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Hello Pojo dude! My name is Footitch, and I am very concerned about the propositions wizards is trying to pass, so I sent a letter to them.  I thought that Pojo readers may find it interesting, so I’m sending it to you guys too, but I wasn’t sure where to send it, so I’m sending it to you, Mr. Webmaster, the big cheese.  Please post it if you think readers may enjoy it.

Drew the Pickleman Footitch.

To whom it may concern,

I am an avid player of Pokemon, and recently heard about propositions 2 trainers a turn and 15 trainer deck limit. With the upcoming STS being DCI sanctioned, if these propositions are passed in time for November, the STS and all future Pokemon DCI sanctioned events will be a very different environment. I ask you to please read this letter and pass it on to higher powers if possible. The aim of this letter is to present a large fault in the 2 propositions and to also give you my opinion as to why I think they are a bad idea. As you probably get many letters like this one, and don’t have time for them all, you probably delete many of them. You may be considering deleting this one, but I ask you to please hear me out, as I may present a point you have failed to see or hear about before, and as a dedicated player of the Pokemon TCG, that my opinion should be counted, as should all opinions that enter this department. With that cleared up, I will present to you why I believe the 2 propositions will only hurt the game environment more than help it.

Before I begin, I will tell you how I interpret the 2 propositions so that you know where I am coming from, and then I will explain to you why I believe that these 2 propositions will be bad for the game environment. I see the props as this:

The environment right now is dominated by speed decks, most of which do not use evolution cards, and use an enormous amount of trainers. 

Most of these decks have an average of 25 trainers, and the decks are meant to be fast and aggressive.  This hurts a lot of slower evolution decks, and so many decks are crushed by the current metagame and the dominant decks are all very alike. The aim of the props is to slow down these decks in order to give the slower decks more of a chance to win.

This also aims to give more variety to the playing environment and require more thought being put into deckbuilding and a lot more strategy.

This, at first, seems like a good idea, but upon closer examination, these propositions only do the opposite of what they are intended to.

They are intended to

A)  put more variety into the playing environment

B)  take power away from current “archetype” decks and

C)  put more strategy and thought requirement into decks and playing, rather than just who is faster.

These are noble goals and there is no reason that they shouldn’t be pursued, but propositions 15 and 2T aren’t the answers. One employee of Wizards said awhile ago that this is Pokemon, not Trainermon.

However, that employee failed to notice that the trainer is the one that commands the pokemon, TRAINS the pokemon, and has the pokemon do battle in the first place.  So the trainer is important to the game, and shouldn’t be disregarded as such.  I see the propositions to be self-defeating by narrowing the amount of randomness, eventfulness, and fun factor of a match, rather than expand upon it. The propositions reduce the amount of trainer cards in decks, the cards that make the gane something aside from: Pokemon, retreat, attack, use your power, etc. The trainer cards add a certain amount of mystery to the match, something beyond: I win the coin flip, so I win the match. The trainer cards allow something to happen that couldn’t normally happen during a match, making it more exciting and unpredictable. The propositions are especially a wrong direction to go into after the release of Gym, since it has so many new trainers including a new type of trainer, the stadium cards. If the propositions are passed and trainer cards restricted, you are also restricting a certain amount of fun and mystery about a match that makes it so enjoy-able.

The second reason the propositions hurt their own purposes is that many evolution decks, or ANY decks for that matter, still need more than 15 trainers to operate their strategy.  Thats another reason we have trainers, they allow us to expand upon strategy aside from Pokemon attacks and powers. Sure, the powers are good, but have you ever seen Alakazam’s damage swap coupled with Pokemon Center? The combination is great, and requires the trainer for half of it.

Another thing about the propositions that is bad is that they really are unnecessary.  The reason that the decks are so uniform is that they are “cheap.” It’s so easy to build a deck where the concept is to just issue continuous beatdown. You can’t stop kids from being lazy.  If they don’t want to build a complicated strategy deck, no one is going to make them.  You see, these decks really aren’t tough to beat, you just have to focus on beating them. REALLY focus.  One type of common deck is a deck that involves Hitmonchans, Electabuzzs, and Scythers.  It’s calle a “Haymaker.” This deck focuses on fast beatdown, but can be overcome quite easily by a simple moltres deck.  Haymakers and all the dominating decks of the environment focus on getting those key trainers, but Moltres beats that so simply.  I’ve seen these decks beaten by Moltres, chansey, and Erika’s dratini along with some potions and night time trash runs. Its so simple, but no one wants to go looking for the strategy to do it.  Thats the problem with Pokemon, its the fact that kids don’t put in strategy.  And that won’t change. Here’s another card that puts down popular decks: Dark Vileplume.  That restricts the use of trainers! That incapacitates the big decks, whilst still applying strategy, and ACCOMPLISHES THE PURPOSES OF THE PROPOSITIONS WITH NO DRAWBACKS! And that doesn’t mean that deck is invincible, however, it can be beaten easily enough by a “Raindance” deck (a deck that focuses on Blastoise’s power for heavy damage), which can be beaten by a Haymaker deck, and on and on and on! It’s a system of checks and balances, the very concept our American government runs on! This is why no deck is the “greatest”, and the game is fun! Sadly, however, as I stated above, people do not want to apply strategy, and the system has become a food chain, with trainer-dominant SPEED decks at the top.  That is the big problem we haven’t been getting, the lack of strategy is why game is dominated by these decks.  It’s not the trainers, the trainers are there to assisst the deck in its purpose, SPEED. Another deck, say a stall deck, may use an entirely different set of trainers, like defesive trainers, such as Pokemon center and super potion, to accomplish its purposes.  It may also use more than 15 (I assure you it almost always will), but it uses strategy!  I can’t say it enough, you can’t make people use strategy.  Remember the old saying, you can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make him drink.  The propositions only turn the current “food chain” into an even more contorted string of knots and slips, and, if anything, make the game worse.

I thank you all for your time and I ask you to please consider what I have said and to please pass this on to higher places.

Sincerely,

Drew Jacob, along with many other trainers from north

NJ Pokemon leagues, including,

Ark,

Rich,

Jack,

Steve,

Johnathan,

and PokePunk Cole,

along many other trainers around the country whom I cannot list but also share my sentiment.

andrew_jacob@yahoo.com

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