Japan's XY11: 'Explosive Fighter / Cruel Traitor', CP5: 'Mythical / Legendary Dream Holo Collection'

How about Lysandre forcing you to switch into a KO? There's literally nothing you can do about it and it's toxic against ANY opponent. This is something that counters 2 decks that have run rampant due to an oversight from TPCi and countering it diversifies the meta. If this is broken things like Lysandre are broken tenfold.

But there isn't ever a case where a Lysandre drop means you 100% of the time lose the game. Lysandre is a counter balance and is used to punish bad plays. People are too lax to playing very bad deck builds because of what the game has let people get away with for the last 5 years. Printing a card like that to stop a deck completely means they can continue to print cards to stop anything they want.
 
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YES! IT'S DEAD! NIGHT MARCH IS DEAD! Ding, dong, the witch is dead~

...Actually, this means Standard becomes hard to play in again, at least for me. I kinda liked being able to just play Night March and do well.
 
Really with the Karen?

Whats the point in making them if you're going to make a card to specifically target Night March?
 
Karen is really interesting! Pretty much confims that this set was created after the decision to ban Trump Card. Hope to see it being used more than just to counter other decks.

One deck I can see benefiting of Karen is Mrayquaza.
 
I think this card is great. I feel it should be a little nerfed or there needs to be the return of junk arm so that way it gives nm a fighting chance. And also I feel they need to make counter to item lock as I think that that's the most annoying deck out there. You just need to evolve and bam your opponent can't make a move for the most part. NM at least had a long setup the problem was it can set up in turn one. Item lock is where the next counter should go to though
 
I am wondering if no night march, who is going to stop that nauseous trevenent deck

Trevenent is the Hard counter to Night March so that sounds a little backwards if anything Trevenant will get less play because without night march and V-queen were going to go back to decks that have to hit high numbers again to win.

Im pretty happy about this card but its a little to late as its doubtful it will be available by worlds but still Flareon/Vespiquen is somewhat popular in expanded so it helps that. however i feel like with this card Mega Ray(Colorless) will become the undisputed king of both formats
 
So with regards to M Salamence-EX and Karen, shock of shocks: I have opinions! Hopefully they will be a little more, and include some analysis and reasoning to justify any speculation. The short version is that neither card is as good as is generally being said in the comments.

1) M Salamence-EX reminds me a lot of the many Mega Evolutions that maybe, kind of, sort of were played and then died out. It can bring the damage but needs too much setup in order to do so, and/or there will most likely be another similar card that ultimately works better to fill the role anyway.

2) Karen of course is too good; it probably won't be a significant problem (unlike its predecessor Lysandre's Trump Card), but that doesn't mean it is well balanced. I notice how the decks that seems boring but fair* to face has a lot of people hating on it, but I've never heard a good reason why. It isn't dominating Expanded. It was dominating Standard as of the State Championships, but it is hard to tell how much of that is is being, effectively, a budget deck and thus run that much more frequently. I would have much rather had a Supporter based counter for Item lock than for a glass cannon beatdown deck that usually just requires running some decent, non-Pokémon-EX and/or making sure to take out the opponent's Shaymin-EX to avoid getting behind in the Prize count.

*Compared to most of the competitive metagame, a race to take OHKOs against stuff that can easily be OHKO'd is much more fair than a race to take OHKOs against something difficult to OHKO, or against decks that lock down a major part of your deck ASAP (possibly while still doing the OHKO thing).

@Rocket The Shellos Lysandre requires you use your Supporter to force an opponent's Benched Pokémon of your choice into the Active position. Your Supporter. If that seems abusively strong, then I think you're looking at the wrong parts of your example. @crystal_pidgeot and I have discussed this kind of thing a lot. We often don't agree, but sometimes we do.

We've got attackers that start swinging as soon as they are able; it would be the overall first turn of the game if they hadn't revised the first turn rules to prevent attacks! We've got Shaymin-EX (and a few others) so you can still have a big "draw" turn but pull off the Lysandre. We have VS Seeker so a deck can run one or two Lysandre but use them over and over again. Lastly we have Evolving Basic Pokémon, Stage 1 Pokémon, and Restored Pokémon that are either too small and/or exist only to Evolve (so when they get KOed before it is a total loss). Lysandre isn't the problem; remove Lysandre and we just go back to Pokémon Catcher and hoping for "heads", with Item lock decks becoming even stronger. We've had the format where Bench sitters were almost invulnerable; it wasn't fun.

Karen will punish Night March, maybe hurt a few decks that benefited from their already strong match up versus Night March, and will otherwise not bother or improve already existing strong decks. Possibly may make a cheap late game N to one or two cards even more effective if Karen was used the turn before. Yay. ¬_¬
 
Xerneas break would make a very nice addition to fairy decks, but I think rotation will mess that up pretty bad. This card makes geomancy xerneas relevant at all stages of the game which was one of the only problemswith the card in the first place. I like this break, seems like one of those cards that you'd knock out and think to yourself "seriously, I only get one prize card for that?"
 
Karen will be nice for Mega Gardy too. Discard all those hoopas and shaymins, unowns or whatever and then Karen them all back into your deck to search them out next turn
 
Holy Karen! My favorite Elite 4 member not only has awesome artwork, but completely trashes one of the most popular decks in a while.

Can't wait for that full art.
 
Seems they've finally realized just how broken Night March is and have made a counter card. Nice choice :p
 
I'm so mad that Karen will be out after Night March will rotate. :/ Why even bother printing it?

Though, the Salamence on the other hand, that's actually pretty good considering there's a lot
of support for fire energy right now.
 
Trevenant decks be like. Welp. F*** You night march. I got a Karen. You have puzzle of time to get two compressors back? I have another Karen.
 
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