You're not going to get me to agree with you.
Then the conversation probably should stop here. Still you wrote more, so I will at least answer that, though I will most definitely try and be polite about it.
A card simply isn't broken if it's not being used.
Play Yu-Gi-Oh and learn the truth. Yu-Gi-Oh has long suffered from basic costing issues. Many times a card would be broken but it wouldn't see play because
there was something better to run instead!
With Pokemon it is much harder to appreciate because the game simply is better made. With Yu-Gi-Oh there would often be multiple cards to do the exact same thing, and the best one would see play. Then it would get banned or restricted and the next best version would replace it... then that would get banned or restricted and so on and so forth until they arbitrarily took the original off the Banned/Restricted list (they feel they have to do that because they hate any card to be Banned @_@) or until a fundamental shift in game play left no room in the deck. You see
Yu-Gi-Oh is a game where the top third of the cards are "broken", ignoring the clear guidelines that should result in a balanced game given its system.
That's incredibly hypothetical. Sableye wasn't broken until the last few months that it was legal. It was good, but not broken.
That involved a rules change, so clearly it is not the same thing. :thumb:
Rare Candy wasn't broken. It was good, but not broken.
Rare Candy with its original text was most definitely broken! The entire idea of Pokemon is that your Pokemon must Evolve to reach higher levels. Basic Pokemon were the fastest, Stage 2 were the most powerful, and Stage 1 Pokemon were supposed to be the happy middle. Was this often not the case in practice? Sadly yes, the developers had a hard time finding the balance and then maintaining it when they had found it.
Rare Candy favored Stage 2 usage
far too heavily with its original wording. It also allowed bizarre tricks like running a 1-0-1 line for a Stage 2, or a 2-1-2 if you were "cautious" and yet still have a reliable deck, let alone squeezing two Stage 2 lines into a deck surprisingly comfortably since you were able to "overlap" their Stage 1 slots. The only real threats to it are being devolved and Trainer denial, and in another ironic twist that tends to just cemented
Rare Candy use in those style of decks to match the speed of the opposing player.
Stage 1 focused decks would (though rarely) run a
Rare Candy or two for that single-turn surprise factor, though the play was usually reserved as a fringe benefit of a deck running a Stage 1 line alongside a
Rare Candy using Stage 2 line. Meanwhile Basic Pokemon became less and less useful, unable to anchor a deck unless they were part of a gimmick, like Pokemon-ex, Level-Up cards, or Pokemon SP. Were their exceptions? You bet! Fortunately we'd sometimes get some wonderfully well made cards who filled an important niche or whose strategy couldn't be abused just because they were Basics or Stage 1 Pokemon, and unfortunately we would sometimes get cards that were really too powerful but coming full circle, thanks to
Rare Candy powered Stage 2 Pokemon didn't seem like it.
Wally's Training seemed balanced: you couldn't use it to easily build a Bench of behemoths, and definitely not in a single turn.
Pokemon Breeder (and the new wording for
Rare Candy) is balanced: while you can Evolve into several Stage 2 Pokemon in one turn it can't be the first turn those Basic Pokemon were in play. Small difference, huge effect on how the game works.
Pokemon Reversal isn't broken. I don't believe a trainer that has an all or nothing effect on a flip can be considered broken by itself. It might not be healthy for the game, but Reversal isn't broken. Junk Arm (broken) makes Reversal appear broken, but it's not. Pokemon Catcher and Pokemon Reversal are not even in the same universe as far as being broken.
You are overstating your case. Of course a Trainer that has an all or nothing effect on a flip can be broken all by itself. Start by taking it to extremes: if I made a Trainer that said "Flip a coin. If heads you win." that would of course be broken. Yes, that is taking it to the utter extreme, but let's keep scaling it back. I said
Energy Removal 2 wasn't broken because removing a single Energy unreliably isn't strong enough (at least in the current game). If I created
Hyper Energy Removal that said "Flip a coin. If heads, discard all Energy attached to one of your opponent's Pokemon." suddenly we are getting almost plausible-yet-broken tails-fails cards. The the argument that just because an effect is a "tails fails" flip doesn't inherently balance a card.
Mail From Bill only failed because your hand had to have less than five cards (including
Mail From Bill) in it and you drew until you had four cards in hand. If
Mail From Bill had simply said "Flip a coin. If heads draw four cards." and been an Item (or rather normal Trainer, given the time frame) it would have been a staple and pretty broken. Tails, sure you're out a card but most of the time it would have been used before an Eeeeeeek or a
Professor Elm (again, time frame). Heads and you draw something really good? You just hold off on the shuffle and draw for a turn.
So I your stance that a coin toss always keeps a card from being broken is incorrect. Moving onto your assertion that
Pokemon Reversal might not be healthy for the game but that it isn't broken... isn't that a contradiction? Cards are healthy for the game, or they aren't. Even a barely used card is healthy for the game if it doesn't "interfere" with other possible cards, e.g. by its existence an entire style of cards can't be created because when combined with this hypothetical "do nothing" card they'd be broken. I remind you of the use of
Pokemon Reversal: usually its to set-up to KO something important, meaning heads=Prize, tails=one wasted card. The latter is a small cost in a game like Pokemon.
As far as bench sitters, which is a horrible term IMO. How many are there really? I can't think of too many. I never consider those an issue. They are support Pokemon for your main attacker. There was a reason that Luxray Lv. X was broken. There is a reason that Warp Point isn't. Warp Point is a good solid card. If a card is in obscurity for 9 years, it's hard to classify it as broken, especially with a flip that has an all or nothing benefit. Catcher is broken, Junk Arm is broken, but Reversal definitely isn't. I can't in good faith say that Catcher will be GOOD for this game, because it WON'T.
May I call you Drew? I mean, that's how you signed your post... well you don't like the term Bench-Sitters (or however one prefers to spell it). That is fine. Feel free to propose a better term. I dislike the term "donk" but I have not figured out something concise to replace it. Support Pokemon that hide on the Bench naturally carry a negative connotation because too often it allows a card to "fake" being more balanced than it is. What do I mean? A card with crippling low HP, horrid attack, but brilliant Ability can safely hide on the Bench: you're only at risk if you run out of other Pokemon to send up in front of it. That is why we need a card that let's us get to the Bench. As long as it is easy for most decks to include a good sniper (its own set of pitfalls), something to force Benched Pokemon up (again, try doing that without breaking the card in question or watering it down too much), there is a need for a generic card a deck can run to make sure that Pokemon can be hit.
Warp Point doesn't cut it since a single extra body thwarts that.
Also, a card that could be used to attack reasonably well but still functions mostly in a support role allowing a deck to shield it from damage and only attack with it when convenient still meets the definition of "Bench-Sitter" to me, and perhaps to others. So in a ZPS deck,
Pachirisu and
Shaymin are Bench Sitters, even if they are going to be bounced back to hand soon (that is just like the ultimate expression of the problem, and fortunately so uncommon that "Hand Hider" isn't a term yet).
Pokemon Reversal is not obscure. If it is not well known, I consider that a failing of players for not knowing it. It is at the very least an excellent card that I have to eliminate from my deck: by default it starts with a place unless something else bumps it out. You didn't address this, but as I maintain
Pokemon Reversal has escaped scrutiny due to often being overshadowed by more potent effects that rendered it unneeded in many popular, potent decks. Also as you have demonstrated, by many people start with an assumption that a "tails fails" card can't be broken. Often times,
Pokemon Reversal was overshadowed by cards I'd consider broken as well, but sometimes by something balanced: hard to believe but sometimes a broken card doesn't do a job better than a balanced card, just because the balanced card is a core part of the deck and running
Pokemon Reversal would be redundant.
In this format at least, even
without Junk Arm,
Pokemon Reversal is elevated to the level of "Flip a coin, if heads draw a Prize."
Pokemon Catcher will once again make people forget about it. Just like
Pow! Hand Extension,
Double Gust,
Blaziken ex,
Steelix ex,
Metagross (Magnetic Reversal version), etc. managed to outshine it.
Pokemon Reversal is perfectly balanced for some formats, namely where you're only coming out marginally ahead when it succeeds or is only devastating at a specific point in the game. For example, if nothing especially weak or important is on the Bench, what does it matter if
Pokemon Reversal works?
