Pokémon TCG: Sword and Shield—Brilliant Stars

Musings on Unlimited

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ZakDourden

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So I was thinking about the Unlimited format, with its ridiculously fast decks and wondered why POP hasn't taken steps to create a sanctioned tournament series for Unlimited. In my mind it would be similar to the Vintage format for Magic: The Gathering. Here you can use cards from the earliest days of the game on up to the latest expansion. There's of course a restricted list, limiting search and absurdly powerful cards to 1 per deck.

Such a list could make Unlimited a more viable format for oldsters of the game, I think.
 
The problem you have is there is to many broke interactions in the game and I just don't see how more than 1-3 decks would be viable in a tournament setting.
 
This topic gets revived every so often. Sadly, the bottom line seems to be that there isn't enough interest (and that includes both players and POP)

Using the M:TG lingo, I can't see a Vintage type format working, it would have to be Legacy.

What I don't get is why is there not an Extended format? Perhaps from EX-series onwards?

EX-ON sounds like a good title for a format...
 
At least part of the reason is the licensing from the first half dozen years of Pokemon in the US. I'm not sure of the details, but my guess is that there'd be some kind of friction between WOTC and PCI if PCI started supporting WOTC's cards in tournaments. Not to mention that PCI would see less profit from the sales of WOTC cards.

I would like to see a PCI Vintage/Legacy/Extended format officially supported by PCI, at least on some level (side events at larger events, possibly a small Premier cycle, etc). It'd give me a chance to bust out my old Strange Delusions and Flex decks, possibly update them somewhat with the newer cards.
 
I'd love to see Extended (with EX-On as the baseline) but Unlimited would need about as many Limits/Bans as Yugioh to come even close to balance.

And really, how well could you use a Pokemon that's Limited? Let's look at something like Blastoise. Well, you can limit Blastoise to 1... but there's still Blastoise ex, so that's already 2 copies, enough to tech for Rain Dance. Then you look at his best deck, LBS, it only needs two Blastoise anyway. If you Limit Lugia ex, there's still E-series Lugia, so that's (kinda) 2 copies, and even without that there's Night Maintenance, Nightly Garbage Run, Time-Space Distortion (which, even with all of them Limited, is still 3 cards to recur your Lugia/ex).

In cases like Downpour Feraligatr, Limiting him would just flat-out destroy the deck. You couldn't even try to run the deck with him Limited. They could hit Parasect instead, but players could just revert to the original Trash Exchange/Misty's Wrath loop builds. Limit both of those and you're again back to square one, you've killed the viability of the deck.

With so many dependencies and redundancies in Pokemon, a Limit-to-1 list just wouldn't work.
 
There has been some talk of EX-On being thrown around (and maybe playtested?) after a side event at Worlds last year.
 
Unlimited is a hopelessly broken format. I don't see a realistic way to fix it. Who goes second determines who wins.

bullados said:
At least part of the reason is the licensing from the first half dozen years of Pokemon in the US. I'm not sure of the details, but my guess is that there'd be some kind of friction between WOTC and PCI if PCI started supporting WOTC's cards in tournaments. Not to mention that PCI would see less profit from the sales of WOTC cards.
Click to expand...

Neither WotC nor TPCi would see a penny from sales of old cards.
Card manufacturers make money on the initial sales to distributors. They don't stock more than a set or two back.
TPCi controls all rights to all the cards. WotC was merely a liscencee. They owned nothing about pokemon.

The whole problem is lack of interest and broken combos.
 
To make Ex-On work, it has to be incorporated into the premier tournament cycle of tournaments for there to be interest. Give people a reason to play it by offering prizes for it. If it is just another type of tournament that TOs can sanction for fun, it'll never gain attention from a lot of players.

Another argument against unlimited has to be the older mechanics. We no longer need to know that Trainers = Trainers, Supporters, and Stadiums for pre-DP cards, but trainers = only trainers in post-DP cards. We no longer need to know that Pokemon Powers = Poke-Powers + Poke-Bodies. We no longer need to the mass errata to include poison and burn as conditions that shut down powers when the term "special condition" did not exist. We no longer need to know about Ditto and everything it can do.
 
It would suffice to say that some of you have misconceptions about the unlimited format.
As strange as it sounds when I say it, the broken nature of the format balances itself out all on its on.

Blastoise sounds so broken until you remember Muk, Goop gas attack, Mr, Mime, and so on.

Also, if you have never heard of muk/bannete, you've missed a lot of changes that happened.

It would probably go without saying that anybody who wanted to be in an unlimited format event would probably be people who played with the old cards(I miss my computer search. lol).
At the same time, some type of cheat sheet could easily be done up to run down the needed rulings/blanket errata for any players involved.

No matter how much I would love to see it, Pokepop is right, there is no benefit to PUSA to do such a thing, so I wouldn't get my hopes up.
 
You guys are all incorrect. Unlimited is actually a pretty balanced format. There are plenty of viable interactions. What ever ridiculous deck you think you broke the format with, how well does it do when I start with a lone spiritomb AR active?
 
Ah yes, Spiritomb.

That may have helped balance Unlimited more than any other card!
 
Extended is more likely to work than unlimited, imo. For unlimited there would have to be too many bas and limitations, and it would get confusing and annoying. Though I totally still hope they figure out a way for it to work, not too likely.

Extended, however, could work pretty easily, imo, maybe even without bans and limits.
 
Chairman Kaga said:
So basically, Unlimited is Modified with more cards.
Click to expand...

Woah, there.

Going first is SO much better in a lot of decks right now.
Luxray-based decks get a HUGE advantage of going first---they get to use Bright Look first.
Stage 2 decks, with the advent of Spiritomb, get a HUGE boost by going first. The first person to use Claydol, along with Spiritomb being so prevalent, makes going 2nd terrible in comparison. I found in the CC's I've gone to that in nearly every game, going first is super awesome.
 
Spiritomb, and even Gastly help balance out Unlimted.

Adding value to the secondary market encourages players to buy more cards, and helps retailers by not making old packs completely-dead-weight once sets rotate.

I wish interest was higher, but for anyone interested I will be bringing an unlimited deck with me to Nats (wherever it is).

A highlander format, with only 1 of a given card (not a given name) would be interesting too (ie, 4 different Clefairy is cool, but still only 1 Rare Candy despite it being reprinted).
 
i think ex-on would be nice. its just too difficult to get older cards sometimes, and there seem to be too many combos and a lot of luck involved.
 
There is nothing to stop anyone from running an unlimited event. Just don't expect it to be free to enter or to have POP provided prize support.
 
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