玩口袋妖怪的不同方式

What’s up guys, it’s Nico again. For about a month now, I’ve been thinking a lot about things to do within the Pokémon Trading Card Game that don’t necessarily involve playing the Standard ladder on PTCGO because Evolving Skies was still on the horizon, as well as the 2022 rotation on 九月 10. With those two major dates in mind, I didn’t really feel like playing ladder games with Shadow Rider Calyrex, Ice Rider Calyrex or Urshifu, because that was something that I’ve been doing for the last couple of weeks anyway, and it’s not like the majority of those games are particularly interesting.

With the Atlas POG tournament being Standard with Evolving Skies, no Team Challenge on the horizon, and no new Player’s Cup announced, I was looking for other ways to stay in touch with the game and keep playing. I doubt that I’m the only one that felt somewhat bored in this kind of period, which usually would’ve been the time of the year where you would playtest for the World Championships. 

本文将重点介绍除标准格式之外的 Pokémon TCG 的不同玩法，并提供自定义格式列表，作为尝试进入这些格式的玩家的起点。话虽如此，如果您缺少游戏的任何 PTCGO 代码，请随时在 PTCGO 商店获取一些 Pokemon TCG 在线代码！

If you still want to play the ladder (for example, to still finish it for rewards, or simply because it quickly gives you opponents to play against), I encourage you to play with cards that will rotate very soon. Cards like Arceus & Dialga & Palkia GX or Lucario & Melmetal GX haven’t enjoyed the best reputation in the past year, but the 日月 cycle definitely offers a lot of other cards that use somewhat unique mechanics for their attacks or abilities; most prominently GX attacks. GX attacks were never meant to be attacks you use multiple times across one game, so making use of those cards right before they rotate is definitely something I’ve enjoyed. My favorite way to make use of this was the attack of Alolan Sandslash GX. In a format with Inteleon from Chilling Reign, it’s very easy to set up damage counters on your opponent’s board in order to eventually go for a huge (and very satisfying) Spiky Storm GX attack, sweep your opponent’s board, and take multiple prizes in one turn. Another interaction that I’ve been enjoying a lot, that’s also more meta, is Galarian Moltres V paired with 狷维勒 Gx. I’m a really big fan of being able to have consistent energy acceleration that’s useable for all your attackers, so I would’ve really hoped to get a little more out of the synergy of those two. 

Another option for laddering is to dive into the giant card pool that the Expanded format offers. With some sets going back 11 years ago and still incorporating the current Standard, Expanded is the biggest card pool ever for a format TPCi officially supports. If you enjoy deckbuilding with almost no restrictions, Expanded offers basically an infinite amount of creativity and content. Sadly, just like any other format in other card games that involves a giant card pool, Expanded has created some unhealthy interaction across the years which can sometimes make it hard to play on the Expanded ladder. Facing the notorious Latios donk that tries to beat you by going first and knocking out your only basic Pokémon has become more and more popular on the ladder by people trying to get through the versus rewards quickly. Similar to this, there’s also a 霍奇克罗 Gx attack with the goal to take away your playable cards with the very fitting attack called Unfair GX and afterward removes your energies with Team Flare Grunt and Crushing Hammer to prevent you from playing the game. If you can look past these two pokemon online decks and the occasional Arceus & Dialga & Palkia GX with Zacian V, Expanded offers a lot of creativity and unique decks.

The last legitimate ladder option (if we ignore the theme deck ladder that doesn’t really offer a lot of variety) is the 遗产阶梯. Legacy refers to the format the includes all sets from Heartgold & Soulsilver up to Black & White Legendary Treasures. For players that previously only played standard, this format will feel very different. One of the major issues of Legacy is that it’s very expensive to play the real good decks, and even some of the staples like Smeragle from Undaunted go for about 30 packs. One very cheap deck (that doesn’t involve playing a control/lock deck) is Weavil/Exeggcute, which doesn’t use a lot of really expensive cards.

4 貂眼 dex 62

4 斯内塞尔 UD 68

4 维维尔 PLF 66

4 可可西里 PLF 4

1 Mime 先生 PLF 47

 

1 切换 HS 102

1 计算机搜索 BCR 137

4大木博士的新理论 HS 101

2 超级钓竿 NVI 95

1 失落移除者 CL 80

1 神奇宝贝逆转 HS 99

1 银手镯 PLB 88

4 暗斑 DEX 93

4 超级球 FCO 113

2 随机接收器 DEX 99

4 Juniper 教授 BLW 101

1 工具 Scrapper DRX 116

4 水平球 NXD 89

4 垃圾臂 TM 87

 

9 黑暗能量 能量 7

 

The 指挥官格式 is a custom format for Pokémon that people have come up with during the pandemic. The rules might seem a little much at first, but once you get the hang of it, it’s actually pretty easy to understand. The format is a singleton format, which means that you’re only allowed to have one copy of a card in your deck, including cards like Prof. Juniper and Prof. Research, Lysandre, and Bosse’s Orders as Prof. Oaks New Theory and Cynthia. Besides the Cynthia Oak one, you wouldn’t be able to use both cards in the same deck on PTCGO anyways, the last one is to be kept in mind, though, since that ruling isn’t put into PTCGO. The biggest difference for the Commander singleton compared to a regular singleton is that you are allowed to play four Pokémon with the same name, as long as it’s not the same cards or a reprint. For example, you’d be able to run Charmander from Vivid Voltage, Detective Pikachu, Team Up, and Burning Shadows, the same goes for Charmeleon and Charizard.

The next thing to keep in mind for deckbuilding is the choice of a “Commander” and a “Captain”. Every deck gets the choice of one Commander Pokémon, which is either an EX, GX or V Pokémon. Most tournaments exclude Tag Teams, VMAX, and Megas from the choice of Commanders. The captain is a Prism Star or Amazing Rare, both of which also aren’t allowed outside of this special rule. Those are basically the “standard” rules for Pokémon Commander tournaments, but considering the massive card pool of PTCGO, which potentially unhealthy, unfun, or game-breaking combinations of cards, most of them include a banned list, so keep an eye out for that. Ultra beasts and Pokémon with Ancient Traits are also often taken off the list of available cards as a whole. 

I’ve personally really enjoyed 甲贺忍蛙 in that format, this is the most recent list:

1Froakie BKP 38

1Froakie FLI 21

1Froakie FLI 22

1froakie unb 51

1 青蛙 XY 40

1 蛙人 BKP 39

1 蛙人 FLI 23

1 蛙人 UNB 52

1 甲贺忍蛙 PR-XY 162

1 甲贺忍蛙 XY 41

1 甲贺忍蛙 BKP 40

1 甲贺忍蛙 DET 9

1 greninja 打破 bkp 41

1 星光大道 BKP 25

1 星辰之刃 EVO 31

1 百变怪棱镜之星批次 154

1Espeon-EX BKP 52

1索尼娅·卡普65

1 沃利 GEN RC27

1 斯凯拉 RCL 166

1大木博士的新理论 CL 83

1泰特与丽莎 CES 148

1请回复118

1 队友 PRC 141

1 古兹玛巴士 115

1 双胞胎 TM 89

1 北领地外交部 105

1玛妮 CPA 56

1 Boss's Orders RCL 154

1 神奇宝贝饲养员的培育 DAA 166

1 计算机搜索 BCR 137

1 救援担架 GRI 130

1 进化香 SSH 163

1 普通杆 SSH 171

1 超级钓竿 BKT 149

1 巢球总数 123

1 快速球 SSH 179

1 伊芙苏打 GEN 62

1 超级球类 SLG 68

1 稀有糖果 SSH 180

1 潜水球 PRC 125

1 重复球 PRC 136

1 对阵 PHF 找球手 109

1 等级球 AOR 76

1 垃圾臂 TM 87

1 教授的信 BKT 146

1 肌肉带 XY 121

1 布鲁克利特希尔 GRI 120

1 波涛汹涌的大海 PRC 137

1 训练场 RCL 169

 

9 水能 3

1 飞溅能量 BKP 113

 

The Gym Leader format (or short GLC) was very recently invented and popularized by Andrew Mahone from the YouTube and Twitch channel TrickyGym. This unique format has the player choose one specific typing that they become the “Gym leader” of. Much like the Commander format, this format is a singleton format that takes away all Rule Box Pokémon, but this time you have no extra ruling that allows the player to use any of them. You also won’t get to pick multiple copies of the same Pokémon, which makes deckbuilding very different from the Commander format because you usually have to focus much more around your strategy as a whole compared to Commander, where your strategy mostly builds around your Commander of choice and the Pokémon that support it. You also have to keep in mind that the GLC uses the Expanded card pool from Black & White onwards, instead of every card available on PTCGO, but (besides the obvious restriction of Rule Box Pokémon) doesn’t ban any specific card, making you completely free to choose any card you want.

我认为这两种格式并没有哪一种特别好或比另一种更有趣，因为它们都有独特的方式，所以我绝对鼓励你尝试一下这两种格式，因为你很可能会喜欢它们。

There are a bunch of types/archetypes that are considered good, and I’ve been liking Psychic a lot recently because you get two really good type-specific search cards in Fog Crystal and Mysterious Treasure, as well as a broken Stadium in Dimension Valley.

1 布莱塞法隆 CEC 104

1 代欧奇希斯 CES 67

1 达斯库尔 CEC 83

1 伽勒尔地区急冻鸟 EVS 63

1 骑拉帝纳地块 97

1 Hoopa STS 51

1 因凯 FLI 50

1 瓦斯弹 UNB 73

1 Marshadow SLG 45

1 喵喵 UNB 76

1 Tapu Lele PR-SM 45

1 沃布菲特 PHF 36

1 杜斯克洛普斯巴士 52

1 马拉马尔 FLI 51

1 杂草丛生的 UNB 74

1 黄昏黑 BCR 63

 

1 救援担架巴士 165

1 肌肉带 XY 121

1 神秘宝藏 FLI 113

1 球手 SHF 57

1 辛西娅和凯特琳 CEC 228

1索尼娅 RCL 192

1 Juniper PLF 教授 116

1 进化香 SSH 163

1 普通杆 SSH 171

1 露莎米奈 UPR 153

1 维度谷 phf 93

1 莱桑德尔的王牌 PHF 118

1 玛妮·SSH 200

1请回复135

1 硬魔法 XY 119

1 巢球总数 123

1 超级球 SUM 161

1 战斗压缩机队照明弹装备 PHF 92

1 辛西娅·普尔 119

1 队友 PRC 141

1 Boss's Orders RCL 189

1 古兹玛巴士 115

1 气球 SSH 156

1 水平球 BST 129

1 浮石 PLF 99

1 舀取净 RCL 165

1 布里吉特 BKT 161

1 北非地区 101

1 平行城市 BKT 145

1 雾晶 CRE 140

1 快速球 SSH 216

1 对阵 PHF 找球手 109

 

11 心灵能量 SWSHEnergy 5

1 恐怖心灵能量 RCL 172

 

 

My personal favorite to do when the Standard format is particularly interesting is taking a look at older formats to not only see how Pokémon has changed across all those years, but also to revisit some formats that I’ve personally played years ago when I wasn’t able to fully appreciate them, or simply wasn’t good enough yet to be able to play them properly. Especially recently, I’ve been talking a lot to my friend Robin Schulz, who a lot of you might know as the 2018 World Champion, about formats in the XY-bock, mainly because he’s a very big fan of Seismitoad EX and Giratina EX and I really enjoyed the Greninja BREAK deck, all of those cards, of course, being from XY sets. When irl tournament first stopped, I also played a bunch of ex-series tournaments organized by Jason Klaczynski, giving me the first proper look at that format because I previously was only familiar with decks that were really popular back then, such as LBS (Lugia, Blastoise, Steelix), RaiEggs (Raichu, Exeggutor) and FlAriados (Flareon, Ariados). 

One really big issue with older formats is that they’re really gatekept by the possibilities you have to actually play them. Anything pre Heartgold & Soulsilver doesn’t even exist on PTCGO, and thanks to the lack of custom starting rules, it’s not even possible to play any format after Sword & Shield properly, since that’s when he Turn one Supporter rule was changed and therefore made any previous format (even those that are barely one year ago) unplayable unless you resort to alternatives like both players passing their first Turn to make the starting player able to use Supporter cards. This is definitely better than not being able to play old formats at all, but in my opinion takes away from the experience, which is why I’m personally not the biggest fan of “pass, pass”.

There are a couple of unofficial ways to play old formats, but I would really hope that Pokémon realizes how much players appreciate older formats and make at least some of them available in Pokémon Trading Card Game Online, or Pokémon TCG Live (which, at the moment of writing this article, we still don’t know what exactly it is). At the end of the day, playing Irl (with proxies or real cards) is obviously the best way to play old formats, but a lot of people don’t have the possibility, especially due to current restrictions all around the world. Some communities have also started having Webcam tournaments via Discord, which is a really cool way to replace in-person playing, especially because it lets you play against players around the world.

I think the Pokémon TCG offers a lot of amazing ways to take part in the game, even if the current Stanard isn’t enjoyable for you or simply if you’re waiting for a new set release or the rotation. My personal top choice is always going to be old formats because I really enjoy taking a look at the history of the game and how different it felt in other formats, which is why this is definitely my biggest wish for Pokémon TCG Live to be able to play them online on an official simulator. For newer players that look for something that doesn’t require learning a lot of new cards and that doesn’t have the biggest card pool with expensive cards on PTCGO, I highly suggest to play the GLC format. Currently, there are a lot of people interested in it and even some unofficial tournaments online. If you are looking to buy some PTCGO codes, you are in the right spot. PTCGO Store is having a large assortment of Pokémon TCG online codes and an instant delivery of your PTCGO codes directly to your email. Thanks for reading!