Nine Surprising Changes Announced for the PTCG: Fairy Pokemon Dropped!

Catastrophia

PokéBeach Articles Editor
Articles Staff
Member
Very exciting times, looks like I better dust off the old Quick Ball I have in the card bin...
 

MarshalBry

Aspiring Trainer
Member
Have any dragon cards been revealed in the SWSH era yet? I'm curious what happens to the weakness of dragon without fairies existing; probably 2x dragon again?

RIP fairy
 

Clam

Almost decent
Member
DRAGON IS NOW WEAK TO DRAGON AGAIN!!! unless not although i would like it to be weak to itself speaking of dragon types whens our next hydragon V

EDIT i forgot to give respect to fairy type RIP fairy i wont miss you but others might
 

Grass-Type Farm Owner

Aspiring Trainer
Member
Kinda saw the Fairy change coming with its absence from the Energy Search art and how long they were taking to reveal a new Fairy card.

With all these type changes happening at once, they should've moved Rock to Metal.
 

Rcxd9999

Aspiring Trainer
Member
Have any dragon cards been revealed in the SWSH era yet? I'm curious what happens to the weakness of dragon without fairies existing; probably 2x dragon again?

RIP fairy

DRAGON IS NOW WEAK TO DRAGON AGAIN!!! unless not although i would like it to be weak to itself speaking of dragon types whens our next hydragon V

EDIT i forgot to give respect to fairy type RIP fairy i wont miss you but others might

Dragon could be weak to water now, since it represents Ice type in the TCG, especially with Pokemon receiving new weaknesses and resistances.
 

Otaku

The wise fool?
Member
Might as well address all the changes, even those we've long since known were coming:

  1. Expanded is a problem: Yeah, nothing was said about it but a lot of these things are issues because of Expanded and poor planning for it. Maybe it needs to rotate, or maybe they need to plan ahead better because of issues that are their own doing.

  2. No T1 Supporter is a bad idea. Instead of issuing an errata for the Supporters that are too good T1, they're taking away an important first-turn play. Like how, instead of balancing out attacks, the rules of Evolution, etc. we lost T1 attacks and it still didn't balance going first versus going second.

  3. Offense tends to be stronger than defense; combine that with general power creep and restoring Resistance to -30 damage makes sense. Leaving Weakness at x2 does not. This is the TCG; multipliers tend to be too strong. Just change Weakness to a flat +20; a free "Muscle Band" is plenty good!

  4. The game either has too few Types or too many Types, depending on the exact goal. Good game play through preserving video game relationships means no more than two video game Types per TCG Type (preferably striving for 1:1). Good TCG-based gameplay means fewer Types. Both make me think more Types needed rearranging.

  5. No real complaints with the errata. If we nitpick, I wonder if certain cards are going to be worth playing, or I could ask why a lot of those cards didn't read "...up to..." since the beginning.

  6. For the love of common sense, just issue errata for Professor Juniper and Professor Sycamore, so they're also named Professor's Research!
  7. I don't care for the new name for the"between phase" but I don't have anything better for it (including "between phase" XP). I'll get used to it.

  8. Adding a new standardized term is good. Heal/Recover, though, almost feel reversed. Probably because they each make sense in the same context. I'll get used to it.

  9. "Once during your turn" probably also ought to have been removed, for similar reasons. If it makes more sense to just say "All Abilities work like this unless stated otherwise..." yeah, do that. ;) Still, it is a good thing.

  10. Maybe good? I think I'll have to wait and see how this plays out.
 

Animegamer420

Aspiring Trainer
Member
I didn’t know you couldn’t use different types of professors in the same deck. That’s a really weird rule.... thinking more about it I guess that could mean 8 of the same card effect. Too bad you can’t have one of each
 

Rcxd9999

Aspiring Trainer
Member
Might as well address all the changes, even those we've long since known were coming:

  1. Expanded is a problem: Yeah, nothing was said about it but a lot of these things are issues because of Expanded and poor planning for it. Maybe it needs to rotate, or maybe they need to plan ahead better because of issues that are their own doing.

  2. No T1 Supporter is a bad idea. Instead of issuing an errata for the Supporters that are too good T1, they're taking away an important first-turn play. Like how, instead of balancing out attacks, the rules of Evolution, etc. we lost T1 attacks and it still didn't balance going first versus going second.

  3. Offense tends to be stronger than defense; combine that with general power creep and restoring Resistance to -30 damage makes sense. Leaving Weakness at x2 does not. This is the TCG; multipliers tend to be too strong. Just change Weakness to a flat +20; a free "Muscle Band" is plenty good!

  4. The game either has too few Types or too many Types, depending on the exact goal. Good game play through preserving video game relationships means no more than two video game Types per TCG Type (preferably striving for 1:1). Good TCG-based gameplay means fewer Types. Both make me think more Types needed rearranging.

  5. No real complaints with the errata. If we nitpick, I wonder if certain cards are going to be worth playing, or I could ask why a lot of those cards didn't read "...up to..." since the beginning.

  6. For the love of common sense, just issue errata for Professor Juniper and Professor Sycamore, so they're also named Professor's Research!
  7. I don't care for the new name for the"between phase" but I don't have anything better for it (including "between phase" XP). I'll get used to it.

  8. Adding a new standardized term is good. Heal/Recover, though, almost feel reversed. Probably because they each make sense in the same context. I'll get used to it.

  9. "Once during your turn" probably also ought to have been removed, for similar reasons. If it makes more sense to just say "All Abilities work like this unless stated otherwise..." yeah, do that. ;) Still, it is a good thing.

  10. Maybe good? I think I'll have to wait and see how this plays out.

1. Expanded is quite good but due to the massive amount of playable card and multitude of ever increasing combinations, meta problems can arise with newer cards working with older cards in ways that weren't anticipated, requiring a card be banned or errataed. But to Pokemon's credit, expanded works and only has a minimal ban list. If you want to see what hell on earth looks like, look at Yugioh, which is entirely expanded and has a massive ban list as well as a limited list.

2. I personally think further nerfing for T1 start is a good thing, but we have yet to see it in a competitive meta just yet, so can't say much about it's effects just yet.

3. Agreed. At the moment entire decks can be locked out of the meta simply because they're weak against another deck, not because that deck plays better. If weaknesses went back to DP era weaknesses like +10 for evolving basics, +20 for first evolutions and non-evolving Pokemon, +30 for second evolutions and x2 for EX,GX and V Pokemon, I think that would be best.

4. I think the types in the TCG are fine as it is. Not particularly sure why they dropped Fairy type, maybe to reduce the number of cards printed, I don't know, but the TCG definitely can't copy the videogame types, even if there was only singular types, since rock and grass types have 5 weaknesses, and some might have up to 7, if there were dual types. I can easily imagine how much card space would be used just for the weakness area.

6. Agreed. The fact that you can only play 4 of one or the other and not a combination of them is strange but since you should easily be able to get 4 of each in each set they appear in, it shouldn't affect too many people. Do feel bad for the people who want 4 full arts but can't use full art Juniper and full art Sycamore in the same deck lol.

7. I think the new phase name might be used on cards down the line for effects but otherwise, not sure why it needed a name change either.

9. The "once during your turn" sticking in the card text is a good thing because even if abilities were once a turn unless stated otherwise, those 4 words minimise confusion, especially for younger and/or newer players.
 

Number51x

Blasting off at the speed of light!
Member
Probably not a huge issue, but I do wonder how no supporter trun 1 will affect the playability of theme decks (in that format) on PTCGO that are still standard legal.

Which reminds me; are they ever going to update the test decks you play against for basic testing? It would be nice if they hit a little harder and differentiated between standard and expanded.
 

Rcxd9999

Aspiring Trainer
Member
Yeah, 2 Psychic eevee evolutions now, Sylveon and Espeon

And two Water types eeveevoltions as well (Vaporeon and Glaceon). I wonder if this might break the game in some way now that Eevee has two Water and two Psychic evolutions now /S
 

ZTrainer

Aspiring Trainer
Member
Maybe they noticed that a lot of guys like me thought about making a fairy deck because to try some good combos, but changed their mind because other people may get the wrong idea about the sexual orientation of a non woman fairy deck user at local tourneys, because of the pink background of the cards that is very unmanly.
 

Number51x

Blasting off at the speed of light!
Member
Maybe they noticed that a lot of guys like me thought about making a fairy deck because to try some good combos, but changed their mind because other people may get the wrong idea about the sexual orientation of a non woman fairy deck user at local tourneys, because of the pink background of the cards that is very unmanly.
That has to be the dumbest thing I've ever heard and this is a world where Trump is still active on Twitter.
 

treyh37

Watcher of Thorns
Member
some of this news is good, some is bad, some needed more work.

interesting is the regulation mark at the end as that shows they intend to keep us on the same rotation block as japan (even if the release is off like mentioned in the other article)
 

MilesEX

Aspiring Trainer
Member
Maybe they noticed that a lot of guys like me thought about making a fairy deck because to try some good combos, but changed their mind because other people may get the wrong idea about the sexual orientation of a non woman fairy deck user at local tourneys, because of the pink background of the cards that is very unmanly.

Gardy being a top deck debunks this theory.
 

ShaQuL

@KabutoKingTCG
Member
Maybe they noticed that a lot of guys like me thought about making a fairy deck because to try some good combos, but changed their mind because other people may get the wrong idea about the sexual orientation of a non woman fairy deck user at local tourneys, because of the pink background of the cards that is very unmanly.
I think that's just you to be honest mate... it's cards, if they're good you use them. Who cares if there's pink on the card?
 
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