You ban Trevenant, not Wally. Why can't they target the correct cards for bans that are a problem.
Ghetsis, Hex Maniac, and More Banned from Expanded Format!
- Thread starter Water Pokémon Master
- Start date
Then, I just agree to disagree with you on this particular topic.
Which won't help the next time Wally breaks something to the degree even TPCi cares. Generic Evolution acceleration tends to be an accident - by which I mean broken combo - waiting to happen. Trevenant BREAK decks already have to deal with a dangerous Weakness that just so happens to get punched by Zoroark-GX... who also provides draw power under the lock. They can't hit you with Item lock T1 anymore; at best it'll be a T2 lock (by which I mean the first turn of the player going second) so you'll always get one turn with your Items, assuming your deck doesn't brick.
So... yeah, they got the correct card. You can argue they should have also banned Trevenant, but even then wouldn't Dimension Valley be the next logical candidate? No Wally, no Dimension Valley, and are Trevenant BREAK decks even competitive anymore?
Oh, and @TuxedoBlack... sounds good.
I say this simply because the good Wally does for the game far outweighs the bad. They seem to admit that Treventant XY was the problem, since it was the only card to get a T1 lock in Expanded. I can see a argument for a Wally ban simply because it doesn't prevent the evolution to Pokemon-GX (which is my main issue with changing mechanics mid format/season. i.e. EX to GX) and if that is/was the deciding factor, then why not target Pokemon Fan Club or Ninja Boy since the same interaction exist? I don't disagree with the ban on Wally, but I disagree with the reasoning it was banned and that was the synergy with the Item Lock Trevenant, which leads to my next point, Hex Maniac. The card was used to help fight against Trevenant so you can get one turn to do something. I do think such a card needs to exist in Expanded so now we have two cards that were banned because of the existence of Trevenant so I identified that Trevenant is the problem since cards like Wally and Hex Maniac can exist in a balanced state without Trevenant.
Trevenant can waste a turn to Wally because they lock you out of all resources to get the game going, something they don't have to worry about. Trevenant can be just as fast as your turbo deck except they can use a supporter to lock you out of your turbo and still operate as normal. A deck going against Trevenant has to waste their supporter just to get their items for their turn, meaning you can't play something else to setup your board since you have to use your resources to recover the Hex Maniac to have a meaningful turn, not matter the quality of said turn.
I honestly though they would have banned Dimension Valley if they didn't want to ban Trevenant, which would have made the matchup easier but that would mean I expected them to make the right play. However, this is my problem with "can't" card effects because they are always broken. Now things are always more complicated since there will always been unintended card interactions (a problem with Expanded being so large), but there should be effort to monitor such cards that prevent people from doing things and as I have said, both Wally and Hex Maniac being cards I have identified being problems because of Trevenant. Banning Hex Maniac means more things like the World Finals where a Blastoise player was able to win both games in under 15 minutes. The only ban I truly agree with was Puzzle of Time.
I guess while we're on Dimension Valley, do you really think that card should exist in a format With Tapu Lele and Oricorio?
This exact thing. They didn't fix anything, they just tiptoed around the problems. Zoroark still gets to abuse Eggs all game, Trevenant might not get the T1 lock but it still gets 1 Energy Silent Fears and then gets to knock everything out with the Lele promo.
Hex existed in decks to deal with stupid unfun nonsense, and the fact that Zoroark abused it leads me to believe Zoroark itself is the problem (and honestly, it is).
The real problem is the Expanded format. The card pool is way too big for for the existence of all these powerful cards. They just need to ditch the format and let standard be the way the game is played for sanctioned events, like it should be. These cards had their time and now its time to move on.
Personally i think they shouldve banned Zoroark-Gx (Trevenant and Garbodor i hate that guy) but they dont have the guts to do that.
And Modern in MTG isn't? Or even more so, Legacy isn't? Or the fact that Yugioh doesn't rotate? As far as TCG formats go, I would think that expanded is somewhat mild.
How about they just have it rotate? If they instituted Expanded with the notion they would never need to rotate anything out, they were being foolish. I like the idea of a second format that allows cards from further back, I just don't think it absolutely has to go back to Black & White. XY-On is plenty far back.
Would XY-on change much anyway? It would rotate very few cards that were truly impactful. I can only think of Eggs, Ace Specs, and Colress outside of Ghetsis.
Well there goes the $20 I just spent on puzzle of time. Although not surprised by its ban as they allow easy access to any card in your discard....not just the supporters that vs seeker can retrieve. Unfortunately with a large number of cards to pick from in the expanded format.
I recall last summer a similar discussion surrounded Trevenant and Vileplume in wether they would be banned. Last year it was Forest that got banned....this year it is Wally (although why was it not banned last year in expanded format?)
I recall last summer a similar discussion surrounded Trevenant and Vileplume in wether they would be banned. Last year it was Forest that got banned....this year it is Wally (although why was it not banned last year in expanded format?)
They definitely wanted to nerf LonZoro big time because it plays 3 of those 4 cards so i mean this is good news for expanded. But the problem in my opinion was that they printed Zoroark-Gx, a supporter with one if not the best ability in the game, a massive 210 hp, can hit up to 210dmg in expanded. Very few cards can deal with that monster and this becomes a problem for both current standard and expanded. They could have honestly have given Zoroark-Gx something like 180hp instead of 210hp. This pokemon kills the games diversity and is the worse card ever printed.
There are a lot worse cards I can think of in the history of the game. Gardevoir SW, the SP Tools, the first EXs, Night March, Haymaker, and others. The only reason Zoroark did so much is because people did not think to counter it; they joined it. Buzzwole with Wide Lens destroys Zoro. Glaceon does too. Night March should be positive (idk too much on that one), but people just played straight Zoro.
If wally was so deserving of a ban why did it survive 3 years in standard and even get a reprint in generations why not just ban it as soon as it was released since it created t1 trev in may of 2015 and nothing was touched until now... two days before a new sets pre-release. Something tells me these bans have more to do with the incoming sets and influencing(ensuring the archetypes they want to be high level are high level and get rid of anything that could upse tthat) the new season than these cards actually being broken.
Night March sort of had a chance at times, but the hex maniac just destroyed all of your strats and with Karen/Red Card/210Hp (which means at least 9 nmarches in discard unless Marshadow, but then again Hex Maniac) etc, it has a really hard time against it
The reason is back in 2015-16 there was no ban list. And in 2017- early 2018 Trev wasn’t popular but it’s gained popularity recently
Banning Valley wouldn't make the matchup "easier." You'd still be under item lock which is the main draw of Trev decks in the first place. As for Valley and Lele/Oricorio, what does Valley even do for Lele (I assume we're talking about gx)? And Oricorio is usually the one taking advantage of the opponent's Valleys. This seems to be on the opponent to manage their own Valleys.
To expand on Latte's post, I too think that the Expanded format isn't really that big compared to other card game's eternal formats and I also think that it's being managed exceptionally well. The amount of banned cards in the Expanded format is pretty minimal and all seem to be done with a clear direction in mind. The Archeops and Forest bannings were to address the upcoming "evolution cards matter" format of Sun and Moon. These new bannings are mostly to promote interactive gameplay and to stop first-turn scoops due to not being able to play the game. I don't see what's wrong with either approach. If you need some context I invite you to play yu-gi-oh and mtg's Modern/Legacy formats and see just how many banned cards it's taken to keep those formats together (that is if you can afford either game
). I would argue that neither of the other games even have a clear direction besides "keep certain decks from dominating" and if they do then they're not communicating it very well. The fact that Pokemon's Expanded format can keep decks from completely dominating while having very clear goals is a testament to how well the format is being managed. As for my 2 cents on each card:
I'm gonna miss Ghetsis but playing him turn 1 is the dumbest way to win a game. Now I actually have to put in effort to beat Battle Compressor and Max Elixer decks *sigh*
I also agree with Wally being the right card to ban here. With it gone, Trev's item lock is as fast as Seismatoad's; you at least get your first turn to make your plays. At least with Wally gone people can still play Trev if they wish and it's even a fair deck now compared to its other item lock competition. It probably won't see too much play since Zoroark craps all over it so any complaints of Trev still existing are probably fruitless anyway. I don't see any new cards breaking Trev either since the unfair aspect of Trev was always the turn 1 lock and they've clearly learned their lesson with Wally.
Hex Maniac is a weird one for me. On one hand she allows you to get out of some sticky situations. On the other, getting Hexed 5 times is not a great feeling. It also reads "target bronzong player loses his/her next turn" and that's gotta feel bad as well. This one's probably a good call. If you wanna play ability lock then play it. There's still tons of other options, they just require more than one space in your deck.
I can't really comment on Puzzle since I'm not too experienced with the card but I can suggest that they should've banned eggs instead. Eggs is SUPER abusable with more strategies than Trade and makes discarding costs meaningless. Eggs really puts a hard cap on how powerful you can make abilities that require a discard since, no matter how many cards you need to discard, you can always discard that many eggs. I mean, is using Trade without eggs the end of the world? It's still a sick ability.
To expand on Latte's post, I too think that the Expanded format isn't really that big compared to other card game's eternal formats and I also think that it's being managed exceptionally well. The amount of banned cards in the Expanded format is pretty minimal and all seem to be done with a clear direction in mind. The Archeops and Forest bannings were to address the upcoming "evolution cards matter" format of Sun and Moon. These new bannings are mostly to promote interactive gameplay and to stop first-turn scoops due to not being able to play the game. I don't see what's wrong with either approach. If you need some context I invite you to play yu-gi-oh and mtg's Modern/Legacy formats and see just how many banned cards it's taken to keep those formats together (that is if you can afford either game
Black Lotus – Trainer
Item
Search your deck for up to 3 basic energy and attach them to your Pokémon in any way you like. Then, shuffle your deck.
You may play as many Item cards as you like during your turn (before your attack).