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971
- ↓ 0.06
- ꩜ 0.21
- ↑ 1.51
Draw 2 cards.
· Supporter rule: You can play only one Supporter card each turn. When you play this card, put it next to your Active Pokémon. When your turn ends, discard this card.
illus. Ken Sugimori
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feyblade
A ruinous reprint of Bill. Probably one of the most hated cards out there, due to starting a tradition of bizarre, on-the-fly erratas. It just takes a load of mental gymnastics to explain why players can’t play their old Computer Searches in modified (but instead can play four of them alongside the ACE SPEC version in unlimited) but they COULD play their Bills as errata’d substitutes for the nerfed version in its modified rotation
One has to wonder if the rulings team is more interested in ensuring that the price of the modern computer search remains artificially high than actually creating a consistent set of rulings.
Curtis
Base set is the best selling set of all time. In order to sell Boundaries Crossed packs, they had to make up a stupid ruling that they’ll probably reverse when they stop making money on the set.
Blob Takeshi
So they’re scorning people who have Base Set Bill, because money?
Well, at least this print has different artwork.
Otaku
I’d argue that the powers-that-be behind organized play were just being generous allowing folks to use their older copies of Bill. At the time this all went down, they allowed players to use nearly 8-, 10-, and 11-year-old copies of cards with incorrect rules text instead of insisting folks use only the new card.
Not especially generous, given that Bill was obsolete in the Unlimited Format and too weak for the then current Modified (Standard) Format, but they were well within their rights to say “If you want to play using the Unlimited Format and following the official rules, then the old Bill is completely prohibited!”. Yes, the Ace Spec version of Computer Search was one of the cards which drove sales of BW – Boundaries Crossed, but the change to the card’s text was significant even if simple.
Ambassador
“Actually creating a consistent set of rulings.”
I may be misunderstanding the issue being brought up here from 9 years ago (particularly with regard to what’s going on with Computer Search, which seems a different issue entirely), but printing Bill as a supporter in HGSS is actually a question of consistency. Back in the e-Card era, Bill was reprinted as a Supporter, 009/P – why WOTC declined to reprint it is beyond me, but from the Japanese POV, it would probably make 0 sense to flip flop and print Bill as a Trainer after having already “retconned” him into a Supporter back in the day.
I vaguely recall but am probably wrong, but I think an errata was issued insofar as whether Trainer Bill was errata’d by WOTC into a Supporter for the e-Card era, but even if they didn’t, it’s nearly irrelevant – the question is how PCL handled Bill in Japan to because if you want to talk consistency, it’s international organized play that usually has to play catch up to ensure consistency with how Japan does things, and I imagine at the time e-Card came out and they were rolling out their 30+30 (30 ‘old’ back cards and 30 ‘new’ back cards could comprise a deck) transitional format, a ruling might’ve been made regarding the question of the two Bills and how the old one could be played. The ruling made by PCL in 2001/2002 was probably carried through as a legacy ruling for the 2009/2010 print of Bill, and global OP had to try and mirror that as best as they could.
Computer Search could conceivably have been issued a completely different ruling because they didn’t have to worry about the legacy of the 30+30 format and consistency on that front. (Just to be clear, Computer Search was not reprinted during the e-Card era.)
Twylis
So long story short, basically another thing that’s ultimately the fault of Wizards. Had they listened to TPC and adopted the new card back then the discourse around Computer Search would never have occurred since there could just be a blanket ban on old-back cards, and Bill would’ve become a supporter way back in gen 2.
As an aside, I think an e-Card onward semi-unlimited format would actually be surprisingly healthy. Most the serious problem cards are from gen 1. Lots of unhealthy combos, but less high-speed consistency to facilitate them in one turn. Could’ve had an established unlimited format that doesn’t suck in an alt timeline :/
DaneeBound
I have to mildly disagree here.
While WotC did plenty of stupid things in the waning years of PokéMania, the fact that they insisted on keeping the old cardback, was the correct decision in retrospect.
The adoption of the new back in Japan rendered players existing card pool useless, lest they played with sleeves (which few did back then) or obeyed the 30+30 rule (which was just a headache). Imagine if for the 2023 standard rotation, they rotated out not just up to Vivid Voltage, but the entire SwSh block at once, meaning only the cards from the ScaVio base set were legal to play, that’s basically what happened in Japan back then.
In the months following the introduction of the new card back, both the Japanese PTCG tournament scene and the secondary market underwent a gradual collapse, as most of the previous chase-cards lost their value and none of the new stuff from the eCard sets held a candle to the old stuff. Both took years to recover from this. In the meantime, both the Yu-Gi-Oh! OCG and Digimon Hyper Colosseum swept the nation.
Think of WotC what you will, but at least in this one aspect, they were right.
Ambassador
There was a dip across the entire Pokémon franchise around the time the cardback switch was implemented. Trying to blame all of that on the cardback swap out stretches credulity.
Switching the cardback when they did ended up being a smart decision. It was something that needed to be done, but had it been done during the heights of Pokémania, yes, it probably would’ve done damage to the TCG pillar of the franchise, and you could argue it might’ve been irreparable (we’ll never know for sure, obviously). Too late, on the other hand, and the core Japanese player base – who, alongside the collector base, never really did collapse as catastrophically as you suggest, or the game wouldn’t still be here today – might’ve grown increasingly frustrated with the state of the game and that, too, might’ve caused irreparable damage.
The idea that not changing the card back was a “good idea in retrospect” is ridiculous because it still isn’t a good idea in the current moment to have different card backs for a game that’s meant to be global.
Ambassador
Incidentally, to something Danee mentioned at the end there, YGO and Digimon TCG hired on ex-WOTC staff (laid off after the company lost Pokémon) who basically had to beg to be employed. These were people who were *not* rewarded for the mess of terrible localization decisions they made, and were careful to *not* repeat their mistakes of the past – and they were watched carefully. WOTC had a terrible reputation in Japan for the mess they’d made of the Pokémon Card Game. All the WOTC staff that got hired into PUSA did *not* get that direly needed negative reinforcement, which is why it’s now becoming quite (depressingly) easy to discover poor translation choices / brand management during Gen 3 in particular. If you want to talk about what caused a slump for the Pokémon TCG’s popularity, it’s because PUSA was rewarding bad actors for bad work and might’ve been reaping the consequences – meanwhile its competition was squeezing the best work out of bad actors looking to redeem themselves.
NosrednaTrebor
Bill’s Kindness