Dear Pojo,

WOTC is testing two possible rules restricting the use of trainer cards in order to promote the use of different decks besides the big three of Haymaker, Raindance, and Wigglytuff. These two rules are:

1. 15 Trainer limit per deck.

2. Limit of 2 trainer cards per turn.

As outlined in other articles posted here in Pojo, these rules will change the game, but they will not affect the popularity of the big three. This is because the new rules do not directly address the reasons why these three are so popular and why other decks are not.

A successful deck must be able to deal with the three constraints imposed by the game:

1. Play only one energy card per turn.

2. Evolve only once per turn.

3. Draw only one card per turn.

The main feature of Raindance decks is to ignore the 1st constraint. It uses Pokemon Breeder to lessen the impact of #2 and uses Professor Oak for #3. Without speed cards (Professor Oak, Computer Search etc.), Raindance's ability to violate constraint #1 is not a major concern because of the limited chances to have multiple energies in your hand.

Haymaker decks are not greatly affect by #1 because their attacks are low cost in nature. The #2 constraint has no impact because Haymakers don't evolve. Because of the way #1 and #2 are dealt with constraint #3 is only a minor problem that can be corrected with speed.

Wigglytuff decks are strong because of its ability to do a 60 Do The Wave attack in the second round. This is only possible with speed cards. Without the speed cards, this attack will only be able to due damage in the 20, 30 range normally in the early to mid rounds. No more or worse than other cards at this time.

While all other deck types can use speed cards to get around constraint #3, they can't use this advantage as well. Example: A deck featuring Beedrill has to deal with the weak basic Weedle. An opening hand with Weedle as the only basic can make for a very quick lost. If a deck has only 8 basics in it, it will produce a one basic hand about 65% of the time. Having 12 basics only reduces this to 50%. Because one basic opening hands are so common, it is very risking to use weak pokemons.

I propose the following solutions:

1. Limit trainers of the same type to 2 instead of 4. This would make speed decks harder to run. With 4 Oaks and 4 Computer Searches an opening hand will contain one of these cards 66% of the time. With only 2 and 2 it drops to 40%. A deck built on speed only becames alot less dangerous. This will also increase the number of different trainer cards being used. Decks that once contain 4 Oaks would now maybe contain 2 Gamblers to replace the 2 Oaks being removed.

2. Allow the player to reshuffle and draw a new opening hand if the opening hand contains only one basic card. This can only be done a maximum of two times. Oppenent may draw two extra cards for each reshuffle. The chances of getting one basic three times in a row with a deck that contains 8 basics is less than 30%. This would allow players to include weak basics in a deck, because the odds of getting stuck with a bad opening hand are greatly reduced.

I think these rule changes would help to improve the game. If not maybe it will point the way to a rule change that will.

CJ 

email to: cjanney@net-magic.net