Scoop Up Net Banned in Japan!

By: Water Pokémon Master · Posted Posted onOct 24, 2023 at 10:37 PM · 66 Comments

Creatures has announced Scoop Up Net from Rebel Clash will be banned from their Expanded tournaments starting this Friday, October 27th.

They did not give an official explanation for the ban. However, the card made it easy to scoop up Pokemon ex. At the time the card was created, it didn’t work on Pokemon V and Pokemon-GX, but Pokemon ex weren’t in Expanded yet. It was also problematic with older Pokemon-EX, but Creatures banned Shaymin-EX from Roaring Skies instead.

It’s likely the ban will come to the international TCG like previous bans. However, TPCi has not allowed Premier Events to be sanctioned under the Expanded format since before Covid. This has left players outside of Japan feeling like the format has been abandoned. Even Pokemon TCG Live only supports a half-baked, incomplete version of the format.

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Donk decks become significantly worse (yay!) but Jirachi EX loses one of its only niches, and I'd argue that was probably one of the only good EXs we had (besides randy Megas that Mewthree played I guess).

Gethbert said:
Question to everyone: what would we have to ban from expanded to make it fun and/or balanced.
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If they don't ban it I think they would at least have to change the way its ability works from an animation standpoint, because watching someone activate Unown from Ancient Origins. And then draw a card. And then discard Unown. And then do that again with a second Unown. And then Rescue Carrier those Unowns back into the hand. And then do that whole process again 10 more times was physically aging me by several years.

Maybe ADP too? It's not the MOST op thing out there and there are ways to counter it but like. I don't think people should be forced to run otherwise useless cards like Pokemon Ranger because of ONE stupid card that shouldn't have been printed.
 
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axelfure said:
Who’s playing expanded? The format is so broken and unfun to play.
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Expanded is an excellent format for you to take advantage of your pool of rotated cards, but I agree with you. Expanded became a broken format, unfortunately.

Perhaps the solution is to create a new "Moderna Expanded" format, starting with Sun & Moon, preferably without Tag Team Pokémon GX (I hate this mechanic, btw).
 
axelfure said:
Who’s playing expanded? The format is so broken and unfun to play.
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I am, it is by far my favorite format to play in the game.
Gethbert said:
Question to everyone: what would we have to ban from expanded to make it fun and/or balanced.
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the main cards that have been causing egregious degeneracy for the last few years are:

Gengar & Mimikyu-GX (Horror House GX is an extremely unfair turn 1 attack that puts an opposing player at a strong immediate disadvantage that is difficult to come back from)
Electrode-GX (being able to use this on Vs and exs is way too strong, there's a particularly degenerate combo with Dialga VSTAR that can take all six prizes in effectively one turn if done right)
Lugia VSTAR (just way too good, combos too well with Archeops/Double Dragon Energy)
RoboSub/Lillie's Poke Doll (these do not need banned exactly, but it is a bit absurd that you can run both of these together. I'd like a special rule that forbids players from running both cards in the same deck)

Scoop Up Net is a good call, it was gonna be real bad with Iron Valiant-ex and was already a problem with donk and stall decks. All this card really needed was to exclude all Rule Box Pokemon, so maybe we'll get a reprint of it with that errata in the future.
 
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If you want to fix expanded, without defeating the purpose of expanded, a restricted list is the way to go.
Nintenfreak said:
I'd really like a no-rule boxes format to be honest.
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GLC is not your only option. The equivalent to Magic's "Pauper" format in Pokémon uses anything R and under (so no rule boxes, no special trainers, nothing with a silver star). I don't use RB in any decks I build these days.
 
It makes a lot of sense. It wasn't built with ex's in mind. Hell even before ex's, you had stuff like Shaymin EX. Shame that some lesser decks will suffer... hopefully one day we get an item card that bounces non-rulebox Pokemon, to be more futureproof while still allowing some coming into play effects to thrive.
 
Couldnt they just errata it to include the rule box text we have today?
 
Here’s a breakdown of why Net was not the correct ban and why this is problematic:


To summarize, Japan focusing on FTK on not the other real issues with the format says a lot about where their priorities are and the blatant bias towards Lugia VSTAR / Regidrago VSTAR. FTK is far and near from being problematic because not only is it a deck you don’t win tournaments with, but it exists strictly for ladder grinding. For whatever reason Japan plays it like it’s a competitive deck when it’s not.
 
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