Monday, June 1, 2015

Official TCG ruleset bans Lysandre's Trump Card

I find it rather interesting that something like that would happen, considering how reluctant the powers that be have been on the video game front (the only example I could think of was that tournament in Greece in late gen 4 that had a combo ban on Garchomp and Tyranitar/Hippowdon, and that was niche as hell). But let's be honest here, if Mega Kangaskhan and Landorus-T slaughter the VGC metagame, they're still extremely tame compared to Lysandre's Trump Card in the TCG. Remember back in gen 2 when battles would take 200+ turns because of the overabundance of Skarmory, Blissey, Snorlax and friends? Well it's kind of similar. I watched the Madison regionals stream this weekend, and it seemed every series they showed would end with time running out. All because of this one freaking card. I remember one game where it was played FOUR TIMES! So even if I know jack shit about the TCG, I can totally approve this decision.

23 comments:

  1. Of course they banned it, it's basically a freaking Timetwister. That crap's broken no matter what game it's in.

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  2. "The powers that be" have been extremely reluctant on the TCG side too. As far as I know, since TPCi took over the card game, this is the very first card they have banned (though they have errated cards). This move was super necessary as a bunch of current cards made the use of LTC pretty degenerate.

    Everything after this is speculation: we know for sure that TPCi has hired at least one prominent TCG player in the last year. I think the smart but unprecedented move of banning LTC may be a result of this: smart players are finally in a position to be heard. Of course, they banned it in Japan as well so perhaps this was a decision entirely from Japan.

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    1. I think they once banned a Wromadam card which was becoming very popular and dominated the format at the time, and some smaller tournaments have banned the "Hypnotoxic Laser" card.

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  3. With a name like that, I at first thought it was Mega Gyarados that was banned in the TCG. Then, I recalled that it really has cards named like that. My only experience with the TCG is the Game Boy Color game...

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    1. Even having only played that should give you enough insight of the game's rules to understand why that card is so ridiculously broken.

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    2. The Looneyman gave me more insight with what the card actually does. Keep in mind that back in the GBC days, it was the Haymaker cards that dominated. No VS. Seeker. No EX-Darkrai...

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    3. There was no card like LTC. But logically, I can really understand why a card like that is broken...

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  4. As someone who plays the TCG myself, though not on a competitive level, I can safely say this was a good call.

    For those who don't know what the card did, it made both players shuffle their entire discard pile back into their decks, with the exception of Lysandre's Trump Card. As well as prolonging the game, it allowed the ability to search infinitely, re-use powerful trainer cards with ease and eliminated one of the win conditions, namely the one where you win if your opponent has no cards in their deck at the beginning of their turn.

    When I first saw the card I thought it was one of the most powerful cards I had seen, in any trading card game and was amazed they printed such a card. In fact, there are loops which allow one card to be played infinitely due to the VS seeker card, which allows you to retrieve a supporter from the Discard pile. Lo and behold, Lysandre's Trump Card is a supporter card.

    The card was completely broken so I'm kinda glad they banned it.

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    1. " I thought it was one of the most powerful cards I had seen, in any trading card game"

      It is. The card's fucking Timetwister. Actually it might be better than Timetwister, all things considered.

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    2. Bear in mind, that was what I thought when I first read what the card did. As I saw it in practice more and more I began to realise just how broken it was.

      Though there will be somethings that will benefit greatly from the card being banned, namely Plasma Freeze Flareon and Night March decks.

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    3. I wanna say it's going to make stalling with Seismitoad for an hour a hell of a lot more difficult, but I know so little about the TCG there's probably something I'm missing that'll make it easier instead.

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    4. Any format that needed this card to work does not deserve to work, as they abused a broken card.

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  5. I haven't played the TCG in many years, but damn. That's some Funbro-level shit right there. Good thing it's banned for sure.

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  6. Did you really just talk about a banned card and not explain what it does?

    Slowflake, always with the assuming that everybody already knows what everything is even when it's something as obscure as a card.

    Welp off to Google I go.

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    1. Lysandre's Trump Card forces both players to shuffle their discard piles into their deck, aside from the Lysandre's Trump Card itself.

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    2. What do you think I went to Google for?

      Also if I'm remembering how the Pokemon card game is played correctly, I fail to see how this extends the match.

      You just have to get 6 K.O.s to win. What difference does putting the discard pile back into the deck make?

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    3. Because drawing 6 prize cards is only one of THREE win conditions. The other two are...

      KO a pokemon when your opponent has no benched pokemon to replace it
      Your opponent cannot draw a card at the beginning of their turn due to having no cards in their deck.

      The latter win condition is the important one and is why Lysandre's Trump Card extends the game. In addition, it allows for infinite searches by putting valuable cards already discarded, like super heavy hitters, back into the deck so you can just search for them again. That means turns can be taken up by using search cards to go through the deck, then putting the discarded cards back into the deck with Lysandre's Trump Card then searching through it again

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    4. You could arguably say that it also eliminates the first one you listed, because there's almost no way you'll ever lack a Pokémon to place on the bench using this thing.

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    5. Between being able to recover basic Pokémon and being able to run as many as 17 of them because you can easily recover everything else, yeah, the only way a game doesn't end because of the prize cards is when there's a time limit and it's reached.

      With that said, question for people who know things about the TCG. Now that decking out is a thing again, is there such a thing as drawing cards too fast (i.e. Shaymin abuse, drawing 16 cards with Colress, etc.)?

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    6. To answer your question Slowflake, yes that is very likely going to be a huge factor now. The only reason it wasn't before was due to Lysandre's Trump Card, but with that gone people will have to be very careful with the draw they make with things like Colress, Shaymin-EX and Professor Juniper/Sycamore.

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    7. I'm just going to assume the game has drastically changed since generation 1 and the very first set of Pokemon cards because I haven't kept with the trading card game since that time.

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    8. Even if cards didn't get banned for being too old, I'd wager the large majority of the cards that'd get used in such an environment would be from the last four or five years. Power creep tends to hit games like this hard.

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    9. Considering nowadays it's possible to do 240 damage in a single turn of setup nowadays... yeah the powercreep has hit very hard. It would be more powerful trainer cards from way back then which would be sought after.

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