Fun What Were the Most Influential Cards?

DarkMatterGaming

DarkMatterGaming

Aspiring Trainer
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In any format, there are cards/decks that dictate how the game is played: Haymaker from Base set, SableDonk for those 5 minutes that it existed, Tropical Beach before it got banned (with good reason)...

My question today is which cards, in any format, were the most influential and if they were reprinted today, would they make any shift in today's meta?

I'll start by saying that Broken Time Space, to my knowledge, was super good for what were the best decks at the time. A reprint of that would be absolutely bonkers and would make Broken Vine Space obsolete. Whoops.
 
Professor Oak's New Theory, Dual Ball, Boost Energy, Double Rainbow Energy... just a few of many that would be welcome back into the format.

Many of the most influential cards (Holon engine, SP engine) require those specific cards and are a lot less powerful without them.
 
Oak's New Theory is just a straight up better Shauna and I'm okay with this.

Dual Ball is a tad bit risky but it's a free search for potentially 2 basics without losing hand advantage. I can see how that'd be amazing in today's format.

Boost Energy... I'm not 100% sure what could really use Boost Energy right now, honestly, but that is a scary effect.

Double Rainbow Energy would work with Megas and also make evolution based decks viable again but whoa.


Reading up on things, I wonder if Desert Ruins would do anything. It would probably need a small buff - or stay the same since Faded Town does the job for Megas - but it could help with avoiding the "I barely missed the KO" scenarios. That damage stacks up.
 
Energy Removal and Super Energy Removal were incredibly important to how the early game developed. Yes if we were to remove the raw draw, search, and even Trainer recycling power of the early Pokémon TCG, they probably wouldn't be... but those first two are pretty much mainstays of how Pokémon differentiates itself from many other TCGs, for better or worse.

As an experiment I began testing with a card pool consisting of Base Set through Fossil. I was trying to get a group of other players interested as well but it all fell apart before it even got started. So it was just me testing on my own. Still these incomplete, preliminary results suggested that if you got rid of S/ER from the early card pool, you got a much healthier and more diverse metagame. It turns out that Haymaker decks needed to keep the opponent from building anything remotely "big". Kind of obvious, but really think about it; Haymaker decks worked because of both OHKOing really small targets while its own Pokémon took multiple turns to take down. Without S/ER, even in the face of Gust of Wind, you could build stuff up to rival Haymaker Pokémon.

You might be down two Prizes and at least one, but without S/ER several decks could afford Electrode (Base Set) as a 2-2 (or more) line. This meant you could use its "Buzzap" Pokémon Power so that Electrode would self-KO but turn into two Energy of any Type. Throw in your manual Energy attachment (often on a Double Colorless Energy) and most of the card pool (Evolution or Basic) can be readied in two turns of prep. So even if the Haymaker deck does its thing and KOs one of your Evolving Basics, as long as you opened with two of your main attacker (or its Basic Stage) and two Voltorb, it was okay. Next turn you would Evolve, pull off the combo, and have something Haymaker decks would struggle to take down.

Haymaker still remained one of top decks, probably even the best, but the other competitive decks of the time joined it as the top tier. The decks that were functional but non-competitive suddenly became the new Tier 2 and Tier 3.
 
Pokemon EX: Mewtwo EX --- Legendary Treasure. I still think one of the most dominant cards in the game was Mewtwo EX. I also think that if it was reprinted it would be played more then Lugia EX in standard. I just think that the DCE on Weakness was a big flaw that took advantage of the game structure. I think if it was reprinted it would be very playable, not as dominant, but very playable.
 
poke4trade said:
I just think that the DCE on Weakness was a big flaw that took advantage of the game structure.
Click to expand...

Oh, that reminds me of another one? So assuming it is okay if I go again... Double Colorless Energy. I was shocked when it returned in HeartGold/SoulSilver. The short version is that it means attacks that cost [CC] have to be really innocuous or reserved for stuff that isn't hitting the field the first turn or two... which is exactly the opposite of how cards were being designed back then, let alone to this day!
 
Otaku said:
The short version is that it means attacks that cost [CC] have to be really innocuous or reserved for stuff that isn't hitting the field the first turn or two... which is exactly the opposite of how cards were being designed back then, let alone to this day!
Click to expand...

If it wasn't for DCE, Siesmitoad EX would have never gotten the speed it needed to be so dominant in the format. Good Call!
 
That's a bunch of good points, Otaku. Super/Energy Removal is bonkers which is why it makes sense they attached the coin flip to it and never printed something akin to Super Energy Removal (Enhanced Hammer seems like a twist on it).

As for DCE... Huh. That never really occurred to me. Thanks for putting some stuff into perspective, fellas!
 
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