News Lysandre's Trump Card Has Been Banned

Lysandre's Trump Card is one of the many cards I would have thought were obvious bad ideas and thus would never have been made... 10 years ago.

What concerns me now is why this ban appears to be happening; it isn't that the designers wish for mill decks to become viable (outside of lucky breaks) but that several other problem cards were made so much worse with the option to spam them. Lock decks such as those build around Seismitoad-EX or Exeggutor (PLF) have at least lately taken to unsustainable practices, more or less throwing near their entire deck at you in the first few turns before using Lysandre's Trump Card to reset all those things (less the hand and field).

This should have some useful benefits; all the discard costs people so haphazardly pay are now more significant again. Unfortunately I doubt it will be enough to suddenly make people think twice about running Professor Juniper or Professor Sycamore. I would love to think deck management was going to become a relevant skill again, but I'm not holding my breath.

We have VS Seeker to reclaim Supporters, Sacred Ash for Pokémon and Energy Retrieval/Super Energy Retrieval for basic Energy cards, so at this point my main concern is Night March... could this make it too strong? I'm not worried about there being an added incentive to cut back on Items and Special Energy cards. Hopefully this reminds the designers that making super-powerful-cards-and-combos that are supposed to be the major balance for other super-powerful-cards-and-combos is a bad idea: cards interact with so many other cards that the results can be hard to predict. This can lead to one card not only countering what was intended, but altering the very way in which the format works... which seems to be what happened with Lysandre's Trump Card.
 
Japan has a very different format and a different tournament structure than that of the U.S.
I would be surprised if LTC gets banned in all honesty, it is probably the least broken card in the format as compared to other things that could use erratas or bans. If we get rid of LTC I think it only makes the format slower, discouraging cards such as Shaymin EX to be used and not being able to play Junipers whenever you want. Making the format slower would only help decks like Toad or Eggs which is what everybody wants to avoid.
 
TheStrictNein said:
In a format with Item Lock and no Junk Arm, this makes many games auto-losses if you're not set up within the first few turns and your opponent manages to discard the cards you need or a lot of them are prized.

There would be no such thing as stalling, because stalling relies on either the ability to keep putting stuff back into stall or attacks not being OHKOs. Both of those being the case (remember, we've had Spirit Link Megas as long as we've had LTC. Take away LTC and SL Megas even further outclass every card in the format). makes every game a game of chance rather than skill, seeing as we can only currently recycle Supporters (most of which are draw support and at most 4 can be recycled) and Energy.

If LTC is to be gone, we need a Junk Arm back in format, or SLs to be banned as well.
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I disagree here. Lysandre's Trump card turned into a problem because it is able to recycle trainers and special energy. This allows control decks such as Seismitoad Shaymin and Trevenant Shaymin to recycle their hammers. Crushing Hammer had a coinflip for a reason but with Lysandre's Last Resort that drawback does not matter much. In a deck with 4 Crushing Hammer and 2 enhanced Hammer in addition to Lysandre's Last Resort you will have infinit access to those cards one the control deck set up. Remember that Trevenant and Seismitoad also block item cards and can do so from turn one or turn two on in a realiable manner. To combat this lock you need fast ability or attack based energy acceleration to outpace the speed at which these decks can discard your energies in play. At present only few deck have access to such an engine.

Also keep in mind that the Pokémon Company wants us to play Mega Evolutions. They tried to get us to use them from XY1 on but their concept failed. If you look at battle roads in Japan and recent regional around the word using the BW6-ROS format you will be hard pressed to find a Mega evolution under the top three decks. The main reason is that control deck were able to abuse the new tools intended to be used in speed beatdown decks much better. To give an example: A lot of people claimed that M Rayquaza will take over the format but the deck did not take off in tournaments. The main reason is that it needs three energies and a full bench to attack and only has access to item-based energy acceleration if it does not want to become too slow or too clunky. While the deck sets up real fast the same engine that allows the deck to do so can be used in any other deck too. Furthermore, the engine required to do so forced players to cut down on supporters and energies. In a match against speed control decks which essentially run the same draw- and recycle engine, this means that M Rayquaza is real vulnerable to energy discard combined with item lock. It does not matter that you can ohko almost all Pokémon in format if you cannot attack at all. For this reason the deck did not take off.

To resolve this problem you can either ban Lyandre's Last Resort, or errata the card. The ban will force control decks to be so much more precise in their card management because statistically your number of effective energy discard cards shrunk down to 2 Crushing Hammers (due to a .50 chance of flipping heads) and 2 Enhanced Hammers. This even ignores that you might have to discard some of the hammers with Sycamore / Juniper in some matches and that not all decks play special energy. A total of 2 (versus decks without special energy) or 4 (versus decks with special energies) hammers is not enough to keep energy off the board. Also remember that even of if rotate to XY-on Hammers will remain in format because they were printed in the Kalos Starter decks and the Yveltal half deck in Japan. So the problem would persist. I could imagine that hammers were a concern because they could rotate Laser out with ease and Lasers on their own are not that much trouble to several of the new decks.

Please keep in mind that this comes from a player, who loves to use control decks. At present Trevenant Shaymin is one of my favorit decks and it also looses almost nothing in case of an XY-on rotation that retains Lysandre's Last resort in format. Just use trevenant as the attacker that he is ment to be and capitalize on the bench damage with a single teched Absol ROS and four Super Scoop Ups and three Dimensional Valley instead of the Laser Virbank combo. Now you can even run more baisc energies, which makes it much harder to break the lock and the contineous attack and bench snipe.

In a nutshell, Lysandre's Last Resort's ability to recycle trainers and special energies combined with Vs Seeker is the main issue. If Lysandre's Last Resort would be unable to shuffle trainers back into the deck we may not even talk about it being banned at all.

Printing a new card that shuffles all Pokémon and basic energies back into each players deck would be a resolution to the problem outlined above that seem to me to be the main issue the Pokémon TCG company might have with Lysandre's Last Resort card. Another option would be to errata Lysandre's Last Resort as outlined right above. This would retain its strategic element of messing up the opponents' deck management without giving either player access to disruption trainers that may loose their penalty (aka coin flip) for being used.
 
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TheStrictNein said:
The main reason Mray did not take off in the tournaments is because 90% of decks in the tournament were teched to counter MRayray. Once the meta turns away from massive hype, MRayray will shine as a meta call and be virtually unstoppable.

IF LTC stays in format. If not, sell your Shaymin and MRays while they're still worth more than $0.05
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Have you battled a good Trevenant Shaymin or Seismitoad Shaymin list? How do you want to take off with Head Ringer on your Pokémon Ex and a constant storm of hammers that knock your energies off the battlefield. As outlined above: No energies means no attacks. At that point it does not matter how hard you would be hitting.

Even if Lysandre's Last Resort is banned M Rayquaza will remain viable. You will receive Hoopa Ex and Unown to speed up the deck and you have access to Sacred Ashes to retrieve Pokémon discarded because Skyfield was replaced. Shyamin will most likely be better in this deck than in lock decks because it is not hard to bench Pokémon in order to reduce the hand size and 1-2 Sacred Ashes can easily shuffle them back into the deck. In fact you could even argue that M Rayquaza will become better because of the lower risk to have no energies on the battlefield while under item lock due to masses of recycled hammers. Shaymin might do less well in other decks that do not want to fill their bench or cannot do so for some reason.
 
Dark Espeon said:
I disagree here. Lysandre's Trump card turned into a problem because it is able to recycle trainers and special energy. This allows control decks such as Seismitoad Shaymin and Trevenant Shaymin to recycle their hammers. Crushing Hammer had a coinflip for a reason but with Lysandre's Last Resort that drawback does not matter much. In a deck with 4 Crushing Hammer and 2 enhanced Hammer in addition to Lysandre's Last Resort you will have infinit access to those cards one the control deck set up. Remember that Trevenant and Seismitoad also block item cards and can do so from turn one or turn two on in a realiable manner. To combat this lock you need fast ability or attack based energy acceleration to outpace the speed at which these decks can discard your energies in play. At present only few deck have access to such an engine.

Also keep in mind that the Pokémon Company wants us to play Mega Evolutions. They tried to get us to use them from XY1 on but their concept failed. If you look at battle roads in Japan and recent regional around the word using the BW6-ROS format you will be hard pressed to find a Mega evolution under the top three decks. The main reason is that control deck were able to abuse the new tools intended to be used in speed beatdown decks much better. To give an example: A lot of people claimed that M Rayquaza will take over the format but the deck did not take off in tournaments. The main reason is that it needs three energies and a full bench to attack and only has access to item-based energy acceleration if it does not want to become too slow or too clunky. While the deck sets up real fast the same engine that allows the deck to do so can be used in any other deck too. Furthermore, the engine required to do so forced players to cut down on supporters and energies. In a match against speed control decks which essentially run the same draw- and recycle engine, this means that M Rayquaza is real vulnerable to energy discard combined with item lock. It does not matter that you can ohko almost all Pokémon in format if you cannot attack at all. For this reason the deck did not take off.

To resolve this problem you can either ban Lyandre's Last Resort, or errata the card. The ban will force control decks to be so much more precise in their card management because statistically your number of effective energy discard cards shrunk down to 2 Crushing Hammers (due to a .50 chance of flipping heads) and 2 Enhanced Hammers. This even ignores that you might have to discard some of the hammers with Sycamore / Juniper in some matches and that not all decks play special energy. A total of 2 (versus decks without special energy) or 4 (versus decks with special energies) hammers is not enough to keep energy off the board. Also remember that even of if rotate to XY-on Hammers will remain in format because they were printed in the Kalos Starter decks and the Yveltal half deck in Japan. So the problem would persist. I could imagine that hammers were a concern because they could rotate Laser out with ease and Lasers on their own are not that much trouble to several of the new decks.

Please keep in mind that this comes from a player, who loves to use control decks. At present Trevenant Shaymin is one of my favorit decks and it also looses almost nothing in case of an XY-on rotation that retains Lysandre's Last resort in format. Just use trevenant as the attacker that he is ment to be and capitalize on the bench damage with a single teched Absol ROS and four Super Scoop Ups and three Dimensional Valley instead of the Laser Virbank combo. Now you can even run more baisc energies, which makes it much harder to break the lock and the contineous attack and bench snipe.

In a nutshell, Lysandre's Last Resort's ability to recycle trainers and special energies combined with Vs Seeker is the main issue. If Lysandre's Last Resort would be unable to shuffle trainers back into the deck we may not even talk about it being banned at all.

Printing a new card that shuffles all Pokémon and basic energies back into each players deck would be a resolution to the problem outlined above that seem to me to be the main issue the Pokémon TCG company might have with Lysandre's Last Resort card. Another option would be to errata Lysandre's Last Resort as outlined right above. This would retain its strategic element of messing up the opponents' deck management without giving either player access to disruption trainers that may loose their penalty (aka coin flip) for being used.
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Banning this card won't help the game as a whole though because like Otaku said, decks like Night March could get will get out of control. Also, the whole meta seems to be about drawing through half your deck on your first turn. Banning this will mess up the whole thing.
 
Dark Espeon said:
I disagree here. Lysandre's Trump card turned into a problem because it is able to recycle trainers and special energy. This allows control decks such as Seismitoad Shaymin and Trevenant Shaymin to recycle their hammers. Crushing Hammer had a coinflip for a reason but with Lysandre's Last Resort that drawback does not matter much. In a deck with 4 Crushing Hammer and 2 enhanced Hammer in addition to Lysandre's Last Resort you will have infinit access to those cards one the control deck set up. Remember that Trevenant and Seismitoad also block item cards and can do so from turn one or turn two on in a realiable manner. To combat this lock you need fast ability or attack based energy acceleration to outpace the speed at which these decks can discard your energies in play. At present only few deck have access to such an engine.

Also keep in mind that the Pokémon Company wants us to play Mega Evolutions. They tried to get us to use them from XY1 on but their concept failed. If you look at battle roads in Japan and recent regional around the word using the BW6-ROS format you will be hard pressed to find a Mega evolution under the top three decks. The main reason is that control deck were able to abuse the new tools intended to be used in speed beatdown decks much better. To give an example: A lot of people claimed that M Rayquaza will take over the format but the deck did not take off in tournaments. The main reason is that it needs three energies and a full bench to attack and only has access to item-based energy acceleration if it does not want to become too slow or too clunky. While the deck sets up real fast the same engine that allows the deck to do so can be used in any other deck too. Furthermore, the engine required to do so forced players to cut down on supporters and energies. In a match against speed control decks which essentially run the same draw- and recycle engine, this means that M Rayquaza is real vulnerable to energy discard combined with item lock. It does not matter that you can ohko almost all Pokémon in format if you cannot attack at all. For this reason the deck did not take off.

To resolve this problem you can either ban Lyandre's Last Resort, or errata the card. The ban will force control decks to be so much more precise in their card management because statistically your number of effective energy discard cards shrunk down to 2 Crushing Hammers (due to a .50 chance of flipping heads) and 2 Enhanced Hammers. This even ignores that you might have to discard some of the hammers with Sycamore / Juniper in some matches and that not all decks play special energy. A total of 2 (versus decks without special energy) or 4 (versus decks with special energies) hammers is not enough to keep energy off the board. Also remember that even of if rotate to XY-on Hammers will remain in format because they were printed in the Kalos Starter decks and the Yveltal half deck in Japan. So the problem would persist. I could imagine that hammers were a concern because they could rotate Laser out with ease and Lasers on their own are not that much trouble to several of the new decks.

Please keep in mind that this comes from a player, who loves to use control decks. At present Trevenant Shaymin is one of my favorit decks and it also looses almost nothing in case of an XY-on rotation that retains Lysandre's Last resort in format. Just use trevenant as the attacker that he is ment to be and capitalize on the bench damage with a single teched Absol ROS and four Super Scoop Ups and three Dimensional Valley instead of the Laser Virbank combo. Now you can even run more baisc energies, which makes it much harder to break the lock and the contineous attack and bench snipe.

In a nutshell, Lysandre's Last Resort's ability to recycle trainers and special energies combined with Vs Seeker is the main issue. If Lysandre's Last Resort would be unable to shuffle trainers back into the deck we may not even talk about it being banned at all.

Printing a new card that shuffles all Pokémon and basic energies back into each players deck would be a resolution to the problem outlined above that seem to me to be the main issue the Pokémon TCG company might have with Lysandre's Last Resort card. Another option would be to errata Lysandre's Last Resort as outlined right above. This would retain its strategic element of messing up the opponents' deck management without giving either player access to disruption trainers that may loose their penalty (aka coin flip) for being used.
Click to expand...
Banning this card won't help the game as a whole though because like Otaku said, decks like Night March could will get out of control. Also, the whole meta seems to be about burning through half your deck on your first turn so banning LTC will mess everything up. All of us are dependent on Acro Bike, Trainers' Mail, etc. How could we lose them all and still play?
 
Dark Espeon said:
Printing a new card that shuffles all Pokémon and basic energies back into each players deck would be a resolution to the problem outlined above that seem to me to be the main issue the Pokémon TCG company might have with Lysandre's Last Resort card. Another option would be to errata Lysandre's Last Resort as outlined right above. This would retain its strategic element of messing up the opponents' deck management without giving either player access to disruption trainers that may loose their penalty (aka coin flip) for being used.
Click to expand...
I agree here, although I think they should errata LTC to shuffle in Pokemon, Basic and Special Energies, and Supporters (other than LTC)
Basically everything except for item cards.

This would make the card very fringe but still see play.

Another solution could be to just ban C. Hammer instead as it does not involve skill and can be abused using LTC.
Although I've always been an advocate for HTL to be banned *grumble*
 
if they want to ban cards to "promote a better competitive environment" then get rid of Seismitoad-EX. That thing needs to go.
 
Hmmm, I dont think Night March could get out of control considering it needs to be very, very careful of not decking out. Enough players of Night March could tell you that Trump isnt nearly the bane of their existence, since all their Battle Comps get shuffled in to start the cycle again, and any key DCEs that got chucked in an untimely Sycamore can be used again. No, the decks that get super nasty are mil decks and cards i.e. Trick Shovel and Absol EX. You can laugh all you want at absols spirtlinkless Mega but 2 Dark for the ability to mill and hit a trainer most of the time (moat decks running at least 20+ Trainers) and one shotting you with a Muscle Band is more worrisome. And thats not counting the next set where we may have access to more reliable mill cards that dont get shut off by Vileplume. Errata it, or ban it but considering they didnt ban Sableye SF just did a mid season rotation, I dont know what theyll do here. Having a Primal Clash on rotation would be immensely weird.
 
asdjklghty said:
Banning this card won't help the game as a whole though because like Otaku said, decks like Night March could will get out of control. Also, the whole meta seems to be about burning through half your deck on your first turn so banning LTC will mess everything up. All of us are dependent on Acro Bike, Trainers' Mail, etc. How could we lose them all and still play?
Click to expand...

Hi asdjklghty,

I agree thatthe current meta is focussed on speed. Unfortunately speed control tends to be better than beatdown and much better than speed-based beatdown decks in general. At the moment a lot of decks run a speed engine. The ban of Lysandre's Last Resort thus hurts them all since decks now need to consider when it is work to use these cards and when it would be better to hold on and wait a turn. In a nutshell: You need to take resource management considerations into account to a greater extent in building and using decks. Note that this applies to all decks, albeit to a different extent. The most important part in my arguement is that control decks such as Trevenant Shaymin and Seismitoad Shaymin are hurt the most.

To handle Night March be sure to include some non-Ex Pokémon to create more even prize trades. Their attackers are not that hard to kill at all. Also take into consideration that Night March will loose some momentum too or run a greater risk of decking out. There is a nice discussion on Virbank on this issue.
 
AlexanderTheAwesome said:
I agree here, although I think they should errata LTC to shuffle in Pokemon, Basic and Special Energies, and Supporters (other than LTC)
Basically everything except for item cards.

This would make the card very fringe but still see play.

Another solution could be to just ban C. Hammer instead as it does not involve skill and can be abused using LTC.
Although I've always been an advocate for HTL to be banned *grumble*
Click to expand...

Hi AlexanderTheAwesome,

In fact I would prefer an errate instead of a ban but I would restrict it to onyl shuffle Pokémon and basic energies in both players discard pile back into the deck. The main reason is that we have Vs Seeker to retrieve lost supporters and being unable to reshuffle special energies back into the deck might discourage insanity-like deck builts that run no more than four special energies.
 
THIS is the card they want to ban?!?? Not colorless Mega Ray, with its first domination potential?? Boo on you Japan, boo on you!

Colorless Mega Rayquaza and Shaymin-EX are the ones with the most broken potential. I can get that they want Mill decks to become a thing again, but when you have something that can crush ANYTHING on the first turn, or something that you can use to constantly refill your hand over and over with minimal investment.
 
Kalyst said:
Hmmm, I dont think Night March could get out of control considering it needs to be very, very careful of not decking out. Enough players of Night March could tell you that Trump isnt nearly the bane of their existence, since all their Battle Comps get shuffled in to start the cycle again, and any key DCEs that got chucked in an untimely Sycamore can be used again. No, the decks that get super nasty are mil decks and cards i.e. Trick Shovel and Absol EX. You can laugh all you want at absols spirtlinkless Mega but 2 Dark for the ability to mill and hit a trainer most of the time (moat decks running at least 20+ Trainers) and one shotting you with a Muscle Band is more worrisome. And thats not counting the next set where we may have access to more reliable mill cards that dont get shut off by Vileplume. Errata it, or ban it but considering they didnt ban Sableye SF just did a mid season rotation, I dont know what theyll do here. Having a Primal Clash on rotation would be immensely weird.
Click to expand...
LTC followed by Quaking Punch or simply having Trevenant active. Best feeling ever.
 
Frosty said:
if they want to ban cards to "promote a better competitive environment" then get rid of Seismitoad-EX. That thing needs to go.
Click to expand...

Hi Frosty,

Seismitoad Ex is balanced as is without unlimited access to energy discard and other disruptive items. The reason that the deck runs that many disruption items is that these items run the deck if the opponent cannot remove them with their own items and ease the pain by using item-based acceleration available to several decks such as Mega Turbo. The problem with these control decks is that they are as fast as speed-beatdown decks and Lysandre's Last Resort gives them unlimited access to their disruption tainers. Banning Seismitoad would remove the symptom but not the cause. Without unlimited access to their disruption engine Seismitoad becomes much less dangerous. If you simply ban Seismitoad you would still have Wally and Trevenant to deal with, who could still abuse the same disruption cards infinitely with Lysandre's Last Resort and the new speed-draw engine. Some might even argue that in the long run Trevenant might be even more troublesome because he has much better damage output and could have even benefited from a possible rotation to XY-on.
 
From the opinion of someone who hasn't been "in" the format for a while, I think this is a good thing. LTC looks like something that would be problematic in most every format and may well be a contributor to whatever problems this format has, even if it doesn't look like it. Seismitoad-EX, while a bit stupid, is only made to be what it is by the cards that support it, too. If it didn't have what it has, it wouldn't be nearly as good I think. Then again, I haven't played much since FLF :p
 
I don't care what you people say, being able to recycle a lot of things with one single card really helps a lot of decks. Not just Seismitoad. This ban is a terrible decision because the only way to recycle cards is with Item Cards. This helped you have space in your room for other helpful stuff and I really loved what it did for my own deck. It allowed me to open up space to cards that it needed desperately. Now the only way to get the job done is with Item cards. Which, in an Item Lock heavy format - makes this a terrible decision.

If we're going to start getting a banlist for the Pokemon TCG, then they need to know what's really wrecking their game - and it's not this. This kind of terrible decision making is why I've started to move on to VGC and simply stick to collecting cards. Something I've seen many local TCG players begin doing. Because whoever is thinking of or play-testing the more broken cards and letting them slip past approval - is making this game more unplayable with each passing set.
 
OmegaLantern said:
THIS is the card they want to ban?!?? Not colorless Mega Ray, with its first domination potential?? Boo on you Japan, boo on you!

Colorless Mega Rayquaza and Shaymin-EX are the ones with the most broken potential. I can get that they want Mill decks to become a thing again, but when you have something that can crush ANYTHING on the first turn, or something that you can use to constantly refill your hand over and over with minimal investment.
Click to expand...
M Ray isn't that OP when you think about it in practice terms. Enhanced Hammer's definitely here to stay for a while and even without LTC, just one Hammer and a Xerosic+Head Ringer slows the Sky High Pokemon down significantly.
 
I think this is a bad idea for many reasons.

Night March and Flareon exist.

They just released Shaymin, which will hurt sales.

Mill decks could start to see play. Keep in mind, in Japan, they still have Aggron DXE and Sabeleye, which could see play with Ninjask.

Finally, LTC isn't anywhere close to overpowered. This is because it takes your supporter and it shuffles in your opponent's discard.
 
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