Now that the Fairy Type has been announced for Pokemon X and Y, there are going to be wondering if this will also affect the trading card game. Can the metagame handling another type to join after recently welcoming the Dragon type?
Until late last year, the TCG hasn’t had a new type introduce since Darkness and Metal Pokemon introduction in 2000. When a new type was introduce last year, it was the Dragon type after many generations of Dragon Type Pokemon being added to the franchise. Before the Dragon type was introduce to the TCG, all Dragon Pokemon were classified as part of the Normal type with weakness to itself. Imagine seeing a Salamance ready to attack only to get knocked out by a Pidgey hitting it for weakness.
Now, Dragon types exist in the TCG. What affects did it have?
Not very much actually. The only type that can hit Dragons for weakness is Dragon itself and unlike when Darkness and Metal were introduce, there was no new energy type introduce. Instead, it was decided to make Dragon types use a combination of Energy types in order to use their attacks. The only Dragon Pokemon that get any use is Rayquaza EX and Black Kyurem EX. No other Pokemon were given weakness to them which means you have to depend on them to do heavy damage. The TCG were able to translate their weakness into the metagame but failed to incorporate the resistances they boost from the video game.
How does this relate to the Fairy Type?
This could mean that the Fairy Type would have to a similar introduction. It looks as if the Dragon Type was introduce into the TCG in the most subtle way in order to not disrupt the metagame. When you look back on Darkness and Metal, they were hitting only “Subtypes” within the TCG metagame for weakness. Darkness as of right now can only hit Pokemon who we would consider Ghost but are classified as Psychic types for weakness. Metal can only hit Pokemon we would consider Ice that are classified as Water Pokemon for weakness. The only types that Fairy can hit for super effective at the time of this article is Dragon but currently they already have a weakness within the TCG metagame. In order for them to be splashable within the TCG, they would need to give Dragon a new weakness or not allow Fairy to hit anything for weakness while making them weak to what may end up being Metal. Ice is rumored to be weak against Fairy but as mention before, they are weak to Metal.
What can the Fairy type do to help stand out within the TCG? As mention before, they could be a Pokemon that hits nothing for weakness. That may sound bad on paper when you have a game that relies on hitting heavy Pokemon for weakness. In order to make up for that, the Fairy type could simply be given interesting abilities or have attacks that hit hard. They could be given no weakness as well which would make them harder to knock out.
Fairy Type has not been announced to be a new type within the TCG at this moment but it would be surprising that they will not make it one. They spent months hyping up the type within the video game and it would be disappointing if Sylveon was simply regulated to some other type. XY is going to bring a lot of new cards into the format. New types have never made a big splash when it came to affecting the previous types and I don’t expect Fairy types to do the same. Instead we may see a few decks built around them with a central card being the leader. This will mirror the introduction of the Dragon type.
So expect the Fairy Type to be an interesting introduction to the TCG once it is announced. It won’t take long to see if it will break the metagame but expect it to be given a lot of hype for the XY TCG once Worlds competition passes.
