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Sabett, I'm not even sure what you're trying to state any more. Are you saying pokemon should be more competitive, should it expand toward a larger competitive player base? Should we be more like magic? It's more like you're contradicting rather than discussing. You're saying that pokemon's weakness is that it doesn't have certain signs that measures viability, but at the same time, the game persists. Should the game grow into something it's not so competitive players are happy?
It would've probably helped if you paid attention to when I talked about it. I said that things like these tins which were obviously marketed towards competitive players were fine because pokemon has a larger fanbase of collecters as apposed to competitive players, which is apparent by the lack of things such as other formats and base sets.
You told me that on of the reasons you wanted extended was because people hated watching their cards rotate. Nintendo introduces a test format that placates those people. No one shows up, what was the point of all the complaining about rotations? Pokemon didn't lose any player base due to rotations, it seems to me that they like it, especially since there were far more guys showing up for modified instead of extended.
I never said I wanted extended. I said extended would exist if there were more players in pokemon than collectors. And then you bring up a million instances of other formats failing, which only further proves my point, because you just skimmed my posts over and over again and read what you wanted to. Almost each reply you have was only to part of my post and typically not an accurate response.
And casual players support magic, not competitive, regardless of the number of formats. The amount of effort to succeed in magic is far beyond what it takes to be good in pokemon. Just walk up and ask your average store owner how many players show up to their FNM with a tier one tournament level deck. For all these formats they have, they aren't reflected in the actual players. Look at the wizards website, there's maybe two articles out of the 10 they post that actually has anything to do with competitive play. The other eight are for casual players, and you can get better competitive articles elsewhere.
Did I say casual players didn't support magic? No, I said that the vast majority of them were competitive players, sure if you use a corner case like that, you can find more casual players than competitive. Where I live constructed doesn't usually make, which means they're playing limited, which means competitive players are honing their limited skills and gathering cards they need, because all the constructed play they do is from playtesting. Also, the day after is the only weekly constructed tournament in houston, and that's legacy, which absolutely doesn't consist of casual players.
As far as the articles are concerned half of it is typically them talking about being a writer and talking about development, and there are more than 2 articles on competitive play. Also, they post tournament results there, live, with decklists, I don't think this is for the casual crowd.
Baneslayer still isn't a staple, white weenie doesn't play it, and plenty of decks cut it. I see 3 decks of the top 8 at US nats running white, and only one plays baneslayer, and that could be replaced by sun titan, which, even though it has been in a core set, as only been in play for less than a year.
But none of those decks were even aggressive, were they? That doesn't fit the archetype at all, that's like putting 4-4 donphan into feralitoise deck. If sun titan could've fit the bill, then it would've still shown importance from the base set. Also, what are you talking about? White weenie does play baneslayer, maybe not in extended where it's too slow, but definetely in standard.
The formats in magic aren't built from the base set, they're built from the first set in the block. Are you really saying that m11 is going to be more important than scars of mirrodin? How about Lorwyn and 10th edition? Alara and m10?
Absolutely, the entire format of standard would be crippled without the base set. If you look at that t8 in us nats, you'll see that the base set has the most cards in that pool than any other set. Sure a block may have more, sure a decklist may have more of one set than the base set, but in perspective, the standard environment relies mostly on the base set.
Back to the topic, does pokemon even need a base set? Again, by design, pokemon isn't forced into balancing a bunch of colors, we have colorless trainers and supporters. We don't need much more than a basic searcher, an evolution searcher, a rare candy, a recursive card, and some draw, those are literally the only staples in pokemon. All of these cards have changed over years of time but they're all basically the same and they've had a presence in every format. None of the sp cards, poketurn, energy gain, cyrus are staples because in the long run sp cards are going to rotate out.
I have no idea how long you have been playing, but my definition of a staple is any card that is absolutely required to play the game. SPs are a flash in the pan, so were EX pokemon, Level X and all the cards that supported it, team magma and aqua, delta pokemon. Those are all part of a giant block of pokemon cards they use to keep the game fresh. There aren't any real cards worthy of a base set because all the cards that support those pokemon are there to support the block. None of those cards would be printed in a base set because they are not required to play the game effectively.
As I've said in this thread, pokemon does not need a base set, I didn't say it needed one. As I've said, every single time, if the pokemon had a larger player base, it would need one, but it doesn't. Also, idk why you mention random archetypes, magic has that too, jund, faeries, soul sisters, doran, don't see a lot of those key cards in base sets.
Why does pokemon need any of these things to be healthy? Unlimited? Sealed? Strong promos? A base set?
I never said pokemon needed any of this, I said the lack of these things (IDK why you said strong promos, I guess claydol and uxie wasn't enough for you), reflect that the pokemon tcg fanbase does not mostly consist of players, but collectors.
Please. don't make another post of you wrongly inferring that I'm trying to say that pokemon needs a base set, because all I said to begin with, was that the lack of one showed that there are more collectors than players, and I never said anything, at all was wrong with that.
