With all of the talk of banning and restricting in the past few weeks as well as talk about how Props 15 and 2T would affect the outcome of Pokemon I would like to add my suggestion to what should happen. I could go into why there needs to be banning and restricting, or why the propositions need to happen, but those have been discussed enough that all of the points have been shown. While I'm against the propositions for obvious reasons, I'm all for banning and restrictions since it will cause the use of multiple cards that are otherwise overlooked to get more play time.

First off would be what needs to be banned and restricted. The cards are fairly obvious: Wigglytuff, Scyther, Electabuzz, MP Mewtwo, Hitmonchan, Professor Oak, Computer Search, Item Finder, The Rocket's Trap, and Super Energy Removal. Each of these pokemon and trainers impacts the game in such a huge way that no deck out there has less than three of these...none that wants to compete at least.

Wigglytuff is one of the most infamous of cards out there which has caused even the usual lax Wizards to ponder doing something about it. The other pokemon are staples of every Potpourri, Haymaker, and Wiggly deck out there, all three are dominant archetypes that have brought about the propositions.

As for the trainers, well, Computer Search, Item Finder, and SER are all banned in tournaments in Japan. Professor Oak is one of the most unbalanced cards there is in any card game out there. Not to mention Team Rocket Trap has started its own archetype, something no other Trainer has done. Not to mention everyone who sees it as broken wants it banned/restricted in use, which I have to agree with.

So how do we do the banning/restricting. Well, that'll most likely be argued for a while. I'm sure everyone understands why Dark Ritual was banned in Magic Extended play. It's just an unfair card, especially teamed with a lot of small, fast creatures. But there will always be those that will argue that banning it is still unnecessary, and that it should be kept in. So there will always be arguments over what should be banned/restricted... though most everyone agrees that something needs to be done about most of the above cards.

As such what I propose is an out and out banning of Wigglytuff. He's a far to powerful card that has dominated the field like no other. Yes, there are answers to him, much like a common Counter Spell could take out the cards banned in Magic...but they are still unfair and thus out of the picture. There for the Wiggly must be knocked out of the game.

The other cards should be put on restrictions. Some of them are the only truly viable 'haymaker' type pokemon an energy type has. However, we can't restrict them as they do in Magic...only one of a certain card will do more harm than good considering that there are so many fewer options open to players than in the much older and much larger other card game. My suggestion would be only a total of four restricted pokemon, and six restricted Trainers in each deck. In other words you could have two Electabuzz and two MP Mewtwo, or two Scyther and two Hitmonchan, or any such combination. The same would go for the above trainers, only in combinations that total six.

What will this do? It'll cause people to add more evolutions to their decks, or other pokemon that tend to get looked over. Dark Dragonair, Dark Golduck, Dark Muk, Erika's Victreebell, Beedril, Venusaur, Raichu might all find their way into winning decks.. It might also lead to more bannings/restrictions, but we'll deal with that when we get there. Fossil Magmar, Blastoise, Ditto, and Chansey all could also be added to the possible restrictions list. But, first thing we need to do is to get some sort of action in this direction taken. Because if something isn't done soon, then the game may lose more players due to the lack of variety and a loss of fun.

That's my two cents worth. Send any and all comments my way to Dr Dem at dr_dem@yahoo.com I'd appreciate hearing from you.