“Hey! Learn our syntax here.”
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- ↓ 0.20
- ꩜ 0.29
- ↑ 18.24
If the Pokémon this card is attached to is a Basic Pokémon, any damage done to this Pokémon by attacks is reduced by 20 (after 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 to it.
illus. 5ban Graphics
External: Pokemon.com ↗, Bulba ↗ · #ad / Affiliate Links: TCGplayer ↗, cardmarket ↗, Amazon ↗, eBay ↗
Curtis
I knew this card would be big, but I had no idea it would change the format the way it did.
Caleb Mullins
lol
Pokémon 31337
My biggest antagonist where I play. I just can’t get a good enough standing to draft one from the booster prize.
Julia Follan
Eviolite + EX = BROKEN
mantine
Bouffalant + Eviolite = Invincibility
Ambassador
“Trainer > I̶t̶e̶m̶ > Pokémon Tool”
“Pokémon Tools are no longer considered Items”
I mean, okay, but. For example, if my opponent’s Active Pokémon is LTR Gothitelle, can I now play Eviolite from my hand because this card is considered a Tool, and not an Item..? Even if it is now the case, it wasn’t the case at the time the cards were legal in the Standard format. In terms of looking through the history of the TCG and rules changes like this, they’re generally poorly documented.
Currently, this card doesn’t show up in a search for || series:black-white type:item || but it’s literally a Black & White series Item card..? Suppose I’m someone who wants to play a BW format game or understand why certain cards/decks had certain cards/interactions. Again, I’m going to get confused. Or suppose I’m a collector who wants to use this site to pull up a list of all the BW Item cards – I probably don’t care about a 2023 rules change for a 2011 card *whatsoever*.
I would suggest something like “This card is no longer considered an Item in the Expanded format, and instead treated as a Pokémon Tool. Effective date: {whatever date}”, and still having it accessible when searching for Item cards, because that *is* what it is printed as, and it hasn’t been subjected to a *corrective* errata as a result of a typo/mistranslation/etc.
JP
We polled users and there were many different suggestions on how to handle this. People wanted the site search to work in literally opposite ways; in the end we had to pick something. A “legacy search/as-printed” option for card types was suggested by a few people, and is an interesting idea, but the current backend does not support it.
There are many other interesting cases of card type reclassification–by far the most interesting (confusing?) one is that a Gen 4 era-appropriate search for “type:Trainer” would not return Bebe’s Search (or any other Gen 4 Supporter). So if we want to argue in favor of the current approach vs defaulting to as-printed, a user could search for “type:Trainer” today and be confused why years’ worth of Supporters do not appear in the results. There is potential for confusion either way, and curious users will likely end up learning about the (complicated!) history of the game’s card type changes.
JP
I also understand the historical value of “as-printed” text, which is why on the site a card like Pokemon Catcher EPO hasn’t had its image+text replaced by an errata’d version (as it appears in PTCGO/TCG Live); the original text-version is more useful for folks who want to print proxies. One could then complain that the site is inconsistent–why are card type errata reflected, but not all card text errata? And really the core issue is that a large backend change would be required to elegantly support errata; this is in the backlog.
JP
A final thought; for anyone wishing to play an old-format game, knowing what the correct card types are at the point in time they are playing is a necessary, but not sufficient, condition, to actually be able to play the game correctly. The best way to learn is to have access to a format-specific document that calls out first-turn rules changes, mechanics changes, important errata that may or may not have ever been corrected with a physical printing, etc. (Something like https://ptcglegends.com/other/rules-by-era is a nice starting point.)
Ambassador
If it’s in the backlog then I think that’s fine. Regardless of the outcome of the vote I think the API and site can cater to all the different venues of interest. I do think it’s harder to learn about than you’d expect, as you mentioned, the complicated history of various changes in TCG mechanics/retcons.
The example you’ve highlighted is actually a great one. Why do HGSS block Supporter cards show up when I do a search for type:trainer, but DP/DPt block Supporter cards don’t? It both isn’t a rhetorical question – it’s actually harder to learn about the complicated history of TCG mechanics changes than you’ve suggested, because while I used to know the answer, I currently don’t, and the current format of the site doesn’t lend itself to helping me figure it out again. – and is a rhetorical question. Who cares? Most of the time, I don’t care at all. When I’m looking for a cross-section of a group of cards over the years, I expect the site to be consistent at least on a certain element like that. While HGSS was printed and marketed as its own block, it’s clearly a part of the overarching “Gen 4” TCG and mechanics system, etc., and this is especially true for the English edition (which put off the whole Item classification of certain kinds of Trainer cards until BW). Whether it was some BW era that only went so far back or some wonky HGSS decision or whatever, all that’s going to happen when I do certain kinds of searches is things will be omitted – and I won’t even necessarily realize it – because I’m insufficiently familiar with poorly documented mechanic reclassification the years. I think, at least, that the burden ought to have been shifted the other way – if you’re looking at certain kinds of cards because you want to play Unlimited/Expanded, you need to bear in mind a card might’ve worked a certain way at a certain time, but that isn’t necessarily how it works today.
Having said all that, you’ve already made a decision based on a vote and it’d be annoying for me to press on about it. Someone can feel just a strongly the opposite manner, and then we’d just get into a matter of the loudest voice, etc. So I’ll settle for expressing that I’m very much looking forward to an update in the site functionality, and if any assistance in rote data entry is ever required to that end, I’d probably be able to find time to help out.