I've seen a lot of videos mention that Japan plays from XY onwards as opposed to our current Standard rotation. I was curious why this is as well as how a tournament like Worlds work. Is it not a bit unfair to host a tournament in a format they don't regularly participate in?
Discussion American Standard vs Japanese
- Thread starter Fool Hardy
- Start date
The world format only allows cards that every region has in their standard format. That basically limits it to the US format minus any promos that didn't make it to other regions. By virtue of the fact that regions have different standard formats at all it was going to be unfair to someone but this way it doesn't force players to deal with cards they never play against or are forced to get cards for a single tournament.
As for why Japan has a different format at all I don't know. It's most likely just run by a different people who organize the TCG differently or is just carryover from when the western version of the game was run by WotC. They have a completely different tournament structure too and booster pack releases as well.
As for why Japan has a different format at all I don't know. It's most likely just run by a different people who organize the TCG differently or is just carryover from when the western version of the game was run by WotC. They have a completely different tournament structure too and booster pack releases as well.
Not really unfair, since all international standard cards are by definition legal in Japanese standard. If you're playing at a high enough level to get into worlds, the differences between our formats aren't that hard to adapt to. Some international players make it to worlds based on performance in expanded events, and expanded is functionally almost identical to JP standard with the addition of a few key cards like lasers, PLF eggs and colress.
I actually hope they take this year's rotation as an opportunity to synchronize our formats, since we will both likely be moving to SM-on and could be painlessly adjusted to a simultaneous rotation schedule, though it would be hard to do this on a set by set basis because Japan's releases are structured differently, around more frequent releases of smaller sets. The Japanese approach, taking whole blocks as meant to be played together, makes more sense to me than rotating on a set by set basis which kind of arbitrarily cuts us off from important cards, like when we lost tool removal for a few months early last season before Guardians was printed.
I actually hope they take this year's rotation as an opportunity to synchronize our formats, since we will both likely be moving to SM-on and could be painlessly adjusted to a simultaneous rotation schedule, though it would be hard to do this on a set by set basis because Japan's releases are structured differently, around more frequent releases of smaller sets. The Japanese approach, taking whole blocks as meant to be played together, makes more sense to me than rotating on a set by set basis which kind of arbitrarily cuts us off from important cards, like when we lost tool removal for a few months early last season before Guardians was printed.