Folly? I Think NOT!

 

        I write this today in rebuttal to “The Folly of Legendary Collection” – an article that, while well written, totally misses the point of LC in my opinion. Let’s start with the beginning of the article. Yes, lol, WotC did shock us all by learning to keep a secret. However, I believe your friends were greatly under informed, Mr. Hornberg. If my memory serves me, WotC Employees dismissed the notion of Vending Cards being in the set a while before it was released; and indeed, there was a set list a few days before release. But let’s move on to what really began to get me wondering; has this guy ever PLAYED Pokémon?!

 

          Nothing new came from Legendary Collection. Players were provided with an abbreviation of the first four sets of the game, with nothing of major power reprinted.

 

            The way I see it, Pokemon R&D took all the cards from Base Set through Team Rocket, laid them out on a table in order, and proceeded to get rid of all the cards that were powerhouses in their day, are powerhouses now in modified, or were played at all.

 

You seem upset by this…did you not realize that this was THE POINT of the SET? What would the fun be in releasing all of the tired and tested cards into a new format, knowing well that they would be picked up and put into decks before you could blink? No, the point of releasing a reprint set into Modified was that new decks would be created, new strategies made.

 

Chansey, Hitmonchan, Double Colorless Energy, Jungle Scyther, Base Electabuzz, Super Energy Removal, Clefable, Itemfinder, and Computer Search were most likely the first nine cards R&D threw out.

 

Of course…hell, most players agreed that they didn’t want these cards in Modified.

 

Even powerful, but remarkably fair cards like Base Blastoise and Base Clefairy were passed up for other, weaker versions either to put in the set, or in past sets that are still in modified.

 

Blastoise was meant to be put in LC, but license holders in Japan felt him to be too powerful. Go figure. And as for Clefairy…it has a 50 HP version in Neo Genesis. Not many people would be using it anyway, as Clefable is missing in action.

 

This looting the game of Pokemon’s “Power Nine” is a tragedy in my mind. As of right now, evolution decks dominate the scene.

 

….Excuse me? Maybe you’d prefer not being able to play any evolutions whatsoever for fear of being creamed by Random Haymaker of the Week? Go play Unlimited if you don’t like evolution decks.

 

 Wizards has dumbed the game down to mind numbing proportions, making it truly the game people stereotyped it as. The format is slow, incredibly simple, and it painfully screams with all the agony and horror it can muster up to supply it with a fast haymaker-like deck, that packs a powerful punch within the first 6 turns of the game. 

 

So in other words, you think that Modified needs to be screwed over by a fast archtype that will mercilessly slaughter anything in its path due to its breakneck speed.

 

…it’s called Sneasel, and that’s why it was banned.

 

See, this is why Modified was created in the first place. To keep these kind of Super-Speed decks from mowing down everything else. Maybe turn three wins are fun for you, but they aren’t for the rest of us.

 

          And I don’t know what you’ve been playing, but I’ve been consistently getting my evolutions up and running on turn two or three in my games. Where’s the slow environment? Simple? Mind numbing? No, simple and mind numbing would be something packing a powerful punch and winning the game six turns in. That’s mind numbing and simple, my friend.

 

           Wizards sacrificed player satisfaction for a fair format, something they have done time in and time out going back into Magic and Pokemon. It’s time that they think of the advanced player for once in their time as a company and throw us a real bone, in this case, they should have reprinted at least some of the greats from way back when.

 

          …Excuse me for a second.

 

          AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!

 

          …Sorry, where was I? Oh yes, the whole “1337 Players Should Come First! Screw a Fair Format, we want to be able to win within 10 minutes!” point you seem to be making here. Frankly, I’m going to let that one stand on by itself. It’s a joke on its own.

 

          Then again, Wizards must want to do away with that era in Pokemon TCG history, especially when they banned Sneasel, who was single handedly building a speed deck for the Modified format.

 

          Yeah man, because I can’t tell you how many times I’ll be sitting there 10 minutes into the game and suddenly think, “Man, I wish my opponent would have crippled me with Trainer denial on his first turn and plowed through my bench by the third.”

 

          …Give me a break.

 

          Gone are the real days of casual matches that could rage for a half hour or more, with more thinking required than with a Pre Calculus test. Welcome, folks, to the dull format of modified, where 99.9% of all the decks are slow, evolution decks, who all share a common goal: get a powerhouse on the bench, build him up, and let him loose on your opponent.

 

            Which, mind you, is totally different from “Get a Sneasel on the bench, build him up, and let him loose on your opponent” right? Anything sounds simple when you dumb it down yourself.

 

          Now, wait a second. Just a few lines up you’re complaining about how SLOW the environment is, and now you’re saying that the games don’t last half an hour? Make up your mind.

 

          Of course, this left the players with all the mediocre cards from back in the day, the stuff that traded well, but never truly saw play.

 

            Hence, it was included NOW, so that it may finally SEE PLAY. Starting to get the picture?

 

          Typical of Wizards to do this to the players, leave them with cards that are only good in combination with something incredible. Then, come reprinting time, they print the supporting cast thinking, “ People will like this, they played it back then didn’t they?”

 

          Yeah, isn’t just SO WRONG of Wizards of the Coast to actually think that the players would STAND for making new decks instead of simply retreating back to their old, tired ones? Damn them! Damn them all to hell for trying to make us think!

 

          The cards they reprinted also fit into this format incredibly well. Almost all of them are grubby energy eaters, who can do cool things when built up. 

 

            Uhm. Of course the cards reprinted fit the environment well. This SET was MEANT FOR THIS ENVIORNMENT. Did you think it was a coincidence?

 

          Unfortunately, when looked at in a true retrospective, Legendary Collection does more harm to the game of Pokemon than it does help. It fails to help Unlimited in any one way, thus giving old school players yet another set to shrug off as “useless.” 

 

            IT. WASN’T. MEANT. FOR. UNLIMITED. It was meant for Modified. You know, that other format that it sounds like you’ve never played.

 

          It is time for Wizards of the Coast to give players a decent set of reprints, or even a decent at all. 

 

          They’re supposedly working on a WotC made set as I type this. But I feel the need to say once again that WotC has to jump through a hell of a lot of hoops to get to do ANYTHING they want to. TPC controls them when it comes to the Pokémon TCG.

 

          I really, really don’t follow what the point of this flame towards Legendary Collection was. It seems to me that you’d rather have the speed dependent Unlimited environment where you would be laughed at if you even THINK about playing an evolution outside of Typhlosion, Steelix or Slowking. Seems like you find it more fun. Well, guess what? The rest of us don’t.

         

          From reading this, I highly suspect that you’ve never played a game of Modified in your life, Mr. Hornberg. No disrespect, but calling the current Modified Environment “slow” or “mind-numbing” is nothing short of ignorance. Gatr, Bat, Big Fires, and all of the other decks that will soon show up in the upcoming Neo Modified are anything but slow and stupid.

 

          In fact, I simply cannot see how anyone who’s EVER played a game of Pokémon in their lives can say that this set HURTS the game. It’s NOT FOR Unlimited, so don’t whine about how there’s nothing new. It only ADDS to Modified, no hurt there. Where is all of this hatred towards LC coming from?

 

          In closing, I can only suggest that you play a few games of Modified versus someone who knows what’s what in the game, and see just how “slow” it really is.

 

~Derek “Satoshi” Heid

Pojo.com Deck Mechanic

Satoshi@pojo.com