Blaine’s Quiz Show Banned at Worlds

Update: TPCi has announced the card is banned at Worlds.

An e-mail to Japanese players has revealed that Blaine's Quiz Show from Unified Minds will be banned at Worlds and its side events. A public announcement should be made soon.

This announcement comes a week after our article writer, Stéphane Ivanoff, questioned how the card would work in a multilingual environment like Worlds. (Though Pokemon may have already anticipated the issue.) His post is a good summary for why the card has been banned from the event:

Here’s a simple situation: if I play Blaine’s Quiz Show at Worlds, using a French Pokémon card, should I announce the name of the attack in French or in English?

-> If it’s in French: unless my opponent speaks French, they probably can’t guess the Pokémon. Is this an intended effect of the card?

-> If it’s in English: What if I don’t know the English name of the attack (since my card is in French)? Also, even if I know the name, what if my opponent doesn’t speak English (say it’s a Japanese player)?

If using translators, there is one major issue: attack names don’t always map one-to-one between languages. Here is an example:

Lillipup (BLW 81) and Gliscor (UNB 99) have the same attack Collect. In French, Lillipup’s Collect was translated to “Collectionner,” and Gliscor’s Collect was translated to “Collecte.”

If I play against a French-speaking player and announce “Collectionner,” they know it can be Lillipup and not Herdier. If I play against an English-speaking player and announce “Collect,” it can be both. This means that doing the exact same game action has different results depending on the language used.

(Also consider the opposite scenario, where the English-speaking player is the one using Blaine’s Quiz Show and announces “Collect.” If the French-speaking player requires a translator, then the translator will have to remove the ambiguity, which seems unfair.)

The announcement says the card has only been banned at Worlds. This is not a regular ban.