News Lysandre's Trump Card Has Been Banned

Does this mean that we have the first banned card since NEO GENESIS Sneasel/ NEO GENESIS Slowking.
I'm actually laughing right now, since i never actually got to use Lysandre's trump card in a deck, since i only got my first one in a Groudon EX tin.
This means Absol EX and Mega Absol EX are now competitively viable cards, as well as any other cards like Trick Shovel, that discard your opponents cards.

Nobel Victories Durant is very happy in Expanded now.
 
One Approved said:
I don't think you understand this bullet point completely. One deck's viability is absolutely no reason to determine whether or not to ban a card. I could argue that Quad Bidoof isn't a viable deck in this format, and that it will need to re-use resources to KO an EX pokemon.

The point of this bullet point is that it creates a literally TOXIC environment where decks like Seismitoad-EX can beat even piss-poor matchups like Virizion/Genesect because they have the capability to literally play more than 4 Crushing Hammer in a turn and not let you play any energy. My friend barely top 8'd at the past Regional Championships in Madison because he was having so much trouble with Seismitoad despite playing a direct counter to it. Re-using trainer cards does, in fact, break the format. If it didn't, Dowsing Machine wouldn't have been an Ace Sec.

It also creates a less skillful format, where decks like Mega Rayquaza can blow through their entire deck on turn 1 with no reprecussions. Without Trump Card, Mega ray can easily still function, but it has to manage its resources much more cautiously.



Item lock might make for longer, drawn-out games, but it doesn't even come close to Trump Card. If it did, they would have banned Seismitoad-EX, Dialga G, old Vileplume, and any other item lock card that has ever existed. I watched players who used Trump Card in tandem with Seismitoad legitimately take 10+ minute turns multiple times in the same game. In a format where people are already complaining that 50 minutes isn't enough time for 3 games, I can easily see why Trump Card causes a reason for concern.
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True but deck's viability is relevant because, all our decks rely on LTC. Removing it would mean redoing all our decks and maybe even dropping some because we can't reuse our resources other than the Item lockable, not very useful Sacred Ash. Don't even think about Dowsing Machine because you have to discard 2 cards to get just 1 Trainer back into your hand. I guess we'll all play Flareon or Night March. Let's all be frustrated with mirror matches since we'll want to play it since LTC will be banned. Those decks aren't that easy to counter without LTC. Even Aegislash EX can be thrown around.

So now TPCi has just made another problem by banning the card; affecting all our decks and, Turbo decks. In order to beat Night March/Flareon decks, you have 2 options:
You can try to outrace them in prizes which will never happen.
Or you can use LTC.
Walls like Aegislash EX aren't viable and give up 2 prizes. If so, many would have found a way to make Night March decks not that viable at States/Provincials.
 
asdjklghty said:
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.
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THANK GOD it will mess up "the whole thing". The whole thing is no longer about strategy so much as it is "how can I trounce in two turns?" We've become, as a society, ridiculously obsessed with immediate gratification that we've lost how to 180 and strategize what we've got in decks. I've noticed in the TCGO that the "Black and White - Basic Red" deck has things like Emboar and Torkoal and Ninetails that make sense... Then there's Rattata and Raticate. For SEVERAL different rounds and "levels", I didn't understate why it was there... And then you get to trainers who have EXs... Lots of them... And all ya got is some Vulpixes on the bench and Raticate. Guess what you get to do to rescue the entire match? Burn with a vulpix and let them knock it out, put forth Raticate, take every EX down to 10hp with 3 energy attack, and the next turn or soon after, die from burn damage.

It has become that the only games I get any satisfaction from is playing ppl with the precon decks at League nights for funzies or the TCGO with precon decks. Meta gaming has ruined the game almost entirely. Watching the final 4 stream yesterday was proof that LTC was the backbone in the decks, because how else would anyone win a game with only 6 energy in their deck????
 
Re-doing a bunch of decks is easy to do. As a pokemon player, we do it every time a new set is released, whenever we have a rotation, or whenever a deck that nobody expects to do well suddenly shoots straight into the limelight (see: Donphan) because of the constantly-changing metagame. Adaptation is a skill that every good pokemon player needs to succeed.

Dealing with Flareon and Night March is indeed difficult and somewhat worrisome, but it's not impossible. Even during winter regionals when very few people played Trump Card, there was what, 2, maybe 3 Night March/Flareon decks that made the top 32 in St. Louis, with 0 making it into the top 8? And the following week in Florida regionals, the most dominant decks were clearly Yveltal (taking each of the top 3 seeds) and Landorus/Bats (taking a whopping 8 or so of the top spots.) Granted, it's a completely different metagame now with Shaymin-EX being released, but dealing with those two decks is not as impossible as a lot of players think it is.
 
Will Night March really take off THAT much with there soon to be 3 ways to lock items in the format? 2 of which can theoretically be set up first-turn?
 
Ms Hugo said:
Will Night March really take off THAT much with there soon to be 3 ways to lock items in the format? 2 of which can theoretically be set up first-turn?
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Yes because without LTC, Toad will have to think carefully about discarding energy with Hammers and Team Flare Grunt.
 
I'd first like to point out that this ban is purely based off of Jason Klaczynski's 1st place win in Sudden Death on yesterday's stream that lasted for 2 hours. If it was a quicker game, this ban would not have happened.
As for the actual situation: I'm a bit conflicted on the banning.
Why it was the right decision: This card makes decks with Shaymin literally broken. You can draw out your whole deck turn 1 and can still recycle it all back that turn. With Toad and a lock, the deck was brutal. The card also limited deck playability of Night March and Flareon. While I personally dislike a deck, it shouldn't be totally wrecked because of one card and a Toad lock. Lastly, this gives Toad some problems. Even in a lock, there are cards that can discard DCE: Cobalion EX, Xerosic, Team Flare Grunt, and Crawdaunt. Without being able to recycle energy, decks will have to up their energy counts.
Why it is a bad decision: The card shouldn't have really been banned now or at least with the same conditions. With Nationals in a few weeks, people who have been play testing now need to rework their whole decks. Despite the whole month to rework their decks, players who felt comfortable with the format now have a problem. The card also gives a lot of viability to Flareon and Night March decks, which can become extremely powerful now that your opponent can't block the strategy in any way. I also think banning the card was wrong, but needed an errata. For example, either having Lysandre's Trump Card go To the Lost Zone or only to shuffle in Energy and Pokemon would have been a better solution. Now, the only energy retrieval cards are either from attacks, abilities, or energy retrieval itself. And as for pokemon, there's only sacred ash. There's now no way to retrieve special energy, which brings back enhanced hammer, which is not good for this format.

My initial reaction is that I like the change, but I don't think that right now and a ban was the correct way to fix this problem.
 
aah
Ms Hugo said:
Will Night March really take off THAT much with there soon to be 3 ways to lock items in the format? 2 of which can theoretically be set up first-turn?
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Honestly, I don't see Night March as much of a threat even right now. It's decent yes, but there's a lot more bench hitters coming out and Delta Plus Swellow can be splashed into anything, making the prize exchange easy to overcome and reverse Night March's purpose.
 
dollyholly said:
THANK GOD it will mess up "the whole thing". The whole thing is no longer about strategy so much as it is "how can I trounce in two turns?" We've become, as a society, ridiculously obsessed with immediate gratification that we've lost how to 180 and strategize what we've got in decks. I've noticed in the TCGO that the "Black and White - Basic Red" deck has things like Emboar and Torkoal and Ninetails that make sense... Then there's Rattata and Raticate. For SEVERAL different rounds and "levels", I didn't understate why it was there... And then you get to trainers who have EXs... Lots of them... And all ya got is some Vulpixes on the bench and Raticate. Guess what you get to do to rescue the entire match? Burn with a vulpix and let them knock it out, put forth Raticate, take every EX down to 10hp with 3 energy attack, and the next turn or soon after, die from burn damage.

It has become that the only games I get any satisfaction from is playing ppl with the precon decks at League nights for funzies or the TCGO with precon decks. Meta gaming has ruined the game almost entirely. Watching the final 4 stream yesterday was proof that LTC was the backbone in the decks, because how else would anyone win a game with only 6 energy in their deck????
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I watched it too and VirGen didn't have Trump. I want Toad to be less dominant but I've said it again. Rebuilding our non-Toad decks will be hard without affecting the consistency and won't have to take into account other matchups. Yeah I think I can build a deck specifically to counter Turbo decks but how will that to against other decks?

TokenDuelist said:
aah

Honestly, I don't see Night March as much of a threat even right now. It's decent yes, but there's a lot more bench hitters coming out and Delta Plus Swellow can be splashed into anything, making the prize exchange easy to overcome and reverse Night March's purpose.
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Yeah I already said LatiBats is hard to set up and play. Turbo decks have almost no setup required and they can donk my Bat or even M Latios on their first turn. You can bring up whatever but at the end of the day or match, they don't matter cause they won't help you win.
Specifically talking about Swellow, you know how clunky it's gonna be? Mew+ Dimension Valley is too much. And a DCE plus a Basic just to finish off a Pokemon? Primal Kyogre can be paired with Articuno and Swellow but outside of that, what else?
 
TheStrictNein said:
It takes Nationals and Worlds from a game of skill and preparation to a game of guessing and hoping you've made a deck that can counter a deck someone else guessed at creating.
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I do kinda like how players can completely use all of their own skill to take the banning and rework their own deck and not netdeck player's lists from the regionals.
But I agree that this really should have either been banned prior to or after Nationals. I think that many people will suffer from lack of testing a format with people's new take on the ban.
 
I can probably live with this ban, but it'll take me a while to adjust :/ I'll need to be more careful with throwing Rainbow Spears around.

off topic: this is the first ban in a while isn't it?
 
TheWhiskaz_ said:
I can probably live with this ban, but it'll take me a while to adjust :/ I'll need to be more careful with throwing Rainbow Spears around.

off topic: this is the first ban in a while isn't it?
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15 years; first time since TPCi took over for WotC
 
......
Speechless. Utterly speechless. Bandit Ring absolutely must have something that will help compensate this.
 
I hate to see a card banned. The could of added errata on the card and on VS seeker.

VS can't retrieve Lysandre Trump card

Add all the pokemon in your discard pile to your deck.
 
Elbow said:
I'd first like to point out that this ban is purely based off of Jason Klaczynski's 1st place win in Sudden Death on yesterday's stream that lasted for 2 hours. If it was a quicker game, this ban would not have happened.
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This is also being banned in Japan and they have been experiencing it dominating over there as well. Odds are that at best, one bullet point is owed to Ness' two hour game.

Addendum: Also if we are going to play Create-A-Card with an errata, let us do it right. The problem was that the card shuffled things that have historically been difficult to recycle, in addition to having no amount cap. So either the amount of cards returned would have to be limited, the kind of cards returned would have to be limited, or both.

Lysandre's Trump Card removing itself from play (for example) does not stop someone from running four copies. So while that would make it less effective, it would still likely work. What might have worked is if it only returned Pokémon and/or Basic Energy cards.
 
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Sounds like Night March is going to be the runaway best deck in the format, since for a DCE you can easily OHKO literally everything that's weak to lightning or psychic. It also sounds like anything running cancer engine gets way worse, since they can't Juniper with impunity anymore.

I disagree with the decision but if the meta is outside the goal of the Pokemon Company's design then I can't really argue. Deciding when to play Trump Card is still a pretty skill-intensive thing.
 
WhoopsyDaisy said:
Sounds like Night March is going to be the runaway best deck in the format, since for a DCE you can easily OHKO literally everything that's weak to lightning or psychic. It also sounds like anything running cancer engine gets way worse, since they can't Juniper with impunity anymore.
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You just contradicted yourself; Night March will no longer be able to be so reckless - while a well timed Lysandre's Trump Card can wreck a Night March deck, there are games where I've spammed it multiple turns in a row and every turn my opponent simply redid his/her set-up. There is a reason some Night March lists run their own Lysandre's Trump Card.

WhoopsyDaisy said:
I disagree with the decision but if the meta is outside the goal of the Pokemon Company's design then I can't really argue. Deciding when to play Trump Card is still a pretty skill-intensive thing.
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You are entitled to your own opinion but not your own facts; while I was confused at first I went to the trouble of quickly reading about how this last weekend's Regionals as well as latest tournaments in Japan went. This decision completely reflects the results of both of these and is very dependent upon the metagame. As for being skill-intensive... does it require skill to use well? Yes, but it also decreases the skill needed elsewhere: it is a net loss. You go from needing to be careful with what you discard as well as what is KOed or used up to just recycling it all.

You don't have to believe me but I've been around for a while; I see more and more reckless plays and less and less skill required to make them. That doesn't mean people who use the card aren't trying to use it well or lack skill themselves, just that we have replaced multiple things that require more skill with something that requires less.
 
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