I go a like on your reply because I understand your side, and I learned from it. Steelix deck was good because of... Cleffas, Special Metal. Yeah. Thanks, sir. About the Geodude system, the rating depends on how good this card should be.
I am glad you understood, and even happier you could learn something from it.
Again, sorry it was so messy.
I realize the amount of Geodudes is supposed to depend upon how good the card actually is, but I don't know what the Geodudes actually indicate. Is low good or bad? I'm assuming bad, but I don't know the minimum or maximum possible score, and what they roughly correspond with either in terms of real-world examples or general concepts. Feel free to explain, or if it is already too tedious, don't sweat it.
The only kind of person that would do that is someone who doesn't have a basic grasp of the English language and therefore should not be playing a game that requires the player to be able to read. It would have to be typed out as "B-A-L-L" on the card in order for that to be the meaning and not searching for the isolated word those letters make.
I don't think you understood my comment. Let me try again.
I was
not advocating that players be allowed to use Apricorn Maker to search out Balloon Berry; I was pointing out that
@Water Pokémon Master should be rash about rulings that are not yet official. I found out
by asking, that Maxie's Hidden Ball Trick uses a different word for "ball" in the original Japanese text than Apricorn Maker does.
That is why Apricorn Maker cannot search out Maxie's Hidden Ball Trick.
Water Pokémon Master did
not use such reasoning. He took an older ruling and extrapolated from it... which isn't a problem when you are clear you're extrapolating and the final ruling may be different. The older ruling Water Pokémon Master cited was about Balloon Berry and Apricorn Maker. I was
not challenging that ruling, but asking Water Pokémon Master if he really thought chopping a word in half was really the same thing as... well... legitimately containing the word, and in a context where it seemed to be talking about Poké Balls. His answer to me acted as if these were indeed the same.
He appealed to the "spirit" of the rules versus the letter of the rules to back his position. Sometimes such an appeal is valid, but as I
also pointed out, Maxie's Hidden Ball Trick may actually fit that spirit. I mentioned I wouldn't be opposed to it, because using a Supporter to search out another Supporter usually isn't all that effective, and also that I suspect Maxie's Hidden Ball Trick is going to be banned sooner or later anyway, because as long as it is in Expanded, it is just a matter of time before another Fighting Type is broken by its effect.
As for the person who asked about Balloon Berry in the first place, it probably takes a
solid grasp of English to see if such an exploit exists. It is also wrong to assume this person had nefarious purposes in asking; it may have actually come up in a game where an opponent tried it or the person may have been bringing it up to close such a loophole.
The suggestion by
@jessalakasam to change the text to "Item" doesn't seem like a good one unless the translator goofed. Item cards are Trainers, but not all Trainers are Item cards. I don't think any non-Item other than Maxie's Hidden Ball Trick contains the word "Ball" in it, and we now know that Maxie's Hidden Ball Trick actually uses a different word in Japanese than Apricorn does for "ball". As such, only Item cards are going to be affected.
However, if they wanted it to forever be restricted to Items, I think they would have worded it that way already. Maybe they don't plan on making any non-Item Trainer cards that would qualify in the foreseeable future, or maybe they do and
want Apricorn Maker to be compatible.
