Discussion Card legality

Christopher Shehan

Christopher Shehan

Aspiring Trainer
Member
I have been wondering why TPCi doesn't allow players to use foreign cards. As a former decade long MTG player this is odd to me. In MTG it was very common and even sought after to use foreign cards. Why does Pokemon only allow the local language cards? Shouldn't they want players around the world splurging on GX Ultra Shiny to make their decks look awesome?
 
I don't know for sure, but my guesses:

Pokémon is meant to be accessible to children, for one; more so than MTG or even Yu-gi-oh, it is by design simpler and playable by children at 5 or 6, even in tournaments. So I suspect one reason is that: it's harder for children to deal with the complexity of other language cards (knowing what they do off the top of your head, etc.)

Pokémon also has a lot stronger 'collector' factor than MTG does. That is, lots of people buy Pokémon TCG cards and never play a game- they want the cards for the art, and are into other aspects of Pokémon. So perhaps they don't need to; see how many people on Reddit/etc. have indeed bought Ultra Shiny despite it not being legal here.
 
If they wanted players outside of Japan to buy Ultra Shiny GX cards they would just print them for outside of Japan
 
Yeah; I think that's an important thing to realize: they understand that Japan and [rest of world] are very different, and so they release different things here than there. Not having legality across languages is important because it means they don't have to worry about America/Europe when releasing something in Japan, or the other way around.

You could get around that by having legality be based on a particular region for a particular tournament, but my feeling is that with card numbers/sets being different between Japan and US, that would get complicated; and ultimately, while it wouldn't be nearly as much a problem to allow (say) German cards, they're not going to have a special rule for languages that doesn't work for their largest player base - Japan.
 
CrownAxe said:
If they wanted players outside of Japan to buy Ultra Shiny GX cards they would just print them for outside of Japan
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Christopher Shehan said:
I have been wondering why TPCi doesn't allow players to use foreign cards.
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The short answer is that they did, for a good five to seven years, I think. It went poorly. So they stopped.

A more rambling but detailed explaination, though just from memory, in the Spoiler box.

Edit: To clarify, I don't recall WotC allowing anything but "local language cards" at the Pokémon events they ran during the early years of the game. When Nintendo took over, I don't remember if it was right away or a few years in, but they allowed any language card to be used provided you had at least one local-language copy for reference, outside of your deck.

At some point, the official website just had some sort of official local-language document from which you could just print a local language "text spoiler" of the card, and use that as reference. In both cases, it led to problems. There had to be rulings on things like whether or not the cards would be shown at the beginning of the game or only when they finally showed up during play, whether a player could have extra cards in their references for... reasons.

Don't forget the fundamental differences between the TCG's. With Pokémon, you have a cast of characters constantly being reused. Sometimes, you have the same character with new stats and effects, sometimes it is a reprint but with very different art. When dealing with foreign language cards, there would sometimes be issues because of people having the wrong local language card to show their opponents... but it wasn't obvious.
 
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Thanks gang. I understand but just wish it was different. Maybe one day they will allow us westerners to use some shiny pokemon!
 
JumpluffTCG said:
They should make Spanish cards legal in the US though
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Why? I'm not saying you don't have a good reason, but feel free to share it. ;)

Canada uses English and French cards.

The USA uses only English.

Mexico uses English and Spanish.

All other Latin American countries, which I take to mean Central and South America use English, Portuguese, and Spanish.

There are reasons to not change things, like avoiding conumer confusion. The USA isn't Canada or Mexico, where typical customers are used to having to deal with some products being in the dominant local language and some being exclusively in another language outside of specific stores or sections of stores. ;) How many parents are going to deal with making sure they get the right packs? I'm not talking anything "political" or "controversial", I mean the very fundamental "Aw man. I wasted $5 because I bought my kid some of them Pokey Man cards, but I got the Spanish version instead of the English. Far as I'm concerned, he's done with them until he can buy'em himself."

If we change things because of the neighbors of the USA, then shouldn't French also be added? At which point, why not "internationalize" the whole thing and start forcing French and Portuguese cards on Mexico? I don't think that is a good idea, either... but I totally can understand it, and find it logically consistent if the primary goal is making it so anyone in the Americas can use their cards anywhere in the Americas. :)

Now, a bad idea I could still get behind is all Pokémon cards being in Latin! Libet vobiscum, Pikachu! XD
 
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I'm French so I will only use France as an example here. For me, there are two sides :
-> It's hard to find English cards in a shop. There are almost only French ones.
-> It's hard for children to use English cards because their English level isn't enough before around 15 years old. How can they use English cards so ?

Personally, I don't care, I always used English cards and I think tournament should either authorize English only and allow to borrow/switch two cards from different languages or allow any translation of a card (it's easy to see which card is used with an artwork and if you have a doubt, you just have to check on the web)
 
Matux said:
I'm French so I will only use France as an example here. For me, there are two sides :
-> It's hard to find English cards in a shop. There are almost only French ones.
-> It's hard for children to use English cards because their English level isn't enough before around 15 years old. How can they use English cards so ?

Personally, I don't care, I always used English cards and I think tournament should either authorize English only and allow to borrow/switch two cards from different languages or allow any translation of a card (it's easy to see which card is used with an artwork and if you have a doubt, you just have to check on the web)
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In Europe, that's already the case more or less, though, isn't it? Any European language (German, French, Portuguese, Italian, Spanish, English) card is permissible at European events, at least for the big ones, and if I recall the rule properly all the way down to League Challenges.

From the TCG Rules and Formats:

Europe, All countries: English, French, German, Italian, Portuguese, Spanish
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In other countries, it doesn't make as much sense to allow other languages because it wouldn't really help all that many people, and there's a reasonable assumption that people who live in, say, the United States, have familiarity with English (or Spanish for Argentina, Portuguese for Brazil, etc.) and thus can play with that region's language cards.
 
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