Ruling Cards that do not say "up to"...

[viewtifulme]

Some search, draw, and retrieval cards have the phrasing "up to," which let you perform an action up to a given amount. Collector is a good example of a card with this phrasing, as you can search your deck for 1, 2, 3, or even 0 basic Pokemon with it's effect.

On the other hand, cards like Fisherman, Energy Retrieval, and Flower Shop Lady do not say "up to," so I assumed you needed exactly 4 energies for Fisherman, exactly 3 energies AND 3 Pokemon for FSL, etc. However, when I was playing that new Pokemon TCG Online game, these cards were played with an "up to" phrasing. For example, my opponent used Energy Returner with only 3 energies in his discard as well as a Fisherman with only 2 energies in the discard.

Is the Online game wrong? What is the correct way to play these cards officially?

Thank you.

 

[AmishEskimoNinja]

This is very similar to your Typhlosion question. When a card doesn't say "up to" you must do as much as you can to satisfy the requirement of the card. For instance, with Fisherman it says to put 4 energy from discard into your hand. So if you only have three basic energy, you must take all three. This is not possible with cards that search from your deck, such as Pokemon collector, because you deck is not public knowledge. So your opponent would have no way of knowing if you had pulled all of the pokemon they could. Therefore deck searching cards tend to say "up to" in their text.

For future reference, the online game is full of bugs. And it will probably stay like that even after the official release. Don't decide anything official from it.

 

[crm103top08]

Also, just to add...
The way you worded your logic for collector gives the impression that you think you can search for 0 with "up to" cards. Just so you know, that's incorrect. You can fail the search, but "up to" does NOT include 0. It obviously doesn't matter in this example, but if we ever have another card like Claydol, that's useful to know.