Pokémon Thread XXX: Hot Skitty on Wailord Action!

[TaiLiu]

Why does it matter if a reference made in a game that comes out this year becomes outdated in a decade? That is not even worth thinking about.

Well, I'm thinking about it, so I must think it's worth thinking about.

And I think it's worth thinking about cuz I find fiction with whatever the opposite of anachronisms are kind of jarring. Especially sci-fi, which I consider Pokemon to be. That's not everyone's experience, which is fine, but it's mine. That's why I'm thinking about it.

[Emmerlaus]

Spoiler: Pokemon Violet and Orange

Show

Can someone explain to me what the Pokemon Paradox are supposed to be? One of my friends said its supposed like the revenge of the Dream World? Like, they are reflection of Pokemon that changed with time in the Dream World? It feel like the sad excuse of "alternate timeline" comic books always use now. I liked the idea of Regional variants though.

[LaZodiac]

Spoiler: Pokemon Violet and Orange

Show

Can someone explain to me what the Pokemon Paradox are supposed to be? One of my friends said its supposed like the revenge of the Dream World? Like, they are reflection of Pokemon that changed with time in the Dream World? It feel like the sad excuse of "alternate timeline" comic books always use now. I liked the idea of Regional variants though.

First I heard about this. Did a search and just speculation, nothing confirmed, but an interesting idea..

Anyway; you know how in a screenshot we saw Hisuian Zoroark, and he's from Hisui's past? It's like that. Pokemon that were shunted from the past (or future) into the present.

[Bartmanhomer]

When I first heard about the Baton Pass move, I thought it was a very useless move but the Baton Pass is a very dangerous move.

[TaiLiu]

When I first heard about the Baton Pass move, I thought it was a very useless move but the Baton Pass is a very dangerous move.

I respect that it's an impressive move competitively, but I've never been able to put it to especially good use in-game. Which is too bad.

[Qwertystop]

I respect that it's an impressive move competitively, but I've never been able to put it to especially good use in-game. Which is too bad.

The main issue, I think, is that in-game battles very rarely put up enough of a fight for the ability to stack a lot of stat boosts to be more valuable than using those turns and team/move slots to just keep attacking. And in the rare case that they do, it's probably easier to level-grind the existing team you've got than to rebuild it to include a mon playing a support role.

[Taevyr]

The main issue, I think, is that in-game battles very rarely put up enough of a fight for the ability to stack a lot of stat boosts to be more valuable than using those turns and team/move slots to just keep attacking. And in the rare case that they do, it's probably easier to level-grind the existing team you've got than to rebuild it to include a mon playing a support role.

Yeah, unless you go into fangames or extreme romhack versions baton pass is relatively useless outside of competitive play.

[MCerberus]

I was personally introduced to the wider nuances of the metagame by Cynthia's boot, planted firmly on my face

[Maat Mons]

Do people have strong opinions of aesthetic differences between Pokémon genders? Do people have strong opinions on mechanical differences between Pokémon genders?

When they add new evolutions to existing Pokémon, do they ever add them between existing evolutions?

Does anyone ever do TCG tournaments with strict caps on total deck cost? I mean, you’d have to agree on a single “authoritative” source for prices. And you’d need to “lock in” the prices at some specific point in time before the tournament. But it would be an easy way to create “weight classes.”

[Lord Raziere]

Do people have strong opinions of aesthetic differences between Pokémon genders? Do people have strong opinions on mechanical differences between Pokémon genders?

When they add new evolutions to existing Pokémon, do they ever add them between existing evolutions?

I can't answer anything TCG, don't play it but I can answer these I think....

1. pokemon with strong gender difference has precedent for existing since Gen 1 in Nidoran Male and Female, being counted as two different pokemon despite the same name and being two different evolutionary lines. however most pokemon don't have as strong a gender difference and those differences only show up in about Gen 4 or 5 I think? like there are a couple pokemon with a strong gender difference as a gimmick here and there, but I don't recall any particular strong opinions on any of them? like this can be very pokemon specific and very subjective because how its handled with Volbeat and Illumise is different from how its handled with like Espurr and Meowstic, or Pyroar. you can't really generalize this.

2. I don't think so, I don't recall any mid-evolutions ever being added. generally the pattern is that a previously singular pokemon gets an evolution upwards for more power like yanma getting yanmega, or something gets a baby form like sudowudo getting bonsly. Roselia is unique/unusual because it got both a baby form and an evolved form going from Gen 3 to 4 in Budew and Roserade so it became a middle evolution. like I don't recall a single instance of an evolution line getting a middle evolution, its either two or three evolutions with an evolved form or a baby form getting added to a previously singular pokemon or two form line. if I'm wrong and there is an example, I haven't heard of it, and would require combing through hundreds of pokemon wiki pages to find it. Most of the time, if something has a three form evolution line, they put it all in one generation as a full concept, probably because thats the ideal design as far as they're concerned. look at most three evolution bug, dragon or starter evolution line and notice how they barely if at all change, mega-evolution was (to my eternal disappointment) a passing gimmick and outside of that if something has a three evolution line its often made that way in one generation, works just fine as it is, while one or two offs seem to get baby or evolved forms with no middles because....thats probably better than a mid form, as baby forms are cuter and big evolved forms can be cooler or tougher or more terrifying while a mid form wouldn't have either appeal, and they're probably improving upon ideas they're revisiting because they couldn't think of any evolutions for that pokemon in a previous gen.

[MCerberus]

There is no official pricing on tournaments, and it wouldn't work anyway, because if a low-weight deck becomes popular the prices of the system will go CRAZY, realigning the whole system week-by-week. The most expensive decks for standard vary wildly by the rarity of the synergistic pieces and when they were printed. There's currently two $45 decks competing with $100-$170 decks. The offender for the expensive deck is requiring 10ish cards that haven't been printed for 2 years and weren't popular when they were.


Unofficially, the community takes the average of recently-sold cards aka "Market Price" (as opposed to listing price) from a trade site called TCGplayer

edit - and for side-evolutions or things like that, gamefreak usually instead has regional "forms". These have different looks and often types, and in the case of Meowth, separate evolutions after.

[Celestia]

They would never add price caps to an official tournament. That would completely undermine the intended goal of selling more cards. Also, Pokémon decks don't get that expensive, anyways. They cap out at a few hundred. Now, in Yugioh, that could easily be the price of a single card, and there have been multiple times throughout history where top meta decks cost literal thousands of dollars.

[MCerberus]

They would never add price caps to an official tournament. That would completely undermine the intended goal of selling more cards. Also, Pokémon decks don't get that expensive, anyways. They cap out at a few hundred. Now, in Yugioh, that could easily be the price of a single card, and there have been multiple times throughout history where top meta decks cost literal thousands of dollars.

Isn't that sort of a side-effect of Yugioh not having rotations?

[Lvl 2 Expert]

When they add new evolutions to existing Pokémon, do they ever add them between existing evolutions?

No, they've never done that. Although I could see it happening in the future, in a kind of baby pokémon way. Say you have a 2-stager that evolves at level 32, then you could have a special middle evolution unlocked by leveling up with high friendship holding a certain item or something that learns a few extra strong moves but doesn't evolve into the regular second stage until level 48. Or you could have a regional form of a regular 2-stager that has an extra middle stage. But it's not a thing we've seen in the first 8 generations.

Do people have strong opinions of aesthetic differences between Pokémon genders? Do people have strong opinions on mechanical differences between Pokémon genders?

That would be a very 2022 thing to do, wouldn't it? I think the minor visual differences are kind of cool, I think the move Attract is weird and suggests that Pokémon get around, I'm fine with all the existing gendered (sexed?) evolutions and such. They're kind of cool, and they're not common or even all similar enough that I can read too deep into it and find something to be mad about.

[Celestia]

Isn't that sort of a side-effect of Yugioh not having rotations?

Not really, no. Every now and then some old cards will go up in price, but Yugioh frequently releases big reprint sets that generally keep old cards reasonably priced. The massive costs come from high rarity staple cards.

In other games, decks are largely self-contained with few or no universal cards that are good in every deck. If you're making a blue deck in Magic, you use blue cards. If you're making a red deck, you use red cards. And so on. This keeps costs low because even if there's a game-breakingly strong green card, the only ones who are going to care about it or buy it are the green players. If you don't play green decks, then you have no reason to buy it, and that keeps the demand relatively low.

Yugioh is different, though. While Yugioh does have archetypes that are often xenophobic, the game also has tons of generic support cards that are good in almost every deck. Therefore, any time a high rarity, generic card become meta defining, literally every player wants it, but there just aren't enough copies to go around. Thus, the price skyrockets. This is especially the case with extra deck monsters, hand traps, and consistency cards as every deck can benefit from them.

[MCerberus]

There are actually quite a bit of support and item cards in the TCG that, if not universal, are only not used in fringe cases. However once a year they release a "trainer toolkit" set that has a full set of 4 of these items that are currently standard legal. They also reprint vital cards with new art all the time.

For example, a card called "Professor's Research" gets at least one printing per base set (game generation) and an additional turbo-fun-collector print (Sonia, and then Oak for the 25th anniversary this time). This card is essentially a saving throw against a bad hand, and most decks run 3 copies. You will never find a shop league where you can't get it donated to you if you're in need.

And on top of that value is about 75% determined by the collectors. So this bad card is, last checked, my most valuable

Spoiler

Show

holy moly it's gone up 40% since I checked

[TaiLiu]

The main issue, I think, is that in-game battles very rarely put up enough of a fight for the ability to stack a lot of stat boosts to be more valuable than using those turns and team/move slots to just keep attacking. And in the rare case that they do, it's probably easier to level-grind the existing team you've got than to rebuild it to include a mon playing a support role.

Yeah, that's true. I had a Scolipede with that move and Iron Defense. It was fun but it wasn't worth eating up a whole move slot.

I was personally introduced to the wider nuances of the metagame by Cynthia's boot, planted firmly on my face

Yeah, she's tough. I think I remember buying and using Natural Gift specifically to defeat her.

[Qwertystop]

Yeah, that's true. I had a Scolipede with that move and Iron Defense. It was fun but it wasn't worth eating up a whole move slot.


Yeah, she's tough. I think I remember buying and using Natural Gift specifically to defeat her.

That's the other thing, yeah. Since everything until the postgame is fixed teams, for the rare case where there *is* an opponent tough enough to need more strategy, if level-grinding past them is impractical, building to counter them specifically is usually still easier than building a generally competitive-capable team - either focusing on types that one particular opponent is weak to, or pulling out a cheese strat that wouldn't be reliable in general but that you know this specific NPC can't handle. If I recall, sub-punch and hazard spam were usually pretty good for "cheese that the NPCs can't handle", or taking advantage of how the smarter ones get predictable with targeting weaknesses and switching.

[Lvl 2 Expert]

So this bad card is, last checked, my most valuable

Spoiler

Show

holy moly it's gone up 40% since I checked

Wait, that's a particularly bad card? No prior evolutions (somehow), 230hp and a 3 energy attack of 250? What are your good cards like?

[MCerberus]

Wait, that's a particularly bad card? No prior evolutions (somehow), 230hp and a 3 energy attack of 250? What are your good cards like?

Alright, first thing is that you notice the 3 mixed energy cost? That's a major consideration, on top of the bench damage. The short of it is that yes you can knock out something with 280hp using an equip item (that number is important in the current meta because of some important mons that sit at that total), but you're going to get smashed back AND THEN also have damage on the bench. It's generally trading negative there.

So let's look at a dragon that does work

Spoiler

Show

It has similar energy cost for less damage right? Well the thing is you're going to get USE out of that energy investment. For the same amount of setup, and with some deck-building shenanigans you get a 300hp mon that takes 100 less damage from every attack with a once-a-game built in full heal. And if it gets KO'd your opponent gets the same 2 prizes that dragonite gives up.

[Beni-Kujaku]

Do people have strong opinions of aesthetic differences between Pokémon genders? Do people have strong opinions on mechanical differences between Pokémon genders?

When they add new evolutions to existing Pokémon, do they ever add them between existing evolutions?

Does anyone ever do TCG tournaments with strict caps on total deck cost? I mean, you’d have to agree on a single “authoritative” source for prices. And you’d need to “lock in” the prices at some specific point in time before the tournament. But it would be an easy way to create “weight classes.”

I don't think mechanical differences between genders are really necessary, but they make for fun Pokémon once in a while (see Indeedee for example, or male Combee not being able to evolve). On the other hand, I really like that there are aesthetic differences. It enlarges the Pokémon lore and makes for interesting new forms to collect.

No, they never added middle evolutions, except if you count the likes of Porygon2 (who was added as a final evolution to Porygon, but became its middle evolution when they added Porygon-Z 2 generations later as a new evolution) or Galarian Mr.Mime (who was added as an alternate evolution to Mime Jr. the same generation they added Mr. Rime as a final evolution to Galarian Mr.Mime. Galarian Mr.Mime was hence added as a middle evolution, but only because two evolution stages were added at the same time.). That's because the "added" evolutions are only supposed to be undiscovered, but to have already existed before the generation they're introduced in. That's why existing methods of evolution never change, and you can't add a new stage between two existing ones. I guess they could introduce an alternative middle evolution in a 3-line that would still evolve into the original 3rd stage, but they never did that yet.

[Celestia]

That's why existing methods of evolution never change, ...

Untrue. In Gen V and beyond, they changed how Feebas evolves due to the removal of the Beauty stat. In Gen VIII, Sliggoo no longer evolves if leveled up in the fog or rain and, instead, requires only the rain. Sword and Shield, specifically, also removed all location-based evolutions. There is no moss rock, so Eevee evolves into Leafeon with a leaf stone. There is no ice rock, so Eevee evolves into Glaceon with an ice stone. And there is no magnetic field, so Magneton and Charjabug evolve with thunder stones. Gen VIII also changed the way Eevee evolves into Sylveon due to the removal of the Affection stat. And, finally, in Legends Arceus, all trade evolutions became item evolutions; though I'm guessing this one will be reversed in Scarlet and Violet.

... and you can't add a new stage between two existing ones. I guess they could introduce an alternative middle evolution in a 3-line that would still evolve into the original 3rd stage, but they never did that yet.

That would be dumb. What would be the use in adding or changing only a middle stage if the Pokémon still ends the same way? They're never going to do that because it would be pointless.

[Lvl 2 Expert]

And if it gets KO'd your opponent gets the same 2 prizes that dragonite gives up.

Ah, they both count as two pokémon. That explains quite a bit. I don't know a lot of top competitive cards, just comparing the HP and damage to random stuff I have seen.

[OracleofWuffing]

Alright, first thing is that you notice the 3 mixed energy cost? That's a major consideration, on top of the bench damage. The short of it is that yes you can knock out something with 280hp using an equip item (that number is important in the current meta because of some important mons that sit at that total), but you're going to get smashed back AND THEN also have damage on the bench. It's generally trading negative there.

You can't damage your bench if you have no pokemon on your bench.

(This a joke. Don't actually do that. The last time I played Pokemon TCG the e-Reader was a thing, and even I know that's a horrible idea that only works in exactly one very specific deck that is easily countered.)

Untrue. In Gen V and beyond, they changed how Feebas evolves due to the removal of the Beauty stat. In Gen VIII, Sliggoo no longer evolves if leveled up in the fog or rain and, instead, requires only the rain. Sword and Shield, specifically, also removed all location-based evolutions.

Well, they removed all location-based evolutions for five seconds. Then, they added Runerigus.

[TaiLiu]

That's the other thing, yeah. Since everything until the postgame is fixed teams, for the rare case where there *is* an opponent tough enough to need more strategy, if level-grinding past them is impractical, building to counter them specifically is usually still easier than building a generally competitive-capable team - either focusing on types that one particular opponent is weak to, or pulling out a cheese strat that wouldn't be reliable in general but that you know this specific NPC can't handle. If I recall, sub-punch and hazard spam were usually pretty good for "cheese that the NPCs can't handle", or taking advantage of how the smarter ones get predictable with targeting weaknesses and switching.

Yeah, I think that's right.

[Rater202]

They just dropped a trailer revealing a ghost type that's a ghost-dog pokemon and dear god it's up there with Hisuin Zorua for cutest ghosty.

[MCerberus]

They just dropped a trailer revealing a ghost type that's a ghost-dog pokemon and dear god it's up there with Hisuin Zorua for cutest ghosty.

And guess what, it's got a disturbing dex entry, though that was to be expected.

[Bartmanhomer]

Imagine if Seto Kaiba was a Pokemon Trainer. He will have the ultimate dragon-type Pokemon team:

Rayquaza
Giratina
Dialga
Palkia
Reshiram
Zekrom

All the other Pokemon trainers will either be destroyed or quit.

[Kareeah_Indaga]

Imagine if Seto Kaiba was a Pokemon Trainer. He will have the ultimate dragon-type Pokemon team:

Rayquaza
Giratina
Dialga
Palkia
Reshiram
Zekrom

All the other Pokemon trainers will either be destroyed or quit.

Until Yugi shows up with a lot of Ice and Fairy attacks.

And actually about half that team is weak to Ground, so throw in a few Earthquakes too.

[Lord Raziere]

Until Yugi shows up with a lot of Ice and Fairy attacks.

And actually about half that team is weak to Ground, so throw in a few Earthquakes too.

Well, if we're talking about theme teams, Yugi's would be magic themed right? Fairy would probably work with that, but for some reason I see Yugi's pokemon being a lot of psychic/ghost/dark types.

but then again the first duel with Kaiba, he had exodia so maybe Yugi just shows up with something like Arceus or Ultra-Necrozma to sweep his team.