Why Differences between the Japanese and International Pokemon TCG Rules Matter for Bans

With the recent expanded bans of Unown and Maxie’s Hidden Ball Trick TPCI(The Pokemon Company International)  is following the bans previously made in Japan for their own expanded format. Since Sets are released in Japan months ahead of being released elsewhere, they were already exposed to the developing metagame and potential design mistakes that they felt made the game unhealthy. Having this look into the pseudo future is great for predicting how metagames will evolve and can be a useful tool to manage formats.Is being tied to the Japanese rules that govern all of Asia good for the International game?

New Expanded Bans

For these two specific deviants, the general consensus is that Unown DAMAGE was banned due to the release of Gengar Mimikyu Tag Team-GX. Unown DAMAGE has seen play as the catalyst of the turn 2 “Exodia” unown deck in Expanded Format, which uses a combination of cards such as Wailord Magikarp Tag Team GX as a place to put a lot of damage, Reuniclus to move damage to the Wailord, Team Magma Base to put damage on a Pokémon when it is benched, Weavile that allows you to pick up a tool card from play to your hand whenever you like, and Klefki which can be placed to the bench and then attached as a tool. The player uses these cards in an infinite loop to put 2 damage on Klefki upon being benched, move the damage to Wailord or another Pokémon, attach Klefki, pick it up with weavile’s ability, and repeat until you have 66 damage counters on your benched Pokémon to instantaneously win the game with unown’s DAMAGE ability. Where does Gengar Mimikyu Tag Team GX come into this? Gengar Mimikyu’s GX attack restricts your opponent from playing any cards on their next turn. This means if you go second and use this GX attack, your opponent cannot play down an ability lock Pokémon like Alolan Muk or Garbotoxin Garbodor to stop your abilities that help you to achieve the combo. This ban makes a lot of sense to me.

The banning of Maxie’s Hidden Ball Trick is a bit simpler. A new Omastar which restricts your opponent from playing item cards (with a technicality) is coming out in Team Up, along with a Kabutops with an ability that restricts your opponent from playing supporters while it is active. Cards like Forest of Giant Plants that allowed Vileplume to establish a turn one lock and Wally’s Training which allowed Trevenant to establish a turn one lock have previously been banned, so it makes sense to see Maxie’s Hidden Ball Trick receive the ban before it enabled these potentially degenerate turn one locks. Again, this ban makes sense. My issue isn’t with these specific bans but with the idea of strictly adhering to the Japanese format management.

Separation of the Pokémon Company Japan and TPCI

The Pokemon Company has an interesting structure when it comes to managing their game in Asia and outside of Asia. This separation of Japanese Pokémon TCG and Pokémon TCG  comes straight from Pokémon.com: “The Pokémon Company International, a subsidiary of The Pokémon Company in Japan, manages the property outside of Asia and is responsible for brand management, licensing, marketing, the Pokémon Trading Card Game, the animated TV series, home entertainment, and the official Pokémon website.” This division makes the huge differences between Japan and International make more sense, but also they are the same company. It is odd how divergent they are for being under the same umbrella. Their decisions are (or at least I hope are) based on the needs and wants of their differing player base.

Lack of Moderation Outside of Japan

Basing our bans off of the Japanese bans makes sense as they receive cards from new sets earlier than us and have already seen a metagame develop. The issue is that Asia has a different tournament structure; Japan plays Best of 1 matches with 25 minute rounds. That is 1 game, 25 minutes. A tie within one of these rounds count as a loss for both players.

This system deters slow play and decks that stall out the game, which helps inherently manage the toxicity and diversity of their format. When moderating our International format, we need to look at things differently as we play best two out of three matches with wins being 3 points, ties being 1 point and a loss is 0 match points. Awarding the 1 point for ties doesn’t curb stall decks enough and certainly less so than the Japanese structure.

The Pokemon trading cards that we all know and love are developed in Asia, by developers who know the Japanese rules, and are making cards for the Japanese Pokemon TCG. By dropping these cards designed for the Japanese structure into our different parameters, there can be unintended consequences. It is completely possible that when developing a card like Oranguru UPR, the creators never thought it would be the integral part of a deck which sought out to control the game for 50 minutes until the opponent had no resources left. I like to imagine that Oranguru’s original function was to get back needed resources that may have been used or even taken away by those nasty control decks. Of course, it was used outside of Japan as a mill and stall counter at first. But it was only a matter of time until expert deck builders found obnoxious ways to take advantage of it in the TPCI managed tournament structure.

Degenerate Cards

Let’s take a look at an arsenal of degenerate cards, Zoroark-GX/Seismitoad-EX in our current Expanded format. Jimmy Pendarvis won Portland Regionals and Anaheim Regionals with this archetype, and teammate Caleb Gedemer finished in 2nd place with the deck at the following regionals in Dallas, TX. Powerful control cards like Lusamine, Oranguru UPR, Seismitoad-EX, and the fossil trio Tirtuoga, Lilleep, and Archen are just as bad of offenders. A card like Lusamine which can retrieve a combination of two supporters and stadiums from the discard pile looks like it would be used in standard format to be a pseudo replacement for Vs Seeker, but in best of 3, it can string together game locking redundant loops of a second Lusamine and whichever stadium or supporter fits the matchup.

It is easy to see that these cards were not developed or tested with the knowledge of these oppressive combinations and decks. Expanded is a really big format, it includes sets, subsets, and promos from 2011 to the present day. Putting that many cards designed for best of 1 rounds together is asking for trouble.

A control, stall, or mill deck can win game 1 and have game 2 never finish. This results in a win for whoever won game 1. In the result of each player winning 1 game each in a best two out of three series, finishing a third game against a control deck is not a likely possibility and the player who is behind at the end of the game is incentivized to play slower to get a draw as opposed to a loss. While intentionally stalling is prohibited, it is a hard penalty to enforce consistently and clearly.

Japanese Pokemon TCG rarely has this issue with control, stall, and mill decks as their best of 1 tournament structure deters players from choosing a deck that cannot consistently finish full games in 25 minutes, since an unfinished game at the end of time in this style of play results in each player receiving a loss for the round. An added bonus of the Japanese best of 1 is that purposeful slow play cannot gain the player anything. Both players are incentivized to finish the match, preventing stalling.

Rules for Time Being Called (Japan)

In Japan, there are two scenarios for time being called on the round with no decided winner:

1. If time is called on the player who started the game going first, that player takes their turn, Player two takes their turn, and then the round is over. If there is still no winner that round results as a loss for both players.

2. If time if called on the player who went second, this player finishes their turn and then the round is over. If there is still no winner that round results in a loss for both players.

(Special thanks to Franco Takahashi for translating these rules and helping me understand them).

Having this simplified system incentivizes faster play as players have less untimed turns to look forward to at the end of the time. Why does this matter? Well, if an average game in a matchup goes 12 turns, now players need to play 11 turns in 25 mins as opposed to only needing to play 9 turns. While players may not intentionally imply this thinking, its an underlying factor that incentivizes and does not punish slow play.

I do not imagine that TPCI would gladly implement this rule, the company, judges, organizers, and players have become accustomed to the “time plus 3 turns” rule. Although, I could be wrong and TPCI could surprise us with changes and reworks to the system.

Tie Rates

The Japanese structure discourages slow play and also deters players from playing naturally slow control, stall, and mill decks because of the risk of losing if the game is not finished at the 25 minute mark, as opposed to our International system.

One of my biggest concerns as a player is the high tie rates at Regionals, especially expanded format events. As anyone can look at Rk9labs pairings, I followed the tie rates during swiss rounds of Dallas Regionals just a couple weeks ago. Most rounds from round 1-8 (not including Round 9 because of an expected increase of intentional draws) had about a 15% tie rate give or take. One that stuck out to me was round 2’s 20% tie rate. This means that in round 2 for every five games played, one of them ended in a tie. As a competitive player, I would not want to go into a round or even a whole tournament with a ⅕ chance of unintentionally drawing.

Now of course this has many variables such as which decks tied, were both players playing control decks, were either of the players intentionally or unintentionally slow playing, etc.  I can control (no pun intended) what deck I play and the speed of my own play, but I am sure that many readers can relate when I say that I have walked away with many ties due to the speed at which my opponent played the game.

A Perfect Fix?

To finally tie this back to the starting topic of bans, many players are upset that cards like Lusamine and Oranguru UPR have gone completely unmoderated whether it be a ban, an errata, or a limitation of how many can be played per deck.

In best of 1, cards like this would be used as intended by developers as a way to re-use important resources, not as never ending loops that eat up 50 minutes. In the event that TPCI does not want to do something about the incredible institutional strength of stall / mill / and control decks by banning cards, changing to this 25 minute best of 1 format seems like a way to keep the cards legal while hindering the degenerate strategies they have brought to the game.

In addition to banning cards that are continuously problematic in the way that they are used in our formats and in our tournament structure, I believe that erratas and limits could also be a positive direction for maintaining healthy formats. Note that in the modern era of Pokemon TCG (2011-on), TPCI has never issued erratas for the sake of changing how a card functions (example: instead of banning Lusamine, errata it so it reads “you cannot choose a Lusamine in your discard pile when choosing a combination of 2 supporter/stadium cards to put into your hand”) or issued limits on cards (example: instead of banning or publishing an errata for Lusamine, limit it so a legal deck can only play 1 copy of the card). While I would be ecstatic to see TPCI take action in this way, it seems unlikely as they are not intuitive for new players, which TPCI values highly.

Would Best of 1 games with 25 minute rounds and no ties be a perfect fix? No, I cannot imagine that it would instantly fix all of the problems I have laid out from unintentional slow play, to unintentional ties, and control decks gaining an advantage by only finishing one game. There is also the logistical issues of having to issue more pairings throughout the day if there are more rounds to compensate. Tournament delays happen most often in the turnaround of each round and taxing that more so may be something tournament organizers don’t want to deal with. But if we did copy the Japanese structure to address our concerns, it would. There would be an inescapable penalty for slow playing in the form of both players losing in the event of a tie and a large deterrent from playing decks that have the intention of decking your opponent out and/or taking a very slow 6 prizes while chipping away and removing resources.