Taking a Break From the Meta Game

I’d like to first off note that you probably haven’t seen me around the Front Page area of the site yet. Well it’s because you haven’t and this will be my first article for the site. They say first impression are important so hopefully I leave you guys here today with a good one. I’d like to thank Adam for giving me a chance to show my ideas to you all.

Normally when you come here to 6 Prizes, you’re coming to find articles on the top news and strategies in the Pokémon TCG Competitive play style. But we all know every now and then it’s great to just kick back and play a casual game. And even better at times to add our own fun rules. And fun new rules are sometimes hard to come across. But maybe today I can help you out.

While at my local League, I was introduced to a new way to play the Pokémon TCG. I have myself named this style “Future Sight”. (Because I like to pretend there is a Psychic Pokémon off to the side of the battle blasting off Future Sights.)

pokebeach.com
I usually like to imagine this little guy hovering over the battle raining shots up from above.

The rules are simple yet fun and include a bit of luck and chance. I’ll try to break it down for you and then show an example. Hopefully my explanation is clear enough.

  1. You start the game like normal, setting your starting Pokémon face down and putting up your prizes.
  2. Before you flip, roll a dice. This number decides the turn when Future Sight will hit.
  3. Play the game as normal until the turn on the dice comes.
  4. At the start of that turn, roll the dice again. Take the number you roll times 10. Whoever is playing on that turn takes that much damage to their active Pokémon.
  5. Then roll the dice again to see how many more turns will go before Future Sight hits again, continue your turn like normal.

Now I will give you an example of the game I played. At the start we rolled the dice. It hit 5. So on turn 5, Future Sight will hit. I was first (Turn 1) and I attached an energy and attacked. Now it was my opponents turn. (Turn 2) He attached an energy and played a supporter. We played on like normal. Then turn 5 came. It happened to be my move. I rolled the dice and hit a 6, which did 60 damage, KOing my active Pokémon. Then I rolled the dice again, 4, so in 4 more turns, someone would be hit again. I put a Pokémon in the active slot off the bench and continued like normal.

That was just a short example I pulled from my memory. Now some of you may ask what the point of the game is besides just giving your opponent a chance to win off luck of the Future Sight. The way I see, the game forces you to think ahead and plan. Your Pokémon in the active slot that your focusing on as your main attacker, could easily be taken down by the combination of your opponent’s attacks and a hard hit from Future Sight in a few turns.

While veteran players are already in the habit of setting up another Pokémon on the bench to be ready, I remember myself as a new player only setting up my main Pokémon, and then being stuck with a weak bench once it was taken out. I feel that the game could be a nice tool to help teach newer players the value of having more than one plan set in mind to win the game.

It also takes some of the predictability out of the game. Playing a bad match up your deck always loses again? You might get a lucky role and take down your opponent’s Pokémon, leaving them out of options to use against your times two weakness to their decks focus type. Sure you got the win by chance with a modified rule set, but a win is a win to me!

Hopefully you get the game idea, if not, feel free to ask questions in the comments. Also your feedback is always nice. At first the idea seemed stupid to me but after playing a few games, I found it to be a fun & challenging twist on the game. I’m always looking to find out more variations on the game to change things up. With states looming ahead, the tireless play testing can get pretty stale sometimes.

So feel free to send me a message or contact me in any way with your fun rule variations, I’d love to hear them. And with states just around the corner I wish you all the best of luck, may Arceus give you strength. Don’t forget to keep coming back here to get your strategic help for the metagame and check out other peoples States reports. Why not submit your own as well? It’s always great to see reports from all over in the forums to see how people are playing all over.

Until next time guys. Thanks for reading

Reader Interactions

9 replies

  1. Anonymous

    See, I’d say it is Alakazam 4 Lv. X blasting off those attacks. Poor guy had the unfortunate luck to be in RR, and therefore ignored by all his would-be friends in favor of shiny cats and monkeys. And water weasels even get more love than this sage guy. In fact, I always saw Alakazam 4 as having the forever alone face. So he rains death from above to feel like he’s important. And then it finally gives you something to do with all those extra worthless Alakazam cards we all pulled.

    *Opens RR booster*
    “OMG A LEVEL X!!!!!!”
    “Eh, just another crappy alakazam, nevermind.”

  2. Anonymous

    I really enjoy hearing about some of these alternate game modes, kudos to you!

  3. Tyler Odom

    How about whenever a Player plays a card that allows them to search their decks, the opposing player gets to pick the card… >.>

  4. AndrewV

    I like this idea. My cousins and I once developed a way to have a “double battle” by using 2 decks against 2 decks and that was always fun. I like ideas like this, they’re fun when people are getting tired of the regular game.

    • Derek Coontz  → AndrewV

      That’s actually funny to hear because we did a “Double Battle” day at League as well just last Wednesday!

  5. Joshua Hall

    Sounds like a great idea, as you’ll know whether it’s you or your opponent it will hit, and you can plan accordingly, hoping a pluspower doesn’t turn into an expert belt plus 4 bat drops. Gotta try this sometime :)

  6. Jonah Davids

    Can Fainting spell from Gengar SF kill the future sight?

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