I'll get to your specific question,
but I want to make sure you understand how the rest of it works. You might want to take a look at the
official announcement for the current Standard Format. Apologies for the length.
Standard features set rotation once per year. TPCi will usually announce it well in advance. For the last several years, this rotation has happened on or close to September 1st,
after the World Championships. The announcements were made - I think - in June or July.
The oldest sets rotate out. The minimum amount of sets rotated is zero; this has happened only once. The most we've seen leave at once time is seven. Typically it will be three, four, or five expansions. Mini-sets like
Double Crisis and "bonus" sets like
Generations are rare, and usually
not counted in these numbers.
As for promos, a specific promo is given as the new cut-off. For example, it is currently XY36 and later for the
Black Star Promos. Typically, these will line up with the sets, as the sets often have Pre-Release promos featuring cards from within that set (but numbered as
Black Star Promos).
Year is not actually a good indicator, save that releases from the current year* have never been cut (banned, but never rotated out).
This actually is confusing for
all of us now, because things have changed a bit. "Reprint" is a bit of a misnomer; literal reprints, where TPCi prints an additional run of an existing product, indistinguishable from the original product, is quite rare. For example,
XY: Roaring Skies received an additional print run, something I don't think has happened in years. A little less rare is when there is a product like a Battle Arena Deck; sometimes they'll include a card with its original set ID and numbering, but which was clearly printing long after printings of the official expansion had stopped. TPCi doesn't hide this; in fact if the card is a holo, they'll use a different foil pattern so that the difference is obvious. For legality purposes, however, these are all treated as a single printing.
Until recently, a reprint referred to a card being released with all the same game relevant information (name, stats, and effects) but with a new Set ID/Card Number. Art could be new or different. When this happens,
all previous printings have the same legality (with respect to Standard and Expanded play) as the
newest release. There are
two major exceptions here, one new and one old.
The old is actually pretty easy to understand; the game relevant text isn't actually the same. How cards are worded has changed over time. If the wording is
sufficiently different, then the older copies are not legal, so as to avoid confusion. The exception within this exception is if the newest version received an errata**, or that specific older version received an errata matching the new text, then you can use the older versions even though they may be worded very differently.
Example: Potion originally released in the
Base Set, the first set for the Pokémon TCG. It originally removed two damage counters from one of your Pokémon. The newest version heals 30 damage instead. The change happened partway through the 31 releases of this card, and would
normally mean earlier versions that stated they removed two damage counters would be illegal; "removing counters" is no longer the same as "healing", and two is not 30.
An erratum was issued for all
older versions of
Potion, however,
before the "heal 30" version was released, changing their text to the new text.
The other exception are "Alternate Prints". This is a
new thing, probably done because of the Expanded Format and to remove some of the weirdness I was talking about earlier (like Battle Arena Decks featuring a card labeled the same as an older release, but with a new foil pattern so it wouldn't confuse collectors). There will be a big ol' letter "A" on the card, to designate it as an "Alternate Print". The card name, stats, and effects will all be the same,
but so will the set symbol. The numbering will be a little different as well; if the card was 53/111, it will now read 53a/111.
Please note that small "a" in the set ID is
not the same as the Capital A symbol I mentioned a few sentences ago. If an additional alternate printing is released, the "A" symbol will still be on the card, but numbering will adjust again; 53b/111 for the second alternate printing, 53c/111 for the third, etc.
This is why I went into detail.
If we get a
reprint of
VS Seeker, unless the effect text changes, then all prior printings will become (or if before rotation, remain) Standard legal. It will remain legal until whatever it was released in rotates from Standard play... which will probably be around the time when whatever set is current
also rotates out, but not guaranteed.
If it is an
alternate print or literal
reprint, then legality is the same as the initial printing.
Which is probably what you said, but I wasn't sure. >.>
*It's the current year actually being a valid answer. XP
**If you are unfamiliar with the term, "errata" is when something that has already been printed has its text changed, either because it was printed wrong, or because the poewrs-that-be decide it needs to be changed. Both are quite rare. "Erratum" is the singular form, but most folks will still just say "errata" because they aren't as fussy as me.
