Favorite gen of the TCG?

Broken Pokemon EX

Broken Pokemon EX

Aspiring Trainer
Member
After a pretty long hiatus from the tcg I've recently gotten back into it, and I was just looking over my collection thinking about which generation (as in the classic sets, neo, ex sets, DP, HGSS, BW, etc.) has had my favorite additions/changes to the game.

For me, personally, I'd have to easily give it to the DP sets. Just on the design of the cards alone was a huge improvement. The finally brought back the pokedex info, all of the reverse foil cards had the same pattern (the inconsistent change in foil pattern every new set during the ex era drove me craaaazy). Then the changes to the game were also some of my favorite. I loved the energy-less attacks, changes to how the weakness system worked, the introduction of lv. x cards, and also the held items certain pokemon had. The tcg finally felt fresh again to me.

Getting back into the game now to see that HGSS & B&W changed a lot of those new rules back bums me out. I know each gen has their own gimmicks (like lv. x cards, ex pokemon, pokemon*, etc.), but I thought for sure the energy-less attacks and new weakness system would become new staples of the game. Oh well, things change. The Neo cards were also some of my favorites.
 
I really enjoyed the Hgss set purely because Of the primes involved and I frankly loved the legend cards
 
I personally loved the SP era. Not many people agree with me but I liked the faster gameplay and fast counterattacks that SPs allowed.
 
Quality thread.

*DP-on...meh. There was some room for variety, but in the end some decks were clearly better than others. Roseanne's Research was a nice card. Fossil Excavator as well, if they made the Fossil guys a bit quicker.

*PL-on...I liked the SP era, but it had stupid cards like Gengar and Machamp SF still in the format. That kinda ruined it for me. Oh, and LV X is a good gimmick.

*I disliked EX/Delta a bit, for it was too obvious to pick the...Delta decks, they had way too much support compared to the other cards in the format. Delta species were cool guys, they were just pushing the rest of the format away. The EX mechanic was okay.

*Base-Fossil was fun, much variety to be found there. The first Team Rocket set had a ton of fun ideas, as did the first Neo set. Too bad Neo meant the uprising of stupid flippy decks, especially with the dawn of Sneasel. Slowking (Neo Genesis) is still the ultimate trollercoaster card, one of the most hilarious cards ever.

*The current format, HS-on, is pretty promising, but already shows some signs of unbalance. The problem here is that the best decks in the format rely on Primes, or otherwise hard to acquire cards. I don't want the TCG to become some lame elitist game. I refuse to accept Prime as a gimmick, it's just a stupid excuse to print a shiny border on cards, which is fine. But then they should make ALL Primes available as normal rares to keep it fair, imo.

These are the only formats I played actively in, but I'll read on to see what the rest of the formats were like..
 
thefleeee said:
I really enjoyed the Hgss set purely because Of the primes involved and I frankly loved the legend cards
Click to expand...

Yea the Legend cards were awesome, though I wish they had done more single pokemon legend cards like Lugia and Ho-oh.
 
E-Card series had best art ever. I loved the vibrant texture and colors they had. The crystal Pokemon were okay, but I mostly loved the art.

Oh, and Juggler <3
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Base: The start of an era. Cards were very clean-cut and simplistic, but still had that little bit of beauty. There was no real standard to expect of it, but even so it looked pretty good. (I include Gym in this as well.)

Neo: Much the same as Base, except it looks a bit cleaner than before and also adds a bit of variety. Like Base Set, though, the card artwork leaves much to be desired but it still isn't terrible.

E-Series/EX: The awesomeness of many of the card artworks from this series do NOT make up for the ugly card style and lack of flavor text. I wasn't around for EX series, and I'm sure glad I wasn't.

DP: I know I might be biased but these are my favorite. You have great card artwork (gotta love those LV.Xs), clean-looking text, and the much beloved length/weight/dex entries/flavor text coming back. They blazed a trail and did it well.

HGSS: I don't know if this was better or worse than the EX series. I'll refrain to comment, for now. The Primes were like the Pokemon ex in terms of artwork, sorta, but unlike the Pokemon ex, Primes have no appeal. omg look we'll have a close-up of the Pokemon's face! Granted, some of the Primes looked great (Gengar is probably the best looking of any Prime), but most suck.

BW: I don't know if this was better or worse than the Base series. I'm pretty sure it's worse because now the card art is even MORE boring (look at any artwork by 5ban graphics for proof) and there's no real appeal to it either. There are probably 1 or 2 small exceptions, but other than that, no.
 
I have only been around for three formats, but DP through UL was by far the best. I loved that format. HGSS on is too slow for me still, and MD on had VileGar.
 
Wow. Easy choice: EX-series. Goodness gracious...the artwork was perfect. I loved all the different ex cards, and how creative you could be because most of them were powerful. (They may not have the best synergy, but you could find a way.) This was probably the most fun series for me as well, because it was the dawn of a new generation of Pokemon, as well as a rebirth of Secret Rare Pokemon that showed up in EX Dragon. This was also the largest generation, reaching from EX Ruby & Sapphire to EX Power Keepers, so there was a lot to love about it. I think it was DX-DP that was my favorite format.
 
I loved the ex series, and that definitely includes the Delta Species sets! I grew up with those cards (before anyone thinks I'm really young, I was born before Pokemon started, and I did play the oldest games when they came out, the ex era just happened in my elementary school years and I mostly started getting into tcg in 3rd grade.) Only getting competitive around the time of Stormfront, I wasn't really around for the competitive play in that era. I did like the art and card style, unlike many people, and the reverse holos from Hidden Legends through Power Keepers were my favorite. Much better than today's, in my opinion.

Oh but DP-on and MD-on were my favorite competitive formats, this one is rather stale...
 
Definitely Base through Neo Destiny. I was in fourth or fifth grade when the cards came out, and they were an immediate hit amongst all of my friends. I have such nostalgia just looking at my old cards. I lost interest for a while when I went into middle school, just before the Neo-era came about. Once I started getting back into Pokémon, though, the Neo-series became my favorite since it was so elusive. You can find boxes from Jungle, Fossil, Team Rocket, and the Gym sets easy, but the Neo cards are hard to find.

The E-card series has, in my opinion, some of the best looking artwork. The cards themselves are bright and colorful, though the shape of the art border is...interesting. Only problem is that it (and all sets prior) are plagued with a huge problem: reverse holos. To this day, I trade away or sell on eBay all of my reverse holos. I'm a completist, and unless I can obtain each piece of a whole, I refuse to collect it and I find trying to get a whole reverse holo set of anything is too much trouble.

The EX series was decent -- it was what brought me back in the first place. I enjoyed it through the beginning of the Delta-era, which I'm no fan of. I don't really like bells and whistles (in fact, in my Pokédex collection, even though I try and get the first set a Pokémon premiered, I refused to count the Regi trio because they were ex cards in their debut). Pokémon ex and Pokémon *, while they look cool, don't really do much for me. The EX series just doesn't have the spark that the classic and Neo series do.

I collected Diamond and Pearl before realizing that I needed to limit my collection, and it was when Mysterious Treasures was released that I started only buying singles of individual Pokémon needed for my Pokédex collection. The cards looked nice, and the return of height/weight/flavor text was a welcome change, but it still didn't keep my interest enough.

So yeah...gens one and two are my favorites. They aren't the most powerful, or have the most synergy, but it's the nostalgia that settles it for me, and it's why my fake set, Neo Redux, is done in Neo-style.
 
As a collector, I definitely have to say Generation IV. The card designs looked great and the artwork was awesome. I also really like the current reverse holos the most, honestly.

Late Generation II and Generation III were both bogged down by the hideous e-card format, which just looked awful IMO. I also didn't care much for Gen III's reverse holos, or how the cards didn't list the basic info like Pokedex number under the card's artwork.

And Generation I... while the artwork is not bad, a lot of the classic sets were either Ken Sugimori stock art, awkward late 90's CGI, or Mitsuhiro Arita, and only one of those is particularly exciting card artwork to me. Kagemaru Himeno and Atsuko Nishida were good in the early days, too, but hadn't hit their peak yet IMO.
 
As a collector i can say the EX series was my fav in terms of art Quality :)
 
Any generation with Mitsuhiro Arita as an artist (aka every one) XD

I haven't played in a long, long time, but I love seeing the tweaks in the BW era. It's a bit like home, in the sense of home in competitive play for me was the original era since that was when I last played.

It's so hard to pick what generation I like from a collector's standpoint, though. The reward and feeling of triumph at getting the second last card I needed for the Pokemon e-Era was electrifying, since the sets are so beautiful and so hard to complete in Japanese due to scarcity, but the thrill and joy of tearing open boxes in DP/DPt/LEGEND/BW also are really fun. I do think ultimately it is the e-Series for me though: between the art and the fact the region they made for it had its own story (which never was carried over in the English sets..) really intrigued me.

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And heck just... just all of this set.

I didn't mind the design of the e-cards, they certainly were different that's for sure, and I loved the change into silver borders in ADV/PCG in Japan which has pretty much stuck just with some variation over the years.

I'm just TCG crazy. Love it. Every bit.
 
Agh. Wow. I skipped Neo in its entirety. Neo sets beat EX just barely. There being so few, yet with artwork so beautiful, captured my interest more than anything. The Shining Pokemon were amazing. The Light and Dark were spectacular. The only part I dislike: the Trainers. Especially in Destiny. Loved the first three though.
 
I like the ex series sets! They have a lot of rare cards in the set such as gold stars and ex cards! The holo cards are just amazing!
 
I never played any tourneys beyond the Neo sets so I'm partial to those first few expansions. I love the artwork in Team Rocket and enjoyed the inclusion of Dark Pokemon (and later Light Pokemon in Neo Destiny). I wish they would've made the cards a bit more playable though. The HP for the Dark counterparts was horrible, which makes sense I guess, but I wish their attacks were better. I think it would've been nice if their energy costs was low and attack power high to make up for the low HP. My all-time favorite expansions were the 4 Neo sets. Gold/Silver has always been my favorite "chapter" in the Pokemon series.
 
Base up until Neo. Thats when I first started, still my favorite era of this game. I remember when I got back in, back right around arceus and when I found they reprinted some of the old cards in other sets, I was so happy. I even have a Old school haymaker deck built still. Gotta love it.
 
I like the ex series cards. Pokémon-ex were a blast, and that was really the first series I collected any of the cards from (in English, at least). The artwork's pretty nice, I just don't like the e-readers (they look kind of ugly). HGSS is okay (I like the borders and some of the art), but the lack of any original card mechanics besides mostly-unplayable Legends is a big downer.
 
I like bw. the full art cards are neat, in my opinion the artwork is the best part of the tcg, along with the collecting part. Anyway, the new ex cards are awesome! I loved how the l.v. x cards artwork came out of the frame and i've been waiting for it to come back! The normal cards are neat, but i like how the japanese frame was silver but the american frame with the boring yellow was dumb. The holos are amazing! The background is cool in them. The texture of the lettering and stuff on the secret rares (including pikachu) was really cool, too! BW also had good booster back artwork. Besides the american border, BW TCG doesn't really have any down sides. It's 100% for sure without a doubt my favorite TGC gen.
 
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