Pokemon has release their TCG Quarterly Announcement and it has some banned cards!
The TCG Quarterly Announcement was released today by Pokemon and it had changes that will effect players. The Standard format will stay the same but the Expanded format will be seeing some big changes. These big changes includes the banning of Forest of Giant Plants and Archeops (Black & White—Noble Victories)!
The first of the banning was Forest of Giant Plants which allowed players to evolve their Grass Pokemon right away. Below is what Pokemon had to say about the banning of this card.
The Forest of Giant Plants Stadium card enables many dangerous strategies with Grass-type Pokémon in the Expanded format. These strategies can range from locking down the opponent’s options to winning the game on the first turn, and all of them can happen before the opponent ever gets a chance to play. No single strategy was powerful enough to ban this Stadium card, but so many of them existing at the same time gave sufficient cause to ban it.
Forest of Giant Plants was going to be rotated to Expanded along with Vileplume from Ancient Origins this September. This Stadium would allow cards like Vileplume, Shiftry (Next Destinies) and Decidueye GX have a strong hold of the meta. These three cards could abuse Forest of Giant Plants where the other player could not retaliate. Because of that, it was decided to banned Forest of Giant Plants in order to maintain a healthy playing environment.
The other card that was banned today was Archeops from Noble Victories. This card has the ability called Ancient Power which prevents your opponent from evolving Pokemon from their hand. Below is what Pokemon had to say about the banning.
The existence of Archeops’s Ancient Power Ability has a very negative effect on decks that rely on evolved Pokémon. There are ways to combat it—Hex Maniac, Evosoda, or Wobbuffet are a few examples—but decks that focus on evolved Pokémon are forced to use these cards just to evolve their Pokémon. The combination of Maxie’s Hidden Ball Trick with Archeops can stop Evolution before the opponent ever gets a chance to evolve their Pokémon, which limits the number of viable strategies. Removing a different part of the combo (Maxie’s Hidden Ball Trick or Battle Compressor was also considered, but banning Archeops impacted existing strategies the least, so that was the route that made the most sense.
Archeops has been in the game for a long time. In Expanded, it pairs up with Maxie’s Hidden Ball Trick. This will allow Archeops to get on the field without evolving or using the Fossil mechanic. Though, the game is moving towards a more evolution heavy format. So cards like Archeops could be used to discourage players from using strategies that involves evolving Pokemon. It is because of this that Pokemon decided to ban Archeops.
Shiftry from Next Destines was unbanned. The ban was lifted because Forest of Giant Plants was banned. Shitry had combo with Forest of Giant Plants which was the reason why Shiftry was banned in the first place. Now that there are other Grass type Pokemon that could abuse Forest of Giant Plants, it was decided to ban the Stadium. Now that Forest of Giant Plants has been banned, Shiftry can be used as to how it was intended.
The bans on these cards will go into effect on August 18th.
Source: Pokemon
