MonsterOfTheLake's Lake

---

06-10-2009

No rotation? POP gets it right

In today's news, Pokemon cards were traded with much volatility today. Anticipating rumors about the rotation for the new 2009-2010 format originally drove prices down. A rally spawned with a surprise announcement that no future cards would be rotated out.

"In an effort to increase the depth of the available card pool at early season events, Pokémon Organized Play will forego its standard set rotation for the 2009–2010 tournament season." (Pokemon Organized Play)

With this announcement, the prices of Claydol (Ticker Symbol: CLA) and Uxie (Ticker Symbol: UXE) rose 20% in late day trading. In other news, the Dow Jones is up 1 point.

-- pokemonforever, Expert Pokémonomics Analyst

In case you've been living under a Solrock and haven't heard the news, POP has recently announced the format for the next season. In a surprising but sensible decision, POP decreed that there would be no rotation for the 2009-10 season, keeping the DP-On format for another year.

Predictably, this has given the community -- who were feeling rather hard done by with the recent foreign card ruling -- something to cheer about. In addition to the obvious benefit of cards purchased just two years ago not losing all their value, this move has done wonders for the competitive scene, in keeping key cards like Claydol and Unown G in the format, and keeping the Modified card pool wider.

It was easy enough to see that Great Encounters would not be rotated. POP must generate profits, and new sets must be sold. As the current trend is one of "making broken SP Pokémon and giving them a broken engine," there is one glaring problem: Machamp SF. Take Out, as it stands, takes out every single SP Pokémon (sans a certain Toxicroak G) for a single Fighting Energy. Without Unown G, there is hardly any incentive to buy new cards that will handily lose to an old card. Sure, they could reprint Unown G and rotate Great Encounters anyway, but that would open a whole can of worms that POP would rather not deal with. Setting precedents is never a good idea. Remember the time I said I would write new articles every two weeks? There's one example of setting a bad precedent =P

Another reason for rotation -- the one that POP likes to state, rather than "profits" -- is keeping the format "fresh." People will be hard pressed to remain interested if it's the same decks winning over and over again. However, there would be no such worries with the current format, due to the extremity of the power creep we have seen in recent sets. It is now common to see cards doing anywhere from 40 to 60 damage for just a single Energy. A quick glance through DP-MD cards will show that doing that much damage generally requires 2-3 Energy cards. You are clearly at an advantage with the newer, more powerful cards, as they are much stronger than their previous counterparts. Damagewise, there's hardly any incentive to use older cards. However, that doesn't mean that they're all bad.

And the prime example of the "not bad," alongside Unown G, is Claydol. Having been playing the game since the very beginning, I can think of relatively little cards that offered such consistency to decks as this Stage 1 has. Claydol is vital for a good metagame and a good competitive environment. Why? Claydol offers consistency, lowering the amount of luck involved in drawing from a randomized deck, and allowing decks to set up. And thus, games boil down to the quality of the decks and the talents of the players, not topdecking.

Unown G will, in addition to stopping Machamp, stop the menace of Gengar and Dusknoir. And the relative non-menace of Special Condition decks. It's a brilliant little card, one that any competitive player will be glad to see remain in Modified for next season.

Meanwhile, past favorites such as Gardevoir, Gallade, Palkia Lv.X, Cresselia Lv.X, Pachirisu, Dusknoir DP, Sceptile, Torterra Lv.X, and many others will have another season of competitive play to prove themselves in, trying to outdo the new, more broken cards.

In addition to Pokémon, the players will also benefit from a larger pool of Trainers. Team Galactic's Wager will make Rock-Paper-Scissors in competitive Pokémon possible for another season, while Time-Space Distortion will also be staying around to provide us with laughs when someone flips all 3 Tails on it, and thus playing a $30 card for no effect. Felicity's Drawing, Professor Oak's Visit, and Professor Rowan will also be with us in 2010, offering their inferior draw Power.

To cap it all: Players are delighted with a wider selection of cards available for competitive play, POP is delighted to rake in the profits as the new broken SP cards can be played without having a Machamp SF autoloss, and I'm delighted to have something to write an article about, because I was having some serious writer's block lately. Win-win-win. Well done, POP.

---

Feedback

(You can send in your feedback at PoJoMOTL@gmail.com)

so, to me, and I've been in and out of pokemon (mostly out) it seems that Kingdra could be the new riptide deck. Also, I have to say, this curent set - the only card I want (i just print them out and shove them in sleves to play anymore i cant aford this game lol) is the broken time space stadum. it lets me do... crazy stuff like hyper devolution then evolve... insaintiy.

soulara chan

Kingdra certainly is good, and Broken Time-Space is one of the greatest Stadium cards ever printed (you can guess that I also have an affinity towards Holon Lake, Lake Boundary, and Underground Lake!). However, Nidoqueen from Rising Rivals has brought everyone's favorite seahorse/dragon hybrid down to earth from its throne of "60/20 for 1-Energy," and made it sit at the corner of "40 and discard 2 cards for 1-Energy." Nidoqueen is the DP-On spreaders' worst nightmare.

I ment to also say miss the articles I know u gotta be a busy 1, but your lighter yet biting side is always highly antcipated

marc

Thanks a lot, man! I'll try to dish some new articles out before Nationals to make up for the whole no-articles-for-3-months thing.

Hope it's not too late to send in illustrations for the buyer's tome. And since my mommy tells me I'm such a good artist, here ya go: http://i186.photobucket.com/albums/x161/kentuckyfriedtorchic/crappyTome.jpg

I know it sucks. I made it in paint as you can tell. I thought that if you were getting bombarded by awesome artwork, this horribad Paint created monster that not even its mother could love would remind you that not everyone's a Leonardo Da Vinci. I'm only a step above being a six year-old with finger paints, and that's only because I don't cry during nap time.

Anyways, seeing as how it's a pretty lighthearted article, my abomination might help.

Sincerly, Awful Artist Ryan

Here's the image:


That. Is. FANTASTIC.

Everybody, you just got Tomed =P

I decided to hold off on the Buyer's Tome series for the time being, because it basically boiled down to me ripping on Theme Decks, instead of offering any insights for the competitive player. However, this new catchphrase is inspiring stuff, and I might just take the Tome off the shelf for that amazing line. And then, you'll all get tomed.

http://www.pojo.com/pokemon/FeaturedWriters/monster/2009/3-16.shtml Was a good article indeed, but you failed. "Mesprit Lv.X's healing ability and damage output -- able to knock out any card Pokémon card printed in history --, and the powers of Mesprit, Uxie, and Azelf make AMU an effective deck.". There is atleast one card that Mesprit can't Knock out with Supreme Blast. It's this card... http://pokebeach.com/scans/gym-heroes/42-erika%27s-dratini.jpg Erika's Dratini. I just wanted to say this. Otherwise a really good article. Keep up the good work.

-Sami

Hey Sami, nice catch! I was trying to explain the significance of the 200 damage, as it's the maximum max. HP a card can have (ignore cards like Unown E for the sake of the argument, I'm talking about printed values). Before anyone tries to correct that as well, keep in mind that Imakuni cards don't count >=/

Erika's Dratini is certainly one Pokémon that wouldn't be knocked out by Mesprit Lv.X. Neither would Mewtwo Lv.X or Mr. Mime. Giovanni's Machamp, Jumpluff RR and Celebi* can flip heads to avoid knock-out. Any card with a Focus Band attached does the same. I'm sure that there are more examples out there. However, I was simply trying to make the point that it hits for 200, which is more than enough to take out things like Dialga G Lv.X, Palkia G Lv.X, Machamp, Gengar, etc. In fact, as 200 is the most HP any *playable* card has, it does knock out almost all Pokémon, save for the ones with the weird defensive mechanisms that stop the knock-out in some way. In any case, thanks for writing in!

---

And that's all for today. Go practice for Nationals now! You know, if you haven't already had yours. And if you have, prepare for next year's! It's going to be DP-On, just like the one you just had!


PoJoMOTL@gmail.com

Back to MonsterOfTheLake's Lake
PoJo's Pokémon Site

Copyright© 1998-2009 pojo.com
This site is not sponsored, endorsed, or otherwise affiliated with any of the companies or products featured on this site. This is not an Official Site.