Pokemon: Legends... WTF

[Roy Karrde]

Okay so I have been out of the Pokemon scene for a long time, well, pretty much since the old WotC days right around Yu Gi Oh appeared. Anyway I was browsing Serebii's card gallery because I was bored, and noticed three new cards in the new Pokemon Legends series. They are combined Pokemon, basically 2 Pokemon on 1 Card. Did I miss something? WTF is this? And what do the players think about it?

Suicune and Raikou

Suicune and Entai

Entai and Raikou

[Mr. Brightside]

O.o I have never seen this before. I stopped caring about the Pokemon cards many years ago. I wonder. Interesting may i say and the artwork is really beautiful.

[mr_pikachu]

Well then. That's... wacky. I have a feeling these won't be all that useful, since they require fairly diverse energy types in order to really be effective as double attackers (which, I gather, is the main benefit of these over the heavyweights of the last few years like Pokemon-ex).

Entei & Raikou might be playable, I guess, if you've got the deck to support it. With the others, the necessity to play both Pokemon, get the Legend card out there, and shuffle energies to the Legend quickly enough might make them too situational. Three energies instead of two make it much difficult. This is, of course, assuming I accurately understand the requirements for their use.

[Houndoom_Lover]

What the hell is that? That insults me right down to my very soul. I think my soul is barfing. I can feel it

[Master Rudy]

I dabbled in the TCG slightly back in the day but never got into it due to a lack of players. In any case while this looks to be a rather minor gameplay change I'd be careful if I were them......too many changes will kill a TCG (doublely so if the changes are overpowered ones). Don't believe me? Here's a story how oversight, poor planning and new overpowered cards can kill a game.

Take the DBZ/GT CCG released by Score from 2000-2005. Awesome card game. Anything new was minor enough that it didn't really kill or wreck anything. However by GT the tourney scene was getting dominated by Trunks Dragon Ball decks due to oversights in the planning. Back in the original sets for some strange reason Score made Trunks very resistant to energy attacks. This wasn't too much of an issue since it was only his level 1 promo (which was fairly easy to get) and level 4 cards. Near the end of Z they put out a rule stating that Young Trunks was a different character from the original Trunks. Makes sense with the time travel thing. Finally come GT they state that the now adult Trunks is now the same person as the original "future" Trunks and that his personality cards can be mixed with the ones from the Andriod and Cell Sagas.

Wait......wait?

If you don't get how this is a problem go watch DBZ. In any case the new Trunks from GT had all his powers rounded out to be energy resistant. Mixed with the level 1 and 4 from Z you had a combination of levels that capped energy damage until level 4 which outright states that your opponent cannot use energy attacks. Trunks with Dragon Balls in paticular was known to be very broken and nearly unbeatable without very specific decks and planning. The reason being that the quickest way to capture a DB was to do damage to an opponent in excess of 5 life cards. However seeing that the powers of Trunks either capped the damage or wouldn't let you perform energy you had to focus on physical damage. Of course the person playing as Trunks would come to expect this and build a deck around heavy physical defenses. As a result he could stop your physicals while energy damage was capped and just bide his time until he had all 7 Dragon Balls in play.

Yeah.....sound like a fun game doesn't it? Instead of people focusing on the different decks, characters and strats it turned into "everyone plays as Trunks!"

This wasn't to say Trunks was unbeatable. If you could plan it right a deck could beat how cheap it was. Problem with this was that planning to beat a DB deck tended to leave you very weak in other areas. Before you know it your getting beaten by another deck type which would in turn fall to someone else playing Trunks ~_~()

By the end Score ditched plans for the Anthology expansion which was suppose to re-balance the game and fix some of the problems. Instead they redesigned the entire game from the ground up and said the previous cards that the players had been collecting for the past FIVE YEARS would NOT be compatable with the new game/rules. The new game designers and playtesters? The very idiots that favored the overpowered DB decks and cheap characters. What should have been a simple re-balancing of the original game turned into a nightmare that turned off many long time players. The new game didn't last a year and died before the third set. Meanwhile the original game went for almost 6 years and 14 sets. I personally think with the redubs of the early episodes, the newer video games, ect. that the game would possibly still be in production if Score had focused on the balance issues with Trunks and DB decks in general as opposed to trashing the entire game ~_~()

The above is a prime example of how NOT to run a CCG. Bottom line is that for Pokémon they need to be careful with stuff like this. If it overpowers things too much then you get everyone favoring one deck type and as a result you'll see nothing but the same damn thing over and over. Once a card game gets to that point it gets very hard to fix and balance things without destroying everything :-/

[homeofmew]

ho oh ledgend and lugia ledgend are the same way.
i currently have 2 ho oh tops and 1 ho oh bottom and 1 lugia top.