EXs: Ruining the Game?

silver116

silver116

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From time to time I run into people who believe that the rise of the fairly new EXs has ruined the game. A lot of people at my league feel that, because of the EXs, it chokes other more creative deck ideas that could be successful otherwise. What do you think? Personally I believe that the EX cards do choke out most deck ideas and maybe should restricted more. I know that they make the meta game what it is but does the game have to be such an expensive, dominating experience? Discuss!
 
RE: EX's: Ruining the Game?

The EX cards are actually very balanced. Most of them are about as powerful as your above-average Stage 2, but they have a little more HP and are easier to set up. However, in exchange for this, they give up two Prize cards. You're basically exchanging easy Prize exchanges for easy set up. The balance is admittedly not flawless, but it's better than it has been in the past.

The real problem lies, as it always has, in Pokémon Catcher. It lets the EX's and other Basic cards stop evolution cards from setting up the way they should be able to and makes ease of setup much more important than actually winning the 1-on-1 exchanges evolutions are usually good at. Once Catcher rotates, I'm sure everything will get better. :)
 
RE: EX's: Ruining the Game?

EXs are fine as long as they are balanced. But then we have Mewtwo EX who is just absurdly broken. Not so much anymore, but still, you know something is wrong with the game when you have to play Mewtwo in your deck.. or you lose. This really was the case for HGSS-DEX format :/

But that's all in the past now. I've taken a look at some of the new EXs we're getting and they don't seem broken at all. In fact most of them are pretty meh. If it stays that way I'm cool with EXs being in the game. If they print a new Mewtwo EX I'm not.
 
RE: EX's: Ruining the Game?

Mewtwo is (imo) among the top 10 best-designed cards ever. It's not broken because it counters itself. Sure, this means it needs to be in every deck, but so did Junk Arm, Smeargle, Collector/Dual Ball, PONT, N, etc. Does that make all these cards bad for the game too? No. Staples are a natural part of it.

What Mewtwo did was neutralize all your bad matchups. If you were playing against a card that beat your deck, you could just start the Mewtwo war and hope for the best. However, the player who started the war was almost always at a disadvantage, so metagaming was still a big part of the format - unless you were Eelektrik, you didn't want to have to start Mewtwo wars every game, so you wanted to pick a deck that was matched up well against the format. Furthermore, there was quite a bit of skill in the Mewtwo war. Should you start it or not? Should you drop extra Mewtwo, effectively locking yourself into the war, or should you hold onto them and risk getting N'd? When should you pull out of it for a turn or two? It required a lot more forethought and strategy than people give it credit for.

Was it perfectly designed? No. It ideally wouldn't have relied on DCE and it really shouldn't have been able to attack on the first turn or been so reliant on Energy acceleration. But it was still a great design.
 
RE: EX's: Ruining the Game?

Celebi23 said:
The EX cards are actually very balanced. Most of them are about as powerful as your above-average Stage 2, but they have a little more HP and are easier to set up. However, in exchange for this, they give up two Prize cards. You're basically exchanging easy Prize exchanges for easy set up. The balance is admittedly not flawless, but it's better than it has been in the past.

The real problem lies, as it always has, in Pokémon Catcher. It lets the EX's and other Basic cards stop evolution cards from setting up the way they should be able to and makes ease of setup much more important than actually winning the 1-on-1 exchanges evolutions are usually good at. Once Catcher rotates, I'm sure everything will get better. :)
Click to expand...

Pokemon Catcher is a catch-22. It singlehandedly removed 90% of the flips from the game mostly coming from Pokemon Reversal last format, but also right now it somewhat hurts the game. Granted we only have 1 more year with it (theoretically) but I don't think it is a game-ruining card.
 
RE: EX's: Ruining the Game?

It might be two if we rotate to NXD-on, Dark Explorers-on, or just stay at BW-on. Any of those three are more logical that Dragons-on because of the reprint Supporters we got in Dark Explorers and because most of our search is in those two sets. Of course, there are still a few sets we haven't seen from Japan yet so anything could happen. I wouldn't be surprised if there are two more years of it though.

The game would have evolved out of Reversal in time; none of the decks that won Worlds in any division had it and people finally figured out Twins can set Vileplume up. Then we got Gothitelle too. You really couldn't rely on Catcher or Reversal to win games, but with BW-on you can because there's no Twins and Mewtwo is less powerful.
 
RE: EX's: Ruining the Game?

I think that Exs can ruin the game a little bit. There's this guy at my league who hates Exs
and tries to make all his decks without Exs. he never gets successful unless he uses durant.
Sometimes.
 
RE: EX's: Ruining the Game?

I actually agree with the Catcher statement. Although I am just getting back into the TCG, that card alone seems to majorly speed up the format by forcing everyone to be on their toes.
 
RE: EX's: Ruining the Game?

In HGSS-On I think the EXs where dominant. But in BW-On I don't think so. With a slower format, Stage 2s like Garchomp and Empoleon can still easily compete.

One reason I think EXs will die down is because more and more things can OHKO them. There was the obvious Mewtwo with 9 energy, now we've got Rayquaza EX, that can OHKO EXs. And when Freeze Bolt and Cold Flare come out, there will be so many things that can OHKO EXs. Because of this, the EXs will lose the prize trade against so many things that they might not be the forerunners of the format anymore.

On the other hand, this would create a Triangle. Meaning when 180 damage+ Pokemon get popular, EXs will see less play. But when that happens, Speedier decks that don't use EXs will get popular and overpower the high damage Pokemon, meaning they will see less play. And when THAT happens, EXs will get popular because the high damage Pokemon will be gone, and so-on and so-on.
 
RE: EX's: Ruining the Game?

I find Mewtwo's fairly balanced as we stand however, during it's release in the Next Destinies format, it was IMO far too powerful. While I agree there is strategy in playing it, I personally felt the format to which is was released in was entirely dominated by Durant and Mewtwo wars. At a BR I attended, I faced nothing but Durant the whole day, and personally that really took the fun out of the event for me. I did really enjoy in playing in the HGSS to NV format though, I really felt there were a lot of creative decks being played ranging from Six Corners to Chandelure.

Back to the topic, I don't feel as we stand that EX's are ruining game personally. Every EX has it's downfall, it's more of a case of exploiting that. I don't even believe Pokemon Catcher is too much of a problem, but I am glad to see Junk Arm finally gone, despite the amount it's helped me in the past.
 
RE: EX's: Ruining the Game?

EX's don't ruin the game for me. Higher HP, Higher damaging attacks in exchange for double the prizes on K.O. Still sounds fair enough. Just think of it like Expert Belt. (I don't know if that's a good comparison, though.)
 
RE: EX's: Ruining the Game?

With EXs dominating the meta, they are kinda making people new at this go crazy. They look at reshiram EX and say it's the best card ever and it's better than mewtwo EX because it has 10 more health.
It can ruin the victory of a person new at this. They don't get why they are losing until they learn the truth.
 
RE: EX's: Ruining the Game?

People who think Reshiram-EX is better than Mewtwo-EX shouldn't be winning anyway, lol. The game is more new-player friendly than it has been in years.
 
RE: EX's: Ruining the Game?

It's not just EXs. Much of the reason I stopped playing was because of how stale the format was, and while that is apparently no longer the case, at the time I quit, the entire format was just cram as many high-HP basics into your deck as you could.

Coming from the point of view of someone who no longer plays but still understands the game, I hardly see how basics with 160+ HP could possibly be healthy for the format at all.

In addition, they're all boring. Really boring. They just do damage, there are no gimmicks or anything remotely interesting that I see in EXs.

Take what I say with a grain of salt since I don't play anymore, but that's what I saw when I played.
 
RE: EX's: Ruining the Game?

I dont remember gust of wind being as disrupting as pokemon catcher tho they do the same thing

I agree tho 180 hp ex's are lame. Everybody is using them which makes just about every stage 2 card nearly useless when someone can set up a 180hp ex to do big damage in just 2 turns. It would be nice to see the game go back to how it use to be where there was more strategy rather then just starting with a bunch of quickly powered high HP EX's or basics. Like for instance look at the original base set, a standard theme deck of now a days would destroy any deck you could have built back then. Its just sad how a 70 hp basic pokemon or stage one gets killed to no end now a days
 
RE: EX's: Ruining the Game?

Guys, put it this way, knocking out an EX is like KOing two 90HP super attackers. That's not too hard. The problem in the format (which Celebi23 stated) is actually in the Items, namely, Pokemon Catcher, nothing's worse than this card, it has the same effect as the old Gust of Wind card, but Gust of Wind wasn't as good because of Computer Search and the fact that there weren't Supporters, Catcher is just broken, when you play a Juniper, you take a little bit over 10% of your deck, and then prizes lowers the number of cards, so does the number of Pokemon on your side of the field so it becomes about 15%, then Catcher is really easy to pull out. The system just doesn't work well.
Basically, EXs actually are good for the game, where the problem lies in the I/S/S.
 
RE: EX's: Ruining the Game?

Ex Pokémon in third gen didn't have such gargantual HP. There were quite a bunch of decks that didn't run exs at all. I see dozens of cool cards that aren't playable simply because 'they are Stage 2'. Gardevoir, Blaziken, Gothitelle. They're deemed too slow to catch up with the format. I'd understand if they had the same HP as the bulkiest Stage 1. Heck, even regular legendary Pokémon like Zekrom with 130 HP seem too much when you look at Reuniclus, wich is an AWESOME card and is stuck with its 90.
SPs... and now these EX Pokémon. Why can't we have a format with room for variety?
 
RE: EX's: Ruining the Game?

My only complaint about EX's is that they're making the game a bit more expensive than how decks were in previous formats especially with Pokemon Catcher being the staple it is going for $20 a piece making it hard for budget competitive decks to compete.
 
RE: EX's: Ruining the Game?

Card Slinger J said:
My only complaint about EX's is that they're making the game a bit more expensive than how decks were in previous formats especially with Pokemon Catcher being the staple it is going for $20 a piece making it hard for budget competitive decks to compete.
Click to expand...
I have yet to see a catcher going for 20$
Competive decks will always be expensive. Remember Luxray GL Lv.X? or Uxie/claydol before they were reprinted? Didn't Lugia EX go for loads of money?
 
RE: EX's: Ruining the Game?

I don't think EX's are ruining the game at all. Whoever came up with the idea of FA cards is a genius IMO. It gives people not willing to spend double the money a chance to have the EX's, but it gives collectors and people who like to pimp out their decks something to drool over. EX's also add a ton of skill into the game, which is good.
 
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