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The attacks of the Pokémon this card is attached to do 30 more damage to your opponent’s Active Pokémon V (before applying Weakness and Resistance).
· Pokémon Tool rule: Attach a Pokémon Tool to 1 of your Pokémon that doesn’t already have a Pokémon Tool attached.
illus. Studio Bora Inc.
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Strč prst skrz krk
The seventh “belt” Pokemon Tool card printed.
https://pkmncards.com/?s=type%3Apokemon-tool+belt
Twylis
Absolutely baffling to be reprinting this card in the SV era (specifically Paldea Evolved). It wasn’t rotating anytime soon, and now there’s just gonna eventually be a long period of time when we have an anti-V card legal but no actual V pokemon in the format. And by the time this would have rotated, pretty much every V card would’ve rotated out alongside it.
The fuller context is that it originated from Japan’s Premium Trainer Box ex, which is a broad collection of relevant meta cards, but surely that didn’t require a reset on its legality — several other cards appeared in the box with no such reset.
DoubleEdgeCat
You say this like they didn’t print Spiritomb in the same set.
bakedcheetos
what pulling a reverse holo choice belt instead of a art rare does to a man
DaneeBound
Compared to their insistence on printing “different” Supporters that only draw three cards, this isn’t nearly as eyebrow-raising.
Clearly, Pokémon-V are still gonna be a part of the standard format for the next two years (and in Expanded forevermore), so having their premiere hate card acknowledge the erratum to its own card type wouldn’t hurt. If they had to reset its legality to do it, then so be it.
Twylis
Huh, the Tool update probably is indeed the reason. It’s the only Tool included in the Premium Trainer Box ex. I suuuuper hate that rule update though, a “tool” is still literally an “item” and they’re literally called “Held Item” in the main series :U
But more concerning is how it adds unnecessary confusion for future Expanded players. One reason Unlimited sucks so bad, besides all the obvious balance issues and translation inconsistencies, is you basically need to dedicate your life to understanding all the various rule and classification changes that happened throughout the years. Someone trying to play Expanded down the road will inevitably try searching a Tool with an Irida or a Volkner without realizing that that’s not allowed because of a ruling change that will eventually be years in the past. Without historical context, a Junk Arm looks just like a Dowsing Machine or an Item Finder.
I don’t mind the insistence on Draw 3s though — it’s an easy way to feature prominent game NPCs for collectors and young children. It’s annoying how uselessly unplayable they are, sometimes directly outclassed by Supporters that do the same thing with an additional effect, but you could say the same thing about the vast majority of Pokemon too.
DaneeBound
That is of course assuming there will be official tournament support for Expanded still (The last regionals to use it happened right before the apocalypse).
Additionally, Play! Pokémon never supported Unlimited to begin with, and their predecessor, Pokémon Organized Play, barely did, as seen in the 2004/05 edition of their official tournament rules (https://web.archive.org/web/20050520131013/http://op.pokemon-tcg.com/tournaments/pdfs/Tournament%20Formats.pdf), where Unlimited is listed as a “Fun format” (read: casual, not competitive.)
Twylis
Even without tournament support, Expanded very much seems like it was intended to be a “proper”, official Unlimited, with the classification changes in Gen 5 seeming like the powers at be were finally going to settle on a coherent system of rules so that if you know how to play Standard, you can comfortably play Expanded too without any real snarls (besides a drastically different meta, of course). A banlist being maintained for the format, to me, is all the real “official support” it needs — nothing has been banned for awhile, but as far as I can tell nothing has really warranted a new ban.
The Tool changes remind me of a lot of the changes that Gen 5 brought, but where Gen 5 produced a much more cohesive system than there was prior and served to establish consistency going forward, the new Tool change seems unnecessary and actively thwarts gameplay consistency. Rather than just leaving Expanded alone, it feels like a more active attempt to subtly discourage Expanded play — by adding a layer of potential confusion to put off potential new players. But perhaps I’m reading too much into it.
Twylis
There’s also a couple ways to define “casual”. The more common usage in TCG contexts is just “not competitive”, which obviously describes Unlimited very well, because competitive Unlimited is ultimately just solitaire, and functions better as a sandbox for weird fun gimmicks that don’t work elsewhere to go against each other without genuine investment in winning.
The other reading of casual is “accessible to new/irregular players”, and Unlimited is absolutely not that. But Standard isn’t really that either — keeping track of what’s legal and having to make entirely new decks is silly if you’re not regularly playing, and it feels bad if you’re someone with a bunch of older cards just wanting to try out the game itself. Expanded excels here — other than its small banlist, any card from Gen 5 onward is fair game. For experienced players, it also carries much of the appeal Unlimited does, with a ton of cards to enable all sorts of funky combos that would never work in Standard.
I suppose my situation maybe isn’t actually that common(?), but I’m someone with a lot of passion for the TCG and deckbuilding, but I don’t actually play very often. I don’t enjoy the apps — the TCG is moreso something I play a few times a year when a friend visits or as an occassional family thing. And the thing I hate most in that context is needing to explain that a card isn’t actually the thing that the text says it is.