Gambler · Fossil (FO) #60

Ambassador

Though it’s up for debate, I’ve previously suggested that Trainer cards of the original series were being designed with power levels matching their flavor – Trainers depicting human characters are, on average, better cards than those simply depicting items, and this has practical implications. Generally speaking, were you to retroactively classify cards like Bill, Professor Oak, Erika, etc. etc. etc. as Supporters, it’ll feel like it “works”.

I forget where I previously made comments along these lines, but I believe I pointed out the obvious case of a card like Computer Search, and it’s instructive that although all of the cards I listed as examples prior *were* revisited and *were* reclassified as Supporters, when Computer Search was revisited, they had to do something other than classify it as a Supporter, maybe partly because it might still be too good, but primarily because it doesn’t work, flavor-wise. So the general ruleset proposed not only works fair enough, but is based on what seems to be actually being done.

You end up with only a few problems were you to follow this rule. Reclassifying Brock’s Protection as a Supporter is awkward, a card like Goop Gas Attack feels like it could go either way (either become a Supporter or remain simply a Trainer¹), and then we reach Gambler.

Gambler, and its original name, ギャンブラー, matches the Trainer group by the same name in Pocket Monsters Red/Green and Pokémon Red/Blue. Some might speculate that there is no Gambler depicted in the artwork because they anticipated censorship issues like what came later down the line with N1’s Arcade Game card, the censorship of the Gambler class to the “Gamer” (and later “PI”) class, the later excision of Game Corners from the video games, etc. but that makes no sense, chronologically speaking. This card was printed in 1997 in Japan, a year prior to Pokémon coming out in North America, so that the more likely answer is there’s no Gambler depicted in the artwork partly because nobody had illustrated Gambler yet, and primarily because Sugimori hadn’t illustrated the Gambler class yet. So here we have a card that makes the most sense to classify as a Supporter², but on the basis of the name, rather than the artwork.

This can seem a bit off. I believe the artwork Sugimori did for Mr. Fuji was original for the TCG, so he presumably could’ve done an illustration for Gambler as well. Even if I’m wrong and that illustration of Fuji is pulled from art done for either RG, B, or Y, it’d just go along with the next point I want to make, anyway – Sugimori *had* done illustrations of other classes by this point³, so why not make a card focused a class artwork *had* been done for?

One answer is “this card mechanically fits the Gambler class”, which, sure, but I’d argue the TCG was primarily flavor-driven at this point, and even if they liked the card’s mechanics, they could’ve left it on the backburner until it ended fitting something they did have/make artwork for (e.g. this card’s mechanic could’ve been a natural fit for a Blaine card). I think the better answer, somewhat anticlimactically, is what the cringe-worthy (but useful) website TVtropes.com terms “early installment weirdness”. Gambler only looks really weird in hindsight, but it was released at a time there really were only so many Trainer cards anyways, and though I stand by my assertion Base Set’s Trainer cards were devised with the concept of “Trainers depicting characters = better cards”/prototypal Supporters already in place, this wasn’t a binding rule. It was only after the Gym block Trainer cards came out and Sugimori did all these additional illustrations for them that it really begins to feel baked in, and Gambler ends up this awkward card out, but not an exception to the rule that breaks it.

n.b. this isn’t really a challenge to the way this site has decided to class a majority of old Trainers as Items. I still don’t think that’s the correct way to have handled it, but I meant this is an entirely separate conversation to justify my own set of “house rules”, as it were, and that these rules likely have basis in fact – that it’s not coincidental that the Trainer card G1 Erika was retrained as the Supporter card CEC Erika, but the Trainer card BS Computer Search didn’t become a Supporter for its BW-era retain, and these examples are case studies that instruct how the rest of the old back cards. I actually don’t see Gambler as “breaking” this framework whatsoever. Rather, it’s just this awkward, adolescent-phase example of the same idea.

¹ I feel most a home under the auspices / paradigm of the Gen 3 TCG, where cards could still simply be Trainer cards. So that my point here is that in the event Goop Gas Attack had been reprinted during the EX era, I’m not sure whether it’d have been reclassified as a Supporter or left as a Trainer. For any later era, the answer seems easier – it would probably never be reprinted/retrained because it just doesn’t fit later paradigms.
² Averaged out, this card is [a 0.5th of a card better than an] inconsistent Desert Shaman, where, in exchange for that inconsistency, your opponent doesn’t get to draw cards. And so Shaman, itself being a Supporter, can be used to support the assertion that Gambler is balanced at a Supporter-tier level of power.
³ From a cursory search, he’d done colored illustrations of the Bug Catcher class more than once by the time this card had been printed. No doubt unreleased sketches and illustrations exist for other classes as well, and even if they weren’t colored, could’ve easily been appropriated, finalized, and used here.

2 comments

Dr. λ the Creator of Variables, Binder of Variables, Applicator of Terms, Checker of Types, and β-Reducer of β-Redexes

(6 years ago)

I guess that the supposed use of this card is to try to draw cards from the deck in order to get a better hand but in PTCG for the Gameboy I use this card to put more cards into the deck in order to prevent a deck out.

Ambassador

(2 years ago)

Though it’s up for debate, I’ve previously suggested that Trainer cards of the original series were being designed with power levels matching their flavor – Trainers depicting human characters are, on average, better cards than those simply depicting items, and this has practical implications. Generally speaking, were you to retroactively classify cards like Bill, Professor Oak, Erika, etc. etc. etc. as Supporters, it’ll feel like it “works”.

I forget where I previously made comments along these lines, but I believe I pointed out the obvious case of a card like Computer Search, and it’s instructive that although all of the cards I listed as examples prior *were* revisited and *were* reclassified as Supporters, when Computer Search was revisited, they had to do something other than classify it as a Supporter, maybe partly because it might still be too good, but primarily because it doesn’t work, flavor-wise. So the general ruleset proposed not only works fair enough, but is based on what seems to be actually being done.

You end up with only a few problems were you to follow this rule. Reclassifying Brock’s Protection as a Supporter is awkward, a card like Goop Gas Attack feels like it could go either way (either become a Supporter or remain simply a Trainer¹), and then we reach Gambler.

Gambler, and its original name, ギャンブラー, matches the Trainer group by the same name in Pocket Monsters Red/Green and Pokémon Red/Blue. Some might speculate that there is no Gambler depicted in the artwork because they anticipated censorship issues like what came later down the line with N1’s Arcade Game card, the censorship of the Gambler class to the “Gamer” (and later “PI”) class, the later excision of Game Corners from the video games, etc. but that makes no sense, chronologically speaking. This card was printed in 1997 in Japan, a year prior to Pokémon coming out in North America, so that the more likely answer is there’s no Gambler depicted in the artwork partly because nobody had illustrated Gambler yet, and primarily because Sugimori hadn’t illustrated the Gambler class yet. So here we have a card that makes the most sense to classify as a Supporter², but on the basis of the name, rather than the artwork.

This can seem a bit off. I believe the artwork Sugimori did for Mr. Fuji was original for the TCG, so he presumably could’ve done an illustration for Gambler as well. Even if I’m wrong and that illustration of Fuji is pulled from art done for either RG, B, or Y, it’d just go along with the next point I want to make, anyway – Sugimori *had* done illustrations of other classes by this point³, so why not make a card focused a class artwork *had* been done for?

One answer is “this card mechanically fits the Gambler class”, which, sure, but I’d argue the TCG was primarily flavor-driven at this point, and even if they liked the card’s mechanics, they could’ve left it on the backburner until it ended fitting something they did have/make artwork for (e.g. this card’s mechanic could’ve been a natural fit for a Blaine card). I think the better answer, somewhat anticlimactically, is what the cringe-worthy (but useful) website TVtropes.com terms “early installment weirdness”. Gambler only looks really weird in hindsight, but it was released at a time there really were only so many Trainer cards anyways, and though I stand by my assertion Base Set’s Trainer cards were devised with the concept of “Trainers depicting characters = better cards”/prototypal Supporters already in place, this wasn’t a binding rule. It was only after the Gym block Trainer cards came out and Sugimori did all these additional illustrations for them that it really begins to feel baked in, and Gambler ends up this awkward card out, but not an exception to the rule that breaks it.

n.b. this isn’t really a challenge to the way this site has decided to class a majority of old Trainers as Items. I still don’t think that’s the correct way to have handled it, but I meant this is an entirely separate conversation to justify my own set of “house rules”, as it were, and that these rules likely have basis in fact – that it’s not coincidental that the Trainer card G1 Erika was retrained as the Supporter card CEC Erika, but the Trainer card BS Computer Search didn’t become a Supporter for its BW-era retain, and these examples are case studies that instruct how the rest of the old back cards. I actually don’t see Gambler as “breaking” this framework whatsoever. Rather, it’s just this awkward, adolescent-phase example of the same idea.

¹ I feel most a home under the auspices / paradigm of the Gen 3 TCG, where cards could still simply be Trainer cards. So that my point here is that in the event Goop Gas Attack had been reprinted during the EX era, I’m not sure whether it’d have been reclassified as a Supporter or left as a Trainer. For any later era, the answer seems easier – it would probably never be reprinted/retrained because it just doesn’t fit later paradigms.
² Averaged out, this card is [a 0.5th of a card better than an] inconsistent Desert Shaman, where, in exchange for that inconsistency, your opponent doesn’t get to draw cards. And so Shaman, itself being a Supporter, can be used to support the assertion that Gambler is balanced at a Supporter-tier level of power.
³ From a cursory search, he’d done colored illustrations of the Bug Catcher class more than once by the time this card had been printed. No doubt unreleased sketches and illustrations exist for other classes as well, and even if they weren’t colored, could’ve easily been appropriated, finalized, and used here.

Gambler · Fossil (FO) #60

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