Its been some time Ive been considering retiring from this game.
I think the time has arrived.
When BW came out, I ranted about basically every change they introduced, from not being able to trade items to 3 Abilities. But this is even worse, because I actually care about the TCG.
At first glance, I thought it was gonna be awesome. Prof. Oak as supporter? Ingenious. But then I realized that they renamed Supporters to Trainers again (adding that little Suporter word on the top right part). That's a detail, but I knew that there was something behind it - they had made Supporters very clear to prevent confusion, and now they changed it again?
As I scrolled down, I found the new rules post. 'Trainers and Supporters allowed on first turn'; ok, that's decent. We are moving back to Base Set, it seems; first DCE, now this. Auto-discarding Supporters and Plus Power is simply person - will just make things harder for judges, you'll always have to remember which one you used for Detour and Buck's Training, and does not improve the game in any way. Basically, pointless.
'Abilities' replacing Poké-Powers and Poké-Bodies. Why do this? They are replacing classic mechanics (they date back from e-Expedition days) with a new one that is essentially the same, just phrased into a single word. What were they thinking?! What's the benefit from it? To make the game clearer? I thought the distinction from Powers and Bodies was also very clear - the manual explains it in deep and the very way they are phrased leaves no doubt. Moreover, great cards from older sets (including, let's forget not, Gengar SF, Manectric PT and Umbreon UD) will become rather useless with Powers and Bodies gone. Just an excuse to 'develop' the game and make things fresh.
That's not the way a game develops. They should improve older concepts, especially those who work well like Powers and Bodies, and focus on making the game more pleasant to all.
But it got worse.
Great Ball and Rare Candy were errata'ed. Let me start by saying Im a big fan of Great Ball. I always liked its speed, its sure-fire ability to get a Basic without wasting a Roseanne or Collector. But they had to change it, and worse, change it to an effect that already existed, and that we knew as Master Ball - another card thats been around, if Im not mistaken, since the GYM days. That means that not only Great Ball is arguably worse (Ive seen many more decks run Great Ball than Master Ball), but they will also have to errata Master Ball! And if they errata it to give Great Ball's effect, then they should get a prize for supreme dumbness.
And finnally, there's nothing to be said about Rare Candy that wasnt said before. Stage 2 decks have been taking huge blows left and right: the rise of SPs, loss of Claydol (and basicaly loss of any reliable engine - Uxie X isnt reliable enough)... Now they lost the BEST card they had in their arsenal. No, we lost the best card in the GAME. Rare Candy is what makes the game competitive. The whole purpose of using Rare Candy is to avoid waiting to evolve your Pokemon, not to make you wait anyway. The greater benefit always was to auto evolve and avoid leaving a weak basic in your Bench (think Jumpluff), with the added bonus of automatically getting a Stage 2. Stage 2 decks, which in my humble opinion should be the majority of the metagame (that's how the effing game was built to be), have lost their biggest asset to their already hampered speed. All there's left to them, in matters of quick evolution, is the already standard (and all times favorite) Broken Time-Space.
Or are they errata'ing that too?