Archeops, Forest of Giant Plants Banned from Expanded; Shiftry Ban Lifted!

With the upcoming release of Burning Shadows, Pokemon.com has just updated their rules and ban list page.

Starting August 18th, Forest of Giant Plants and Archeops will be banned from Expanded. Lysandre's Trump Card continues to remain banned.

The ban on Shiftry has been lifted due to the new ban on Forest of Giant Plants.

• Forest of Giant Plants: The Forest of Giant Plants Stadium card enables many dangerous strategies with Grass-type Pokémon in the Expanded format. These strategies can range from locking down the opponent’s options to winning the game on the first turn, and all of them can happen before the opponent ever gets a chance to play. No single strategy was powerful enough to ban this Stadium card, but so many of them existing at the same time gave sufficient cause to ban it.
• Archeops: The existence of Archeops’s Ancient Power Ability has a very negative effect on decks that rely on evolved Pokémon. There are ways to combat it—Hex Maniac, Evosoda, or Wobbuffet are a few examples—but decks that focus on evolved Pokémon are forced to use these cards just to evolve their Pokémon. The combination of Maxie’s Hidden Ball Trick with Archeops can stop Evolution before the opponent ever gets a chance to evolve their Pokémon, which limits the number of viable strategies. Removing a different part of the combo (Maxie’s Hidden Ball Trick or Battle Compressor was also considered, but banning Archeops impacted existing strategies the least, so that was the route that made the most sense.
• Shiftry: Shiftry was banned from the Expanded format because of an unhealthy combo with Forest of Giant Plants. Since that card is now banned, Shiftry has been reinstated into the Expanded format.

Currently, no cards are banned from Standard.