Discussion Does Dragon Need a Basic Energy Type?

signofzeta said:
It's all fairy's fault. Making dragons weak to fairy (in the TCG)? A mistake. Introducing fairy energy rather than making them use an existing energy type? Another mistake. The whole fairy thing is one huge mistake. Mistake isn't even the right word. It needs more words. Boneheaded decision is more like it.
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This ties into something I was getting at earlier.

The TCG suffers for its own sins and those of the video games. Poké-Bodies and Poké-Powers were a good split but that had to go away for Abilities, which feel like a step back. The Fairy-Type has to be added because the video games added it. Same for Mega Evolutions.

This also gets back to how x2 Weaknes is just broken. The TCG can handle damage addition and subtraction, but multipliers are too much.
 
Otaku said:
This ties into something I was getting at earlier.

The TCG suffers for its own sins and those of the video games. Poké-Bodies and Poké-Powers were a good split but that had to go away for Abilities, which feel like a step back. The Fairy-Type has to be added because the video games added it. Same for Mega Evolutions.

This also gets back to how x2 Weaknes is just broken. The TCG can handle damage addition and subtraction, but multipliers are too much.
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It's as if after all these years, they couldn't figure out how to make two different pokemon types in the TCG use the same energy, or to do what Magic the Gathering does, give specific gameplay strengths and weaknesses all the way down to the common rarity cards.

At least in Pokemon TCG, specific gameplay strengths and weaknesses should at least be shown in the uncommon rarity or higher, and what strengths one type might have should never ever be featured in another type. A fire type should never ever poison a pokemon, and a water type should never ever make opponents discard cards. Coin flip combo attack should be exclusive to fighting types.
 
signofzeta said:
It's as if after all these years, they couldn't figure out how to make two different pokemon types in the TCG use the same energy, or to do what Magic the Gathering does, give specific gameplay strengths and weaknesses all the way down to the common rarity cards.

At least in Pokemon TCG, specific gameplay strengths and weaknesses should at least be shown in the uncommon rarity or higher, and what strengths one type might have should never ever be featured in another type. A fire type should never ever poison a pokemon, and a water type should never ever make opponents discard cards. Coin flip combo attack should be exclusive to fighting types.
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Slight disagreement; I won't say "never". Totally denying an aspect doesn't usually make sense in Pokémon, either from balance or from a flavor perspective. What does matter if the focus: the handful of Fire-Types that can, for example, Poison, should be quite low and reflect those of the source material. Now, if they need to - for a time - segretage the effects in such a manner, go ahead. Though I also was hoping "Burn" was gone (since it had been absent for so long) and they'd just use Poison to reflect ongoing damage status effects (like Poison or Burn). Not sure why Water shouldn't discard; seems like a nice flavor for the Ice-Type.

But making sure some Types focus (and are a bit better) at a particular thing than others? Makes sense to me.
 
Just going to say I would love a Basic Colorless Energy in the game, just for pure aesthetics alone. It is also to my knowledge that MtG just added Colorless to their creature types and Mana card. I know people don't want to admit it but colorless is a Pokemon type in the tcg.

If people want the TCG to be more like the VG, then we should want it done right. The Dragon type (as well as Fairy) was fine as the Colorless type, just like Fighting/Ground/Rock types are grouped into the Fighting type.
 
crystal_pidgeot said:
If people want the TCG to be more like the VG, then we should want it done right. The Dragon type (as well as Fairy) was fine as the Colorless type, just like Fighting/Ground/Rock types are grouped into the Fighting type.
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It was a while ago, but I did some playing around with the numbers, trying to see what Types worked best together. Spefically, I looked out how "off" a pairing was in the various Type-matching. I only matched up against single-Type pairings, so I really need to go back and look at Dual-Types, but I doubt it would change this aspect; putting any three Types together creates too much deviation from the video game relationships.

Just for lols, here was the Type spread I came up with... but I don't think I tested to see if I could eliminate Types. It just occurred to me we might be able to mix Fairy with Dragon for "Mythical" Type Pokémon...

Colorless = Normal/Flying
Darkness = Dark/Poison
Dragon = Dragon
Fairy = Fairy
Fighting = Fight/Ground
Fire = Fire
Grass = Bug/Grass
Lightning = Electric
Metal = Rock/Steel
Psychic = Ghost/Psychic
Water = Ice/Water
 
Otaku said:
Slight disagreement; I won't say "never". Totally denying an aspect doesn't usually make sense in Pokémon, either from balance or from a flavor perspective. What does matter if the focus: the handful of Fire-Types that can, for example, Poison, should be quite low and reflect those of the source material. Now, if they need to - for a time - segretage the effects in such a manner, go ahead. Though I also was hoping "Burn" was gone (since it had been absent for so long) and they'd just use Poison to reflect ongoing damage status effects (like Poison or Burn). Not sure why Water shouldn't discard; seems like a nice flavor for the Ice-Type.

But making sure some Types focus (and are a bit better) at a particular thing than others? Makes sense to me.
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Discarding opponent's card is Darkness's domain, and no other type should tread into it. What I'm saying is the rulebook has descriptions of what each type is supposed to be good at, but in reality, these descriptions are loosely followed, and I wish that these type descriptions are more strict. It makes it so that it is impossible to have a deck that does multiple things while running one type of energy.

From the rulebook:

Grass heals and poisons
Fire does high damage at expense of discarding energy, and burns
Water moves opponent's pokemon around
Lightning recycles energy from discard pile and paralyzes
Psychic poisons, paralyzes, and sleeps
Fighting has coin flip combo attacks
Darkness discards opponent's cards
Metal has high HP and absorbs attack
Fairy messes with opponent's attack

Another thing I would like to see is to have every set release the same number of pokemon cards that use a specific energy type.

crystal_pidgeot said:
Just going to say I would love a Basic Colorless Energy in the game, just for pure aesthetics alone. It is also to my knowledge that MtG just added Colorless to their creature types and Mana card. I know people don't want to admit it but colorless is a Pokemon type in the tcg.

If people want the TCG to be more like the VG, then we should want it done right. The Dragon type (as well as Fairy) was fine as the Colorless type, just like Fighting/Ground/Rock types are grouped into the Fighting type.
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In MTG, "wastes", the basic land card that provides colorless mana is a one set deal. MTG still has the typical Plains, Island, Swamp, Mountain, and Forest basic lands.

What Pokemon TCG should have had is all 18 pokemon types in the TCG, and only 6 or 8 energy types. If 8 energy types, 2 types from the video games share an energy type, thus making 8 groups of 2, which equals 16. Normals would be colorless, and Dragons would be multi energy. It's as if they couldn't think that it was possible to have 2 types share the same energy, and I don't mean how water and ice are under the water type in the TCG. I mean actual ice type cards, but they use water energy, or should I say blue energy. If 2 types share the same energy, the cards would be different shades of the same color.
 
signofzeta said:
Discarding opponent's card is Darkness's domain, and no other type should tread into it. What I'm saying is the rulebook has descriptions of what each type is supposed to be good at, but in reality, these descriptions are loosely followed, and I wish that these type descriptions are more strict. It makes it so that it is impossible to have a deck that does multiple things while running one type of energy.

From the rulebook:

Grass heals and poisons
Fire does high damage at expense of discarding energy, and burns
Water moves opponent's pokemon around
Lightning recycles energy from discard pile and paralyzes
Psychic poisons, paralyzes, and sleeps
Fighting has coin flip combo attacks
Darkness discards opponent's cards
Metal has high HP and absorbs attack
Fairy messes with opponent's attack

Another thing I would like to see is to have every set release the same number of pokemon cards that use a specific energy type.



In MTG, "wastes", the basic land card that provides colorless mana is a one set deal. MTG still has the typical Plains, Island, Swamp, Mountain, and Forest basic lands.

What Pokemon TCG should have had is all 18 pokemon types in the TCG, and only 6 or 8 energy types. If 8 energy types, 2 types from the video games share an energy type, thus making 8 groups of 2, which equals 16. Normals would be colorless, and Dragons would be multi energy. It's as if they couldn't think that it was possible to have 2 types share the same energy, and I don't mean how water and ice are under the water type in the TCG. I mean actual ice type cards, but they use water energy, or should I say blue energy. If 2 types share the same energy, the cards would be different shades of the same color.
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I can agree with that. Each type should have its own type while using the current Energy types. Having all the types in the game makes weaknesses more interesting.

Otaku said:
It was a while ago, but I did some playing around with the numbers, trying to see what Types worked best together. Spefically, I looked out how "off" a pairing was in the various Type-matching. I only matched up against single-Type pairings, so I really need to go back and look at Dual-Types, but I doubt it would change this aspect; putting any three Types together creates too much deviation from the video game relationships.

Just for lols, here was the Type spread I came up with... but I don't think I tested to see if I could eliminate Types. It just occurred to me we might be able to mix Fairy with Dragon for "Mythical" Type Pokémon...

Colorless = Normal/Flying
Darkness = Dark/Poison
Dragon = Dragon
Fairy = Fairy
Fighting = Fight/Ground
Fire = Fire
Grass = Bug/Grass
Lightning = Electric
Metal = Rock/Steel
Psychic = Ghost/Psychic
Water = Ice/Water
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It looks good but where do we cut off at? Why should the Flying type be grouped with the Normal type despite having nothing in common. Had the Bird type been a thing (it was supposed to be the counterpart to the Bug type as it is to Grass), they would be Bird/Flying and not Normal/Flying.

Your Mythical type does have me interested though and I can see both Dragon and Fairy as that type.
 
crystal_pidgeot said:
It looks good but where do we cut off at? Why should the Flying type be grouped with the Normal type despite having nothing in common. Had the Bird type been a thing (it was supposed to be the counterpart to the Bug type as it is to Grass), they would be Bird/Flying and not Normal/Flying.

Your Mythical type does have me interested though and I can see both Dragon and Fairy as that type.
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When I came up with those pairings, I assumed I had to neither increase or decrease the total number of TCG Types. I also wanted to avoid any tripling up, because that seemed to increase the amount of deviance. So when I tried pairing up the Flying-Type with every other Type, the least amount of deviation occurred when keeping it with the Normal-Type. Which surprised me. ;)

crystal_pidgeot said:
Each type should have its own type while using the current Energy types. Having all the types in the game makes weaknesses more interesting.
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I know @signofzeta mentioned it (and possible some others up thread), but I'm on board with this notion as well. As an example, an Ice-Type could mostly use Water-Type Energy, but Water Pokémon Type support wouldn't help them much. Unless we finally start mainstreaming Dual-Types (I can dream). Oh, and again, my motto is if we can't condense the Types, then try to work the others in. ;)
 
Normal is colorless white and Dragon is multicolor gold. That's a given.

Bug light green and Grass dark green (nature)
Water dark blue and Ice light blue (water)
Rock gray/silver and Steel light silver (hard)
Ground light orange and Fighting dark orange (tough like the earth)
Psychic dark yellow and Flying light yellow (calm like the air)
Fire dark red and Electric light red (head on damage)
Dark black and Poison dark gray (sneak attacks)
Ghost dark purple and Fairy light purple (supernatural)
 
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@signofzeta

Also a nice list of options. I haven't run the numbers yet, so I don't know what creates the lowest amount of error, but any reason Normal and Dragon aren't partnered up with another Type?

I ask not because you "dared" to disagree with part of my answer, but because I'm genuinely curious.

If nothing is left solo, we could cut things down to just 9 Types:

Colorless = Normal/Flying
Darkness = Dark/Poison
Fighting = Fight/Ground
Grass = Bug/Grass
Metal = Rock/Steel
Psychic = Ghost/Psychic
Water = Ice/Water
?? =Dragon/Fairy?? = Fire/Lightning

I went with the established names where I thought they made sense. Not sure if we'd even have to rename the Energy. Assuming we combined the Pokémon Types themselves, I'd still stick with the older names given above. For the ?? ones, I was thinking "Mythical" for Dragons and Fairies; not perfect as that term could describe a couple other Pokémon, but so far it is the best I've got. XP Fire/Lightning is trickier; both make me think of energy but that's not a good name for the obvious reason. Maybe "Kinetic" or "Kinesis"? Combustion? Reaction? Glancing at the Type VS chart, combinging Dragon and Fairy means we just have Mythical Weak Mythical-Types for Dragons, while Metal Weak Mythical represent Fairies.
 
I would personally Love to see a Basic Dragon Dragon Energy, But i guess that as long as they keep DDE (Double Dragon Energy) in standard, There won't be a need for it (sadly)
 
Otaku said:
@signofzeta

Also a nice list of options. I haven't run the numbers yet, so I don't know what creates the lowest amount of error, but any reason Normal and Dragon aren't partnered up with another Type?

I ask not because you "dared" to disagree with part of my answer, but because I'm genuinely curious.

If nothing is left solo, we could cut things down to just 9 Types:

Colorless = Normal/Flying
Darkness = Dark/Poison
Fighting = Fight/Ground
Grass = Bug/Grass
Metal = Rock/Steel
Psychic = Ghost/Psychic
Water = Ice/Water
?? =Dragon/Fairy?? = Fire/Lightning

I went with the established names where I thought they made sense. Not sure if we'd even have to rename the Energy. Assuming we combined the Pokémon Types themselves, I'd still stick with the older names given above. For the ?? ones, I was thinking "Mythical" for Dragons and Fairies; not perfect as that term could describe a couple other Pokémon, but so far it is the best I've got. XP Fire/Lightning is trickier; both make me think of energy but that's not a good name for the obvious reason. Maybe "Kinetic" or "Kinesis"? Combustion? Reaction? Glancing at the Type VS chart, combinging Dragon and Fairy means we just have Mythical Weak Mythical-Types for Dragons, while Metal Weak Mythical represent Fairies.
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Normal is not paired with anything because it represents the "you can use any energy to power its attacks" type. Similarly, Dragon isn't paired with anything because it is the "you must use 2 or more different energy to power its attacks, or at least have access to all attacks" type. The remaining types are paired because they all use only one type of energy to power its attacks. Another thing is, there should have never been a 9th energy type in the first place anyway. If I had to rearrange things, I would pair flying and normal together as use any energy colorless, Dragon as use 2 or more energy type dragon, and the rest of them are split into groups of 3 with only 5 different energy types. The energies would be Light, Water, Dark, Fire, and Nature.

As for balancing the type pairs so one pair isn't overpowered over another, that's a different story.

Ok. I am going to attempt the triple grouping.

Light (yellow): Electric, Fairy, Steel. They represent community and order.
Water (blue): Water, Ice, Psychic. They represent intellect and advancement.
Dark (purple): Dark, Ghost, Poison. They represent death and selfishness.
Fire (red): Fire, Rock, Fighting. They represent chaos and emotion.
Nature (green): Grass, Bug, Ground. They represent tradition and life.

Too bad some other game already took it.

For those in support of basic dragon energy who don't seem to understand, Dragon, like colorless, isn't treated the same way as the other 9 current pokemon types. Whereas colorless is the type where you can put in any deck, Dragon is the type where you have to use in very specific decks. The only thing they should fix is to increase the power level of Dragon attacks. That is all they should fix. Basic dragon energy should never ever exist.
 
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Just saying as I’ve seen no one mention it but types are grouped by color and not theme, which is why Dragon became its own type and why poison switched from grass to poison in gen 4
 
jessalakasam said:
Just saying as I’ve seen no one mention it but types are grouped by color and not theme, which is why Dragon became its own type and why poison switched from grass to poison in gen 4
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Care to elaborate?

There are official colors assigned to the Type labels from the video games, but those only sometimes match-up to TCG color schemes, and other times are radically different; hint, Dragon-Type video game labels are not gold. ;) Pokémon and Pokémon attack animation color schemes vary unless they have all been standardized with recent games and Pokémon generations.
 
Otaku said:
Care to elaborate?

There are official colors assigned to the Type labels from the video games, but those only sometimes match-up to TCG color schemes, and other times are radically different; hint, Dragon-Type video game labels are not gold. ;) Pokémon and Pokémon attack animation color schemes vary unless they have all been standardized with recent games and Pokémon generations.
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I don't really now how they determine it, it may be common color themes on Pokémon in that type, or maybe based on what the types are based off of. For example:
Normal-White as it's a basic color
Fighting-Brown Possibly to be honest this one I don't really get
Flying-White like clouds
Poison- purple to represent poisons
Ground- Brown like soil
Rock- brown like some rocks (also, a similar type to ground)
Bug- Green I don't get this one either, though it could be based off of how they eat leaves I guess
Ghost- Purple the first ghost pokemon, Gengar, was purple
Steel- Silver like metals
Fire-red like fire
Water- blue...like water
Grass- green.....like Grass -_-
Electric- Yellow like electricity
Psychic- Purple no idea why but it just seems to fit (probably the best they could come up with since psychic is just an idea not a physical thing)
Ice- Blue Ice is a light blue color (at least when it's depicted in Pokemon and other cartoons)
Dragon- light green/gold I got nothing
Dark- Black.....like Darkness
Fairy-Pink a lot of fairy pokemon are pink
 
@jessalakasam Okay, so just based on what certain Pokémon look like or somewhat arbitrary associations. When I call them "arbitrary", I mean for some they really are the first color to spring to mind, and frankly Type interactions are initially arbitrary; even though metal tends to handle heat/fire way better than flesh, Normal-Types don't take double damage from Fire attacks but Steel-Types do. XD
 
I think we should look at it like this. Does Dive Ball need to be reprinted for Water decks? Does Forest of Giant Plants need to be reprinted for Grass decks? Does Blacksmith need to be remade for Fire decks? Should we reprint Double Rainbow Energy or Boost Energy so some evolution decks are better? Should we reprint Dark Patch for Dark decks?

I want you guy to honestly answer these questions and if any of these are no, then why should Dragon types get a pass, since these cards above made their archetypes better.
 
crystal_pidgeot said:
I think we should look at it like this. Does Dive Ball need to be reprinted for Water decks? Does Forest of Giant Plants need to be reprinted for Grass decks? Does Blacksmith need to be remade for Fire decks? Should we reprint Double Rainbow Energy or Boost Energy so some evolution decks are better? Should we reprint Dark Patch for Dark decks?
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Do any of the decks that these cards support require different basic energy?
 
crystal_pidgeot said:
It's not about Energy but the support, which can be any of the above. I mean, how do you play Decidueye without Forest of Giant Plants?
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1st of all, where is above? Also, Stage 2s are not too slow because of evolving at this point. Decidueye will take a huge hit, but it is still playable because of Alolan Vulpix. Kommo-o and other dragons just lose too much energy when they fall.
 
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