Look at rulings for Slaking
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I know that. That means that the player must either pay for the retreat cost and use switch later (remember, only 1 retreat per turn) or use 2 switches. I think this penalty is good enough for an ex. If you turn this card into a bad card, no one will play it anymore and the point of errata will be lost. I still want blaziken ex to be quite playable.
 
Blaziken ex was released in the Dragon set in Japan. You can see the vestiges of that by noticing that Dragon has the Basics and Stage 1s of many of the TMvTA EXs.
 
Another option is to errata Blaziken one of two ways. Either:
a) make the power not cummulative (has been talked about before), or
b) errata the power to add damage counters. Look at all the cards that are coming out now - TM's Camperupt and TA's Lanturn (heck, for that matter, even R/S Gardevoir) can add extra energy from somewhere too, but they add damage counters to wherever that energy goes (2 counters). Assuming that nick has the translations right, even Blastoise ex does the damage counter route (1 counter). A person may think twice about double reloading a Blaziken ex if it's losing a quarter of its total HP every time they do it. Even if they only reload one and play another from their hand, its still losing an eighth of its total HP every time. Granted, the player could just alternate Blaziken's attacks, but still - that gives you a turn to be allowed to play something on your Bench and do something with it before it gets roasted.
 
I remember someone from either nintendo or japan telling us one time this, "the bench is a safe place for pokemon to go when they are hurt or are affected by a special condition, and that is why there won't be a card that increases damage done to the bench." But as you see now, the bench is the most unsafe place to be now. If you hide on the bench, you get sniped and have nothing to fight back. So now the game has been turned 180 where if your active, you die, and if your benched, you die. THis isn't how the game should be. But of course, I was against any EX's being made. As you can see now, EX's are screwing up the game.
 
I agree with Prime. The Bench is the spot where you have a chance to turn the game around. That is the place where you recover and reformulate a counter strategy if the opponent is ahead. Simply the bench plays one of the most important parts of the game. But Blaziken EX eliminates the bench like having no pokemon in a deck.
 
blaziken ex should not be changes, it is fine as is. I have created a deck specifically against it that wins 100% of the time, and does deep damage to most other competitive decks on the tournament scene (the one is does bad against is fossil decks, but blazi ex will kill all of those). The deck list is secret, or else everyone will play it. I won't even play it at states because it is just that secret. gotta wait till nationals or worlds. but back on topic, i think that blaziken ex doesnt need to be banned and the use of it can be regarded as a weak spot for attack, kinda like the hypermodern school of chess.
 
JasonthePwnda said:
I won't even play it at states because it is just that secret. gotta wait till nationals or worlds.
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Hehe, just comes to show you that every idea is thought of by more than one person, and I've told MULTIPLE people about it already...sorry, bud, but Blaziken ex needs to be countered NOW :p

Also, PM me to see if we're on the same page, okay? The card I'm thinking of was also really good back in the olden days, but nobody saw it...=(
 
Patriarch:
What are you talking about? my deck doesnt require any cards past TMvsTA. not like your blastoise deck. and for non-invitation events such as states, ill just play my own blaziken ex :).
 
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