Next Year’s Modified Format: DP-On Remains!

Every year since the Pokemon TCG’s inception, sets have been rotated out of the Modified format, meaning that you could only use cards from the most recent sets in your tournament decks. Pokemon Organized Play (POP) has just announced that for the 2009-2010 season, however, no sets will be rotated out! This means the format will remain Diamond and Pearl-on for another year, starting with nine legal sets and ending with thirteen, thus creating the largest Modified format ever!

In the interest of maintaining a healthy tournament environment, Pokémon Organized Play removes older sets from the Modified format at the beginning of each new tournament season. Each rotation challenges existing players to create new strategies while enabling new players to get into organized play with a minimal investment.

In an effort to increase the depth of the available card pool at early season events, Pokémon Organized Play will forego its standard set rotation for the 2009–2010 tournament season, creating a Modified format with nine regular sets at the beginning of the season, and ending the season with thirteen regular sets.

It is important to note that this will NOT occur again next year, as the announcement later states, “Pokémon Organized Play will resume the seasonal format rotation with the 2010–2011 tournament season.”