Old School is back; Rockets Admin, Fossil Aerodactyl and EX's...
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Box of Fail
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That is incorrect. I understand that apostrophes are not used to form possessives of standard English words such as 'dog,' but you are plainly mistaken here. There is no standard for the term 'ex' when used to mean 'Pokémon ex' (especially because I think you're supposed to pronounce it /:iʔεks/ (EE eks) instead of /εks/ (eks)) I suppose you could say 'exes' if you really wanted to, but that doesn't seem right for a nonstandard commercial term, especially one in which you enounce each letter. So then we turn to 'exs,' which is awfully awkward and even less in touch with English orthography.
To solve this I turn to the simple apostrophe-s, used in several nonstandard English plurals, for example
versus
versus
versus
versus
Now, I'm not saying you can't say 'USAs,' but I think the apostrophe-s solution is a very important option to avoid confusion or awkwardness, as many of these words weren't intended to have plurals. The thing that kills me about grammar enthusiasts is that they don't understand that language evolves. 'Who' can be the object of its clause (as opposed to 'whom'), prepositions can end sentences, etc etc.
---tl;dr - you're wrong
Now that I have finished ranting, I'd like to note that chase cards can be made without their having to introduce unique game mechanics to the format. Alternate art cards in the vein of Reshiram and Zekrom BW would be the ideal solution; cards for which kids will look in their packs and are also playable, but do not dynamize and diversify the format by adding their own rules to the format. Those are still chase cards, but they don't change the game the same way a revival of Pokémoin ex does.
I wouldn't have guessed :wink:
I disagree. I just recently got back into Pokemon. Before I looked up any values, I bought 1 pack of Black & White. I pulled a FA Reshiram. I read the card and realized it was awesome. I figured it would be valuable but to my dismay it was worth about $10 because you could get it as a regular holo too. That kills the value, giving you no reason to chase them. If you have to buy 18 packs to get a full-art, and it's worth 1/5th of what I spent (and so are all the other chase cards) I'm not gonna keep chasing them. Maybe that's just me though.
Of course if they don't print a non-full art version, problem solved.
Son_of_Apollo
New Member
Is it just me or are they getting kind of lazy? It seems like most of the trainers we get are reprints. I understand they're cool cards and all, but maybe give us some new effects to work with? BTW, out of 67 trainers in the HS-BW format, 39 are reprints. Thats 58%.
i don't think metagross ex ever won a tournament. it had a ridiculously powerful attack and power, but was weak to infernape and exeggutor, both of which ohko'd him, while not being able to ohko either one.
AyameHikaru
Active Member
There are certain Trainer card archetypes that are immortal. If something goes out, it WILL be replaced. To my knowledge, Pokeball, Switch & Potion have never been out of the format since they were introduced. Other types of cards get variations. There will always be draw cards. There will always be search cards. There will always be recovery cards. Within those categories, you've got SOME options. However, in order to keep things simple, your options aren't huge. Imagination isn't inexhaustable, and it's often simpler just to use effects you've already done, that people liked.
For instance, Fisherman fills a nice slot. It's two Energy Retrievals, meaning it takes half the deck space for the same effect. To balance that and make it so ER isn't completely obsolete, it's a Supporter. It works well with what we've already got/have gotten since. Yes, it's a card that we've seen before. So? It's harder to come up with a card that does something similar enough to fill the slot but different enough to stand on its own. Making a card that can only be played if you're behind on prizes, have 6 Pokémon in play, and haven't played a Supporter yet that lets you pull out 6 energy from your discard is unnecessarily complicated.
However, if they're too close to another card, they're considered cheap knockoffs. (Think how Cheerleader's Cheer, Oak's Visit, Team Rocket's Trickery, Team Galactic's Mars, and Buck's Training were ALL considered Bill knockoffs, not to mention Mom's Kindness.)
So, sometimes card effects are repeated. If, like Copycat & Fisherman, the name isn't specific to a particular region, they usually keep the name. If, like Celio's Network and Rocket's Admin, it refers to a region/game that isn't the main focus then the name is changed. Take Mom's Kindness. It's basically Bill. BUT, it came out in a time where Diamond & Pearl were the big thing. Bringing in a character from Fire Red or Leaf Green wouldn't make sense. So they used a DP character and gave us a nice, straight draw card. Then, when Heart Gold and Soul Silver came out, Bill was in those games. So, Bill was in that set. Exact same card? Yup. But now after rotating, we've still got a nice, straight draw.
...yeah. Don't knock reprints.
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It doesn't bother me that much. The way I see it, Pokemon's Trainers/Supporters have always had very basic effects such as fetch 'this many' Pokemon from your deck, draw 'this many' cards, return 'this card' from your discard pile, etc. Most of the cards with "new" effects are only new because they go with a specific set of cards, which doesn't happen very often.
Hopefully that made sense. I have a bad habit of rambling about nothing. :nonono:
Edit: Looks like I got ninja'd. Dang.
AyameHikaru
Active Member
Ninja'd by post of doom? wow.
wow.
vanderbilt_grad
New Member
There were Metanite lists that ran it & did well. However, yeah, as a main attacker I don't remember it doing well.
Scipio
New Member
I'm more surprised by Lugia Ex being absent from that list. Oh well, goes to show just how many amazing Ex's there were, without any one being truly broken. Whenever Ex decks were winning, so did Non-Ex decks. Do correct me if I'm wrong, but really, aside from maybe up till TMTA when Team Magma crushed the competition at worlds after Gardevoir and Blaziken were the stronger cards, was there any point where Ex's truly dominated the game and non-ex decks had no say in things at all?
The good thing about ex's is that the fact they give two prizes let them have unique, powerful powers. Also, the two prizes as the drawback to having 20-30hp, and usually doing 20-30 more damage (or, having interesting effects (see: scanblast, power hack))
Giving 2 prizes allowed for creativity. It was interesting; fun. They were just a bit too rare. Reshiram and Zekrom could have been -ex, and I wouldn't have been that surprised, even if you didnt change their HP or attacks. I am fearful of Reshiram and Zekrom -EX, in spite of how 'awesome' ex's were, due to reshiboar and magneboar/zekrom ruling the entire format.
Giving 2 prizes allowed for creativity. It was interesting; fun. They were just a bit too rare. Reshiram and Zekrom could have been -ex, and I wouldn't have been that surprised, even if you didnt change their HP or attacks. I am fearful of Reshiram and Zekrom -EX, in spite of how 'awesome' ex's were, due to reshiboar and magneboar/zekrom ruling the entire format.
From when Gardevoir/Blaziken dominated to when Gardevoir/Gallade dominated, there were a few ex-heavy decks that were pretty hard to take down, but they never dominated the format completely. Ex-heavy decks were: ZRE, LBS, Absolution, Mewtric. Popular decks that ran no ex's or just a few of them were: Queendom, Metanite, Raieggs, Empoleon decks, Infernape, SMP, Tyranitar decks, Flariados.
vanderbilt_grad
New Member
Wait. Wasn't Flariados 100% reliant on Flareon ex?
Though the Silvestro's did well with Polistall in '07, I gotta jump in and give credit where it's due since Jake Burt won Regionals in 2006 with it and can be considered the creator of the deck. Though he doesn't play anymore, Jake was -- in my opinion -- one of the best players the game ever had and the closest thing I can claim as a mentor.
Flariados ran 4 Flareon ex, 1 Espeon ex, and sometimes another tech ex (Crawdaunt or HP Mew). Not quite as reliant as other decks on ex's, but kinda mid-range. I debated putting it on that list, heh.
DJGigabyte
Forum Moderator
Just to point out to everyone, in Japan the old cards were called ex (pronounced as X), short for extra.
These new ones are EX (pronounced E.X.), we can probably stop guessing at reprints now....
These new ones are EX (pronounced E.X.), we can probably stop guessing at reprints now....
Or they could just be trying to line up the way both countries pronounce them? Given that E.X. is the way everyone across the pond ended up calling them by. If there is any difference, I would expect it to be minor. Maybe making them count as a pokemon of the same name like Lv. X's did, or something of the sort. I think expecting reprints is a bit much, but to argue it's going to be a new mechanic when the terms are so similar just seems like you're asking for trouble. Expect something close to ex's with minor changes.
Not like it matters, it's at least two sets off, meaning we have quite awhile before it'll impact us, and we'll see it coming.
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