Good Bye Slowking.

As the Pokemon community eagerly awaits an announcement about a new tournament season, they get a whammy thrown at them instead, the elimination of Slowking from the current Modified format.


master_trainer_mike presents the speaker with question #89 from steelixownzu:
Is there any where I can go to find the latest team rules?
master_trainer_mike says, "That leads into something to tell you about."
master_trainer_mike says, "We will be posting updated Pokemon Floor rules on our web site on Jan 1, 2003."
master_trainer_mike says, "All errors will be corrected, Team Rules will be updated"
master_trainer_mike says, "AND"
master_trainer_mike says, "Slowking (Neo Geneis) will be BANNED from Modified starting on Jan 1, 2003 as well!"
master_trainer_mike says, "Whaddaya think o' that?!?!?!"
nopoke59 enters.
master_trainer_mike smiles.
You say, "get outta town...0-o"
darkmt_mike shakes his head.
darkmt_mike smirks.
master_trainer_mike says, "This, of course, means that it will no longer be playable in Team Constructed either (as that uses the current Modified format)."
darkmt_mike says, "No more King"
master_trainer_mike says, "Ofcourse, it can still be used in Unlimited and Limited

I thought I would take the time to analyze this decision, and dig a little deeper into this subject.

First of all, when we take a look at the last World Championships, the statistics taken by wotc was that 50% of the decks in the 11-14 division were running Slowking. Both the 11-14 and 10-division were ultimately conquered by decks running the purple wonder. Dylan Austin winning with Dark Feraligatr/Slowking and Mindy Lambkee winning with Donphan/Slowking which was a deck she ripped from Brian Six, but that's another story.

However, I don't believe Wizards of the coast is very aware on how much the metagame has changed since worlds. The problem of Feraligatr in old Modified was 10x worse than what Slowking is in the current environment. The playing field is well diverse nowadays. Playable decks are at an all time high. Intense Fire (entei/magcargo), Kingdra, Kingdra/Muk, Crobat, Slowking/Espeon/Lily Pad Mew, and Steelix variants to name a few have anything but have had the spotlight taken away from them by the trainer denying goon.

For those of you that don't know, recently, there was also a new ruling put on Slowking. You have to pay the cost of a trainer card before your opponent flips for Slowking.

An example of this is if your opponent has a Slowking and you attempt to play a computer search, you discard 2 cards from your hand, then your opponent flips to see if it goes to the top. At first, I thought this could have been the reason Slowking was banned, but when you take a look at the current trainer pool, you'll notice there aren't many costs required to play a lot of the more popular cards.

So as of January 1st, how will the environment look like? I'll tell you. The elimination of Slowking has let some old favorites once again become easily able to take the top spot in Modified. Entei/Magcargo and Kingdra to be precise. Slowking's disappearance will significantly lower the amount of Pichu played in decks. With the lack of Pichu threat, Entei/Magcargo will lower the need of anti Pichu cards like Gold berry and will go straight Focus band. Kingdra will also be even more powerful with nothing being able to stop it from using the Pokemon Center combo turn, after turn, after turn.

Espeon takes the largest blow. With the elimination of it's only decent lower stage evolution card (promo eevee) and it's most commonly played support card (Slowking) it is rendered useless. Unless you want to play it with Murkrow and Noctowel, which totally makes a nice rogue deck.

There really is nothing we can do now however, usually when Wizards makes a decision, no matter how horrid it is, they seem to stand by them. The old days of Modified will be back. You all remember, who going first and band flips deciding games once again. The point I am trying to make however is that, I don't believe this was a decision that will help Modified.  Things were actually better before.

You are welcome to reply to this saying why you agree/disagree by sending your response to: Pojo@Pojo.com

Or you can contact me personally: MartinReturns@aol.com or AIM: Martin Returns.

Peace out, and keep playing.

~Martin Moreno