First Teaser Info for S6 'Silver Lance' and 'Jet-Black Spirit!'
- Thread starter Water Pokémon Master
- Start date
N's Rhyperior
Aspiring Trainer
- Ribombee - bland. 3 Geodudes
- Lucky Energy - heck, even the soon-to-be-rotated Draw Energy is superior than this one. Without the draw thing, it's just a special energy card that produces 1 C energy, not good. Porygon-Z won't help you since it's going to rotate as well. 3 Geodudes
All of these would be neat cards in a Limited format, but Pokemon don't really support that, do they?
Lumineon UNM is back, but for 1 energy instead of 2.
Yes how painful and insufferable it must be to watch a card game slowly develop and grow out of what was once a dull and predictable swamp of a Tag Team 4-turn format, into an incredibly diverse and healthy metagame, where a vast number of decks can shine, how tragic.
O' but alas, such a pity this is, there is no way that these 1 prized cards are steadily getting better, it's not like they saw how garbage Lumineon was and thought to make it slightly stronger (despite still being weak), it's not like they printed monsters like Passimian and Salazzle recently, and even Mr Rime, who turned out to be unironically viable despite the meme potential. Let us forget the Cresselia and the Intelleon and the Runerigus and mini-Urshifus and Seviper and Zangoose and even the Gengar from 2 days ago, which are completely insufferable bulk, right?
They're finally trying with the designs of these cards. We see glimmers of creativity every now and then. Ribombee sucks, sure, but it's better than Lumineon, so at least there's an intent to improve upon garbage. The 'lack of patience' is justified when they print crap like Accelgor from Darkness Ablaze. Not with the recent reveals. Zarude has a niche, Gengar's ability is bonkers good. There is something to look forward to.. Still far from the glory days of old, no doubt about it. But they're getting better, and it's awesome to watch.
Yes how painful and insufferable it must be to watch a card game slowly develop and grow out of what was once a dull and predictable swamp of a Tag Team 4-turn format, into an incredibly diverse and healthy metagame, where a vast number of decks can shine, how tragic.
O' but alas, such a pity this is, there is no way that these 1 prized cards are steadily getting better, it's not like they saw how garbage Lumineon was and thought to make it slightly stronger (despite still being weak), it's not like they printed monsters like Passimian and Salazzle recently, and even Mr Rime, who turned out to be unironically viable despite the meme potential. Let us forget the Cresselia and the Intelleon and the Runerigus and mini-Urshifus and Seviper and Zangoose and even the Gengar from 2 days ago, which are completely insufferable bulk, right?
They're finally trying with the designs of these cards. We see glimmers of creativity every now and then. Ribombee sucks, sure, but it's better than Lumineon, so at least there's an intent to improve upon garbage. The 'lack of patience' is justified when they print crap like Accelgor from Darkness Ablaze. Not with the recent reveals. Zarude has a niche, Gengar's ability is bonkers good. There is something to look forward to.. Still far from the glory days of old, no doubt about it. But they're getting better, and it's awesome to watch.
I really wish that they would bring back galaxy foil. The art for the current cards are amazing, they would really look nice on galaxy foil.
There's still going to be a good 2 months between when these release and rotation, so there might be some fun to be had there still.
I was waiting for a Rimbombee card for some reason
Not much to say about the cards, except that they're kinda cute, specially the energy. Isn't it cute? Don't you wanna attach it to a galarian Ponyta or something?
You want to know why I’m excited about the new Ribombee? Now that we have four Ribombee, it is finally playable as an evolution line in cubes! (Even though we still have to double up on Cutifly.)
The line is also a perfect line for several different power levels! Surely at least more seasoned cubers realize that the more Fairy type cube lines get filled in, the easier it becomes to include them with the other eight types in cubes? Not to mention Ribombee’s power is suited for both mid AND high due to the disruptive and consistency functions of the line.
The line is also a perfect line for several different power levels! Surely at least more seasoned cubers realize that the more Fairy type cube lines get filled in, the easier it becomes to include them with the other eight types in cubes? Not to mention Ribombee’s power is suited for both mid AND high due to the disruptive and consistency functions of the line.
You’re right, there are so many more single prize decks in the official format! You’ve also forgotten to mention existing stall decks (such as Omastar and Cradily), which is understandable since they have been in use for a long time but relatively far in the background. And we also have decks like Decidueye and Obstagoon, Mad Party, Spiritomb and Donphan, Altaria and Donphan, Whimsicott, Mad Party, Blacephalon, and several other budget strategies that I can’t disclose because they are highly unusual budget strategies that I learned about from another website. And if budget is your main concern, Togekiss VMAX is arguably LESS expensive than most single prize decks because you don’t need any Crobat V or Dedenne GX or Jirachi Amazing Rare and because of how cheap the main Pokémon themselves are for highly playable V’s (although I’m not sure how viable the archetype is in standard.)
i presume lucky energy has the (even if this pokemon is knocked out) clause?
could be a nice card for togekiss i guess?
could be a nice card for togekiss i guess?
In the Single-Prize format:
I love the idea of Rimbombee being used with RCL Clefable to annoy the everliving heck out of your opponent.
Lucky Energy is a decent replacement for Draw Energy in BTS Indeedee Hand Kinesis decks when Draw Energy rotates.
I love the idea of Rimbombee being used with RCL Clefable to annoy the everliving heck out of your opponent.
Lucky Energy is a decent replacement for Draw Energy in BTS Indeedee Hand Kinesis decks when Draw Energy rotates.
Please, you and the others upvoting your comment; let's not kid ourselves. Half of the "amazing" single-prize Pokemon you named are exclusively designed to support V-Max wincons. Passimian, Cresselia and Inteleon are simply extra cogs into what makes their respective decks more powerful, not the centerpiece. I will give you Mr. Rime and Salazzle, but stuff like Seviper and Zangoose is the BARE minimum of viability a card should have.
Nevermind the fact that you're still not adressing the elephant in the room; stage 2s. I won't praise TPCi for moving away from the terrible TEU-on format, it was entirely their own fault to print ADP and gatekeep single-prizers for two years. It's also their own choice to keep printing stage 2s with pathetic attacks, abilities and stats; anyone with a basic sense of game design would probably understand that higher investment = higher rewards. Not in the backwards world of the Pokemon TCG, tho, where big basics will have effects even better than stage 2s. A healthy pokemon format has a different definition according to everyone, but one of the most common characteristics is having viable stage 2s. And until that happens, TPCi doesn't deserve any praise.
“Doesn’t deserve ANY praise” is too harsh and too much of a blanket statement. You mean to say that the amazing card artwork we’ve been getting isn’t something praiseworthy? Also, I’m not saying that that the format right now is reasonably balanced, and I don’t think The Fish was saying so either, but hey, we’ve gone from a format where Blacephalon is the only viable single prizer to a format with several good single prize decks and a healthy seasoning of single prize techs for non single prize decks, plus when ADP rotated out the format should be prime for a few more single prize decks to rise to the forefront, even if the rest of the big basics and VMAX’s gate keep the rest of the single prizers. So it’s not the worst case scenario, even if it’s not the best case.
If I want to praise the artwork I will directly praise the artist or even go to twitter/pixiv and send them a comment. Companies are not people, so proper criticism of their trashy choices can never be "harsh". The bulk of bad choices that led to the problems with distribution, the format and balance as a whole are done by TPCi. I won't praise moving away from this terrible format when the only reason we are doing so is because of rotation, instead of TPCi reprinting Pokémon Ranger or like, doing ANYTHING to cauterize the wound instead of letting it fester for 2 years because scalpers are buying every card, and they think that means the game is doing well.
It is not clear to me why they do this, but I do have a theory.
Whether it's common knowledge that arose from a shared assumption or actually has basis in fact, I've always taken it as given that when the original meta of Base era all those years ago ended up being dominated by Haymaker (Hitmonchan/Electabuzz/Scyther/Magmar/et al.) it was a pure accident, and they rallied enough with Stage 2s. NG Sneasel was an accidental return to Haymaker format's prominence because they underestimated how easy it would be to power up its Beat Up attack despite Darkness Energy being limited to 4-per-deck at the time (Rainbow Energy boosting it to 8 despite the damage counter drawback)..
Gen III brought back Haymaker again with the 2-prize trade-off (Electabuzz ex, Magmar ex, Hitmonchan ex, Mewtwo ex spiritual reprints with the rule box update) and then the format went on to be very supportive of evolved Pokémon-ex instead.
Gen IV; Pokémon-SP were a viable 'engine' with a ton of supports, but just as many counters in the format, and the 'super shiny' Lv.X cards of the block were de facto evolution cards. I remember a very dynamic, if unpopular, shift back and forth from set to set as to whether evolution cards were going to be viable or if big basics were going to snap up victory from the jaws of defeat. I think it settled on a happy medium of Basic Lv.Xs being the format staples, if it seemed unenjoyable to watch TPCi seem to be unwilling to 'commit' to any given direction for those who wanted to know what cards they needed to buy to stay top-tier. (I have always been a collector first so by all means correct me if I am wrong.)
I think(???) Gen V was when they committed to the idea of big basics as the direction they wanted to go in. Or maybe that's when the power creep started to get a little bit away from them. Gen VI sort of returned to a Lv.X-y thing insofar as how it handled Mega Pokémon, but resigned itself to Basic+Mega-EX being the longest evolution chain a format could support, vs. M Charizard-EX being something you played on top of a Stage 2 Charizard. I don't know what to say about BREAKs, I never felt they were sincerely lined up to take on Mega-EXes.
Gen VII I think ended up swinging about wildly - the reintroduction of the old ex dynamic vs the new -EX dynamic was, I think, sincere, but the rotation dictated they had to compete against old Mega-EXes, so power creep dictated a violent shift back to big basics? And then Tag Team GX I take it was meant to be a genuine experiment and one that started out... okay... but then got ridiculous with ADP.
There is a perpetual power creep dictated here where big basics are needed to counter the last era's big basics until they rotate out, but then when Gen VII's big basics rotate out, the latter half of Gen VIII will need big basics to counter the big basics of the first half of Gen VIII.
Perhaps we will see TPCI get creative with regulation marks to somehow resolve this. e.g. 'Regulation Mark D cards without a rule box are still in rotation, but Regulation D with rule box are rotated out at the same time as Regulation C', or maybe we may start to see overpowered cards printed with a previous block's regulation mark even if it is their first appearance, just to put a timer on their shelf-life and finally end this power creep.
Would this be unpopular? Is TPCI worried about the response?
Yeah of course you have a point, and I agree that we're faaaar from the ideal scenario. I won't comment on the physical acquisition of cards and boxes, since I haven't purchased a sealed English Pokemon product for over 6 months now, but that's another COVID related story.
Rotation being the one thing that is opening the gates for 1 prizers is ridiculous for sure, and the lack of Pokemon Ranger reprint is bizarre. I'm just thankful that there's more to the format than Tag Teams now - Vs and Vmaxs at least need to evolve, which takes time and can be exploited (side note- partly why Zacian is an unbelievably stupid card design). The fact that there's more hope for 1 prizers than there ever has been in the last few years is undeniable. I've finally returned to Standard since BTS dropped on PTCGO from playing Expanded for ages, and it's been a blast. Ultimately (se what I did there) games against ADP while playing RimeJuggler, Salazzle, or Mad Party aren't the best, but it's eons better than what it was during the 'end of Sun and Moon +SWSH base' era. It's not all bad, and I understand that rewarding the bare minimum is silly and that's not my point. The bare minimum was the Team Up to Rebel clash bit. The bare minimum was before Darkness Ablaze gave us Mad Party, and before BTS gave us the a host of 1 prizer decks. Now it's no longer the same. Stuff is evolving.
In a BTS format I can now unironically have fun playing PTCGO, and I ONLY play 1 prizer decks. There is hope that it gets better and stage 2s become viable. The fact that the new Kingdra and Orbeetle (BST) can 'function' despite being stage 2s is a ray of light in an otherwise dark tunnel (I kid you not - Evomancy Orbeetle + Kingdra actually works, it's absurd). It's not the ideal, absolutely not. But it works. That for me is enough. I can't speak for you - of course I can't, that would be rude. Ultimately my aim isn't to convince you - your experience differs from mine, but I can and will argue that our good friend zzzeraora's evident desire to 'clown and rail' me isn't fully justified.
Consider me 'clowned on and railed' then. I'm truly blessed
1. It was I who mentioned art.
2. You literally just called the person with the username “The Fish” and the profile photo of a Trapinch a Bidoof.
3. Well, I suppose it would be weird if The Pokémon Company International ran a format with no cards.
2. You literally just called the person with the username “The Fish” and the profile photo of a Trapinch a Bidoof.
3. Well, I suppose it would be weird if The Pokémon Company International ran a format with no cards.
One big problem with the power creep is that while stage twos have powercreeped NFE basics and stage ones really have not. Just like in Base Set, the vast majority of unevolved basics only do between 10-30 damage, with the only difference being the average HP has increased from ~40 to ~60. Compare that to basic Vs, where even the ones that evolve into Vmaxes can do decent damage. This makes stage twos complete dead weight until they are fully evolved, and if they can make their preevolutions less crappy, it might alleviate the problem somewhat.
A new story has just been posted to PokéBeach's front page:
Posts you make after this point will immediately appear on the front page and vice versa. Discuss!
Posts you make after this point will immediately appear on the front page and vice versa. Discuss!