Author Topic: RetroActive #31: Pokemon: The Trading Card Game (Official Discussion)  (Read 23530 times)

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Offline pokepal148

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Re: RetroActive #31: Pokemon: The Trading Card Game (Official Discussion)
« Reply #25 on: February 22, 2015, 09:39:21 PM »
The issue is that my selection of trainers is very limited.

Offline ClexYoshi

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Re: RetroActive #31: Pokemon: The Trading Card Game (Official Discussion)
« Reply #26 on: February 23, 2015, 02:20:07 AM »
The issue is that my selection of trainers is very limited.


That is indeed problematic. I'd find somebody in the grass club or science club that you can kinda just steamroll and do it over and over again and keep getting packs. do take Johnny's suggestion and get Dr. Mason's Electronically mailed boosters as well.  you might want to make a restore point before you read those so you can control what you get out of those packs too.

Another thing you folks can do to cheat (even on an actual cart of the game) is that a coin flip's results are not determined until you leave the coin flip screen. if you reset the game/turn it off and on, it will let you pick up right where you left off just before you performed the action that required a coin toss!

Offline Halbred

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Re: RetroActive #31: Pokemon: The Trading Card Game (Official Discussion)
« Reply #27 on: February 23, 2015, 02:40:22 PM »
I'm also running a Blastoise deck that incorporates Machop and Hitmonchan to deal damage while my Blastoise powers up. I really wish we got the sequel, which brings in the first Team Rocket expansion. Very interesting cards in there--low HP evolutions but spectacular attack potentials.

I was able to blow through every gym by using my Blastoise deck and doing some very minor tinkering before certain gyms, like the Electric gym. Even then, I killed everyone with Machop and Hitmonchan. By the time Blastoise was powered up, he didn't give a **** about type advantage.

One thing I should note here, about coin flips: you'll notice they're not random. That is, try doing a restore point just before making a coin flip. If you get tails, reset to the restore point and try again. It'll be tails again, forever. Why? Because the coin flips are pre-determined. The game pre-determines ALL of the coin flips for a match before it begins. Not sure why it wouldn't just randomize the coin flip, but there you go. It's always bugged me, though. There will be times where coins flips seem to seriously favor your opponent, but no, it's just that in the order of pre-set positive coin flips, your opponent just happens to be using coin-flip attacks.

One more thing. A lot of people pass over RATTATA because of his low HP and Fighting weakness, but he's actually really good as an opener. 20 damage for one Colorless energy, no retreat cost, and Psychic resistance? He wipes the floor with Psychic and Ghost decks, and his damage is low enough that it skates through Mr. Mime's Barrier. At least one of the Psychic trainers uses a deck that's heavily dependent on Mr. Mime. If you take Rattata in there, that deck is finished before it even gears up.
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Offline ClexYoshi

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Re: RetroActive #31: Pokemon: The Trading Card Game (Official Discussion)
« Reply #28 on: February 23, 2015, 05:41:05 PM »
Thank you for reminding me and correcting me on the bad info, Halbred. It's that you can control coin flips by not using attacks that use them and let the CPU use a coin flip instead before trying again. it even saves this coin flip table if you turn the game off and on. :P

Offline pokepal148

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Re: RetroActive #31: Pokemon: The Trading Card Game (Official Discussion)
« Reply #29 on: February 23, 2015, 10:10:36 PM »
So that pidgeot card sounds absolutely broken, I love it.

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Re: RetroActive #31: Pokemon: The Trading Card Game (Official Discussion)
« Reply #30 on: February 23, 2015, 11:34:20 PM »
So that pidgeot card sounds absolutely broken, I love it.
Yeah not really, it's annoying to deal with but that's about it.

Offline yoshi1001

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Re: RetroActive #31: Pokemon: The Trading Card Game (Official Discussion)
« Reply #31 on: February 23, 2015, 11:35:31 PM »
The issue is that my selection of trainers is very limited.

This brings up another trait of the early TCG I didn't like-rare trainers. Base Set actually has ten of them, many competitively useful:

-Computer Search (reprinted and yet not reprinted in Boundaries Crossed in 2012)
-Item Finder
-Lass
-Pokemon Breeder
-Pokemon Trader
-Scoop Up
-Super Energy Removal

Thankfully, the number of rare staple trainers went down later into the card game's life.
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Offline lolmonade

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Re: RetroActive #31: Pokemon: The Trading Card Game (Official Discussion)
« Reply #32 on: February 24, 2015, 08:46:28 AM »
I hadn't dabbled in deck creation yet, partially because I wanted to see how far I could get with just the base "bulbasaur & friends" deck.  The answer is "not very".  I get steamrolled by the water gym boss each time I play her, so i've had to resort to beating the low-levels to get more booster packs until I have enough cards to build a competent deck.
My most effective games have been ones which I've been able to draw half my deck very, very quickly.  The card game (at least in this game) moves horribly slow, so anything you can do to effectively "speed-up" movement through your deck will give you a distinct advantage.
 
To those of you who have dabbled more into the deck building side, it appears pretty similiar to MtG in that you want to limit your pokemon types to probably 2 at the most (or 1 & colorless, like pokepal's deck indicates).  Is there a particularly good ratio of energy/cards in a deck or base pokemon/evolution that works most effectively? 
 
ALSO - Are the 2nd evolution cards (Venusaur, Charizard, Blastoise) worth holding in a deck?  My experience so far makes me think not, takes far too long to build up a pokemon with the evolutions & enough energy cards to utilize their attacks.
 
Finally, which pokemon have useful pokemon powers?  Do you find yourself even bothering with those?

Offline ClexYoshi

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Re: RetroActive #31: Pokemon: The Trading Card Game (Official Discussion)
« Reply #33 on: February 24, 2015, 11:00:34 AM »
I hadn't dabbled in deck creation yet, partially because I wanted to see how far I could get with just the base "bulbasaur & friends" deck.  The answer is "not very".  I get steamrolled by the water gym boss each time I play her, so i've had to resort to beating the low-levels to get more booster packs until I have enough cards to build a competent deck.
My most effective games have been ones which I've been able to draw half my deck very, very quickly.  The card game (at least in this game) moves horribly slow, so anything you can do to effectively "speed-up" movement through your deck will give you a distinct advantage.
 
To those of you who have dabbled more into the deck building side, it appears pretty similiar to MtG in that you want to limit your pokemon types to probably 2 at the most (or 1 & colorless, like pokepal's deck indicates).  Is there a particularly good ratio of energy/cards in a deck or base pokemon/evolution that works most effectively? 
 
ALSO - Are the 2nd evolution cards (Venusaur, Charizard, Blastoise) worth holding in a deck?  My experience so far makes me think not, takes far too long to build up a pokemon with the evolutions & enough energy cards to utilize their attacks.
 
Finally, which pokemon have useful pokemon powers?  Do you find yourself even bothering with those?

10 to 15 Pokemon (I'd run more pokemon if you don't have as many trianers to plug in.)
20-25 energy
20-30 Trainer cards

Considering that trainers are the thing you can do as many times as you want during a gain is why i'd say your deck should favor trainers. Trainers can help you get to pokemon and energy faster, recycle said things, or do a number of other tricks.


Most of the time, I feel ANY evolution isn't worth it. very few times in any TCG would I recommend somebody run a card that is effectively a dead draw without a prerequisite card. This doubly goes for something that requires not one but two prerequisites, especially in a game where it's VERY possible that you won't start the game with said prerequisites not in your deck due to the Prize mechanic... Unless your deck can do quite a bit of digging and tutoring to bring those cards together, I would say stay clear of Stage 2 Pokemon for the most part. there are a few that are worth it though.

Blastoise: After getting a Blastoise evolved, he pays for himself with his Rain Dance Pokemon Power, especially in a mono water deck, as he basically removes the cap on energy attachment and makes setting himself and the other stuff on your bench up a matter of how fast you can draw into it.

Venusaur (Not the promo one from Card Pop, the normal one.): Energy Trans doesn't quite pay for itself in the way that Rain Dance does, but smart use of Energy Trans can make for a solid strategy, especially if you are playing a Huge Explosion deck.

Alakazam: bouncing damage about is an interesting stall tactic if nothing else, and using this in conjunction with 4 Chansey, 4 Mr. Mime, and Scoop-up can artifically dialate a game if that's your sort of thing.

Finally, yes. Pokemon Powers are VERY much worth it. they are an action you can take using your pokemon outside of attacks. usually, these are very passive, yes, but good use of pokemon powers can be paramount to one's strategy as a whole!

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Re: RetroActive #31: Pokemon: The Trading Card Game (Official Discussion)
« Reply #34 on: February 24, 2015, 04:30:38 PM »
I tend to build decks that do NOT require a lot of Trainers to be effective. My strategy is to use strong Basics out of the gate and wipe out the defender's Basics while they are trying to power them up. I tend to use:

10-12 Trainers (if that)
25-30 Energy
Everything else is Pokémon

My evolution rubric is: Four Basic, three 1st Stage, two 2nd Stage. You have to assume that not all the Basics you find will survive, and then you use Poke Balls, Pokémon Traders, and Pokémon Breeders to evolve them quickly. However, I do not often run with an evolution-heavy deck. This might be different if the Neo expansions were available, because then it would be ALL TYRANITAR ALL THE TIME.

As for Pokémon Powers, some are great, others suck. I hate dealing with Muk's power, because it affects both players, same with Aerodacyl.
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Re: RetroActive #31: Pokemon: The Trading Card Game (Official Discussion)
« Reply #35 on: February 24, 2015, 11:01:45 PM »
I tend to build decks that do NOT require a lot of Trainers to be effective. My strategy is to use strong Basics out of the gate and wipe out the defender's Basics while they are trying to power them up. I tend to use:
The only reason I throw out the suggestion of running so trainer heavy is that while Lass is an option, I have yet to run into somebody who even employs the card, let alone does it effectively in the opponent pool in Pokemon TCG.

For the basic components of the game there are counters. if your opponent runs a ton of trainers? Punish them with Lass. if your opponent crutches on lots of Pokemon powers and you don't...? Muk is worth throwing in just to have it sit on your bench doing nothing...! If your opponent has really strong evolution cards and crap basic pokemon? Splash in Aerodactyl. heck, Aerodactyl is splashable because it has a lot of scyther like properties such as 3 colorless for 30 damage, 70 HP, and a fighting resistance!

Offline lolmonade

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Re: RetroActive #31: Pokemon: The Trading Card Game (Official Discussion)
« Reply #36 on: February 25, 2015, 08:58:42 AM »
Dismantling my base deck & trying to build-up has shown me that I basically don't have a great pool of cards to work with.  I made a frankendeck that does a better job of increasing my deck production output, but I just simply don't have that great a pool of cards yet to turn it into a real powerhouse.  It has increased my win rate against the low-level matches though.
 
This game is good for me to play passively while I have a show or movie on in the background, I can't see myself single-focused on this.  Probably part of why grinding through matches to get more booster packs doesn't seem that enthralling to me.
 
 

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Re: RetroActive #31: Pokemon: The Trading Card Game (Official Discussion)
« Reply #37 on: February 25, 2015, 12:10:15 PM »
You can get a bunch of energy cards from one of Dr. Mason's assistants if you need some. Just put all your energies in some junk deck and you'll be good.

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Re: RetroActive #31: Pokemon: The Trading Card Game (Official Discussion)
« Reply #38 on: February 25, 2015, 09:56:38 PM »
Wigglytuff is another evolution worth running-doing 60 for 3 energy is extremely useful, and it's not hard to fill up your bench (Scyther and Mysterious Fossil are great candidates). There's a reason it was so popular back in the day.
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Re: RetroActive #31: Pokemon: The Trading Card Game (Official Discussion)
« Reply #39 on: February 26, 2015, 02:21:26 AM »
as the eve of the potential podcast recording looms upon us, I want to get in one more big post; one that works as one final opinion piece that chunks can be pulled from for the show. I realize I've dominated this thread, but a lot of what I've had to say has been moreso tips for folks whom the game might have clicked with than an actual opinion (do note I did have a post about the game engine itself earlier, though.)

Digitized versions of TCG are a tricky subject to be certain. it's almost never possible to code in all existing cards unless a game is in it's infancy. Opponent AI can be exploited, sometimes cards don't work as intended, etc. I happen to love single player TCG games, with the MTG game for PC that came out in 1997 probably being the best example of the genre, and YuGiOh! The Eternal Duelist Soul for the GBA being the game I've put the most time in, and the game I would catagorize as the best "Toilet" game.

Pokemon TCG certainly doesn't move at the pace you'd need to play a game in 2 minutes, especially if you have battle animations on and you don't have the swiftest of decks, which you will not in the beginning. at the same time, it doesn't do the "This is a JRPG but played with cards!" thing quite as well as MTG 1997, which made it easy to sit down for a while simply because a lot of the time you'd run into a random battle with a goblin that had 2 life points in a red deck who's mission was to drop as many lightning bolts on your face as possible before dying out and leaving you in need of some stay at an inn or something. I digress, though.

Pokemon TCG, developed by Hudson Soft under license from Gamefreak, Creatures Inc., and Nintendo, is still a competent game that makes for what Johnny Metts would refer to as a multitasker. Much of my time playing this game for this retroactive was spent catching up on Box Office Poison and Discover Music Project, or watching youtube stuff. A lot of this game's difficulty comes from grinding out cards to make a deck with some level of consistency, and it's good to find an opponent you can consistently beat that gives the collesium pack, as that's the one that things like Bill, Oak, Switch, Energy Removal, Gust of Wind, and Computer Search comes in, as well as a lot of those solid basic pokemon I mentioned as well as some decent stage 1 evolutions come in!

When you can put together something that has some flow to it (and maybe even a backup deck), the opponents at the clubs kinda become chumps who only win if they get incredibly lucky. I do like that not every club's ritual isn't quite the same, such as having to find all the fighting club members on their sojourn to the other clubs, or trying to find the grass club leader. I do have to admit that they had to kinda stretch things thin on the clubs, especially considering the Science Club and the Rock Club (where the club leader is literally country bumpkin Prof. Oak!)

Some things that doesn't work are the auto-deck machines and having multiple decks. there's one auto-deck machine that can save your deck lists, and then several more that unlock that basically will let you make duplicates of all the CPU opponents' decks. the issue here is that these auto-deck machines require you to have all the cards in said decks. even worse, if you have cards that are already wrapped up in a deck, you cannot use that card between both decks. I get that that's a bit hard to do IRL, but like... man, if I have a card I'm using in more than 1 deck in real life, I make a proxy (a turned over card back in a sleeve with the text of the card written on it to stand in for the real thing) and if I have to play in some sort of tourney with that secondary deck, I move my copy between decks! The difference here is that this is a digital game with digital cards, and it should fucking assume that if I own a card and want to incorperate it into multiple decks that I can have it automatically moved between decks, instead of manually having to plug a bunch of garbage into my deck to make it exactly 60 because maybe I want to try a second deck with a playset of Prof. Oak and Bill?!?

The Music gets a special mention, as I feel the soundtrack has some of the catchiest stuff that's ever been in a  pokemon game, especially the theme for Ronald and the Grandmasters. I still hum the standard opponent theme every now and then, and Imakuni's theme does a good job of being comical and tipsy, which perfectly frames the strange cameo of the japanese electronic artist. (Hey, maybe you guys should do an episode of Discover Music Project on Imakuni?)

Regardless, as a fun quick diversion, I used to own a copy of http://cdn.bulbagarden.net/upload/8/8e/ImakuniDoduoChallengeDarkness.jpg back in the day. I think it's Pokemon Power is that you have to do the hokey Pokey when it hits the active pokemon slot or it confuses itself... and then it has 2 colorless for 30, but you have to like... thow the card at your opponent or something. it's a weird joke card, just like every other Imakuni card.

Regardless, even after you get all the cards you could want, there's still plenty of fun to be had in the challenge hall and the challenge machine. playing against 5 opponents with a single deck is no easy task, because there is no one single deck that can handle anything and everything you could encounter, and your ability to adapt to this is paramount to success!

Overall, I like this game. the sequel, The Invasion of Team GR! is much better, although that game recycles a lot of content form this one, so I wouldn't play them back to back. What I feel this game does show is the strength of the Pokemon TCG in it's early days. it's a great tool for teaching your friends how to play, as several times I lent this game out ot get my friends to try the TCG out so I could actually have people IRL to play against. that's also how I ended up losing this game since someone decided to keep my copy when I let them borrow it and move away. I still have my original rain deck sitting in my drawer that I keep my TCG stuff. I've bounced in and out of the game a few times, but never got quite as serious with the game as I was during that initial Base/Jungle/Fossil/Rocket/Gym Leader era. Neo Genesis came out, and then Slowking borked the game and things became very unfun and I dropped it for Yugioh and didn't really look back.

http://cdn.bulbagarden.net/upload/0/00/SlowkingNeoGenesis14.jpg Bonus points to whoever can figure out why this card is a problem. (except for Yoshi1001 and halbred, because they probably already know why.)

Offline Shaymin

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Re: RetroActive #31: Pokemon: The Trading Card Game (Official Discussion)
« Reply #40 on: February 26, 2015, 07:09:49 AM »
Depending on how the coin flips go, you could be screwed by playing a Bill?
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Offline ClexYoshi

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Re: RetroActive #31: Pokemon: The Trading Card Game (Official Discussion)
« Reply #41 on: February 26, 2015, 09:24:31 AM »
Depending on how the coin flips go, you could be screwed by playing a Bill?

Bill doesn't have a coin flip. it's just Draw 2 cards. Gambler however has a coin flip.

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Re: RetroActive #31: Pokemon: The Trading Card Game (Official Discussion)
« Reply #42 on: February 26, 2015, 08:24:07 PM »
OK, because the way I'm reading it is if I play a trainer card of any stripe, you flip a coin and if you get heads, you make that trainer my next card - cutting me off from the rest of my deck.

That's more than a little abusable if you've got coin luck.
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Offline yoshi1001

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Re: RetroActive #31: Pokemon: The Trading Card Game (Official Discussion)
« Reply #43 on: February 26, 2015, 08:48:20 PM »
Gambler illustrates another reason why evolution cards were so hard to play in the early TCG-lack of good shuffle draw.

Moving onto something more positive, I like the music in this game as well-all the battle themes are good, as are the ending and end credits themes.
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Offline ClexYoshi

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Re: RetroActive #31: Pokemon: The Trading Card Game (Official Discussion)
« Reply #44 on: February 26, 2015, 09:31:26 PM »
OK, because the way I'm reading it is if I play a trainer card of any stripe, you flip a coin and if you get heads, you make that trainer my next card - cutting me off from the rest of my deck.

That's more than a little abusable if you've got coin luck.

Oh, right! you were talking about Slowking! Uh... yeah. the problem with slowking is that the way the english card is worded, the Pokemon power STACKS!

If you manage to load your bench with 3 Slowking? Well, congratulations! your opponent now needs 3 Heads to play ANY Trainer card. and failure to activate puts it on top of your deck. this is worse than discarding it. you wanna know why? because YOU ARE DRAWING A CARD THAT REQUIRES 3 COIN FLIPS TO ACTIVATE!

Anyhow, Slowking, rather than getting eratta, just got Banned outright along with Sneasel, which pretty much had an attack that was 120 for 2 energy (Which is what Night March decks do these days, ironically.)

and yeah, the Music is lovely. <3 been Jammin' out to Ronald's theme while I draw tonight!

Offline lolmonade

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Re: RetroActive #31: Pokemon: The Trading Card Game (Official Discussion)
« Reply #45 on: February 27, 2015, 03:45:22 PM »
Can any of the podcasters comment on if retroactive is this week?  Want to determine if I should hold out on listening until I make more progress in the game.

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Re: RetroActive #31: Pokemon: The Trading Card Game (Official Discussion)
« Reply #46 on: February 27, 2015, 08:25:16 PM »
It's next week per @RFNPodcast:
https://twitter.com/RFNPodcast/status/571190848190164992

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Re: RetroActive #31: Pokemon: The Trading Card Game (Official Discussion)
« Reply #47 on: February 28, 2015, 06:08:13 PM »
one thing I'm kinda curious about is what people think of Tomoaki Imakuni?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TQ6sQ382hRU

He's actually had his fingers in many different pies as far as the series goes. eccentricities aside, the guy composed music for the Japanese Anime, has done card art for not only the cards that center around himself, but for some others that actually look REALLY good!





there's also his trainer, which has been reprinted at least once in japan! He's quite the overt presence out in the land of the rising sun, and yet... besides the card art he's done, he's almost unheard of outside of japan besides his presence in this game, which is something they honestly could have easily removed alltogether since the only point of him is to be an easy opponent who randomly shows up and gives you a joke card when he's defeated 3 times!

Offline Evan_B

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Re: RetroActive #31: Pokemon: The Trading Card Game (Official Discussion)
« Reply #48 on: March 02, 2015, 12:12:50 AM »
I found the progression of this game to be a bit backwards. Why make me wait until I defeat 4 club leaders to challenge the psychic (science?) leader? It feels like it's railroading for no other reason aside from typical Pokemon progression.

Anyway, aside from that, I enjoyed the game, however as a MtG fan, I found the mechanics to be unbearably slow and I have no idea who thought they were a good idea. Energy attachment is just a terrible concept and it turns the game into a much more stall- and trick-based game. The game practically discourages evolution which is absurd considering the nature of the brand.

Ultimately, I think that Pokemon TCG is a passable card game, and that this game is at least functional as an introduction to the early waves. I think the amount of cards in this game I'm particular fits just about all the time you can get out of the game since the grinding mechanics are aggravating and the card variety only goes so far until you realize certain setups are just plain better than others. I wish there were more cards so I could make something deeper but I don't think I could handle the card grinding mechanics of there were more cards.

My main issue with this game existing on the eShop, however, is that it further highlights how stupid Game Freak and Nintendo are in terms of Pokemon-based VC titles. I know their current reasoning for not putting the mainline Pokemon titles on VC is that "each new game in the series is more definitive than the last, so why would you want to play am inferior version...?" Which is damning in two aspects- for a yearly release series like Pokemon the Devs are saying the previous entires are not as good as the past efforts (which is not true in a number of ways) but also they're refusing to feed the nostalgia of the series' fans. I can think of very few people who wouldn't want to pick up specific versions of old Pokemon titles- and with VC functionality you could even me trading and battles easier! But instead, we're stuck with Pokemon Pinball and the TCG.

(Honestly the only reason I mention this is because there's already been exhaustive discussion of the TCG mechanics so I was hoping we could talk about something else.)
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Offline ClexYoshi

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Re: RetroActive #31: Pokemon: The Trading Card Game (Official Discussion)
« Reply #49 on: March 02, 2015, 02:58:27 AM »
yeah, it gets a lot better in future rotations where they figure out what makes good cards and such. this would pretty much be the equivalent of playing a MTG Video game with the format only including Alpha, Beta, and Unlimited. this game came out EERILY early in the TCG's life span, and they made exactly one sequel that added one expansion.

I've dumped a shitton of time into Yugioh: the Eternal Duelist's soul, but I would MUCH rather play something much more updated like... maybe World Championship 2010?

Pokemon Online just doesn't do it for me like these single player TCGs do.