Tabletop Game / Pokémon Trading Card Game

aka: Pokemon

Gotta collect them all!

A Collectible Card Game based on the popular Pokémon franchise. Recursively, the card game itself became a pair of video games, of which only one left Japan. Really likes making people flip coins.

The starting game play is simple: the players draw their hands, and then set aside 6 cards to be "Prize Cards" of which the player can take one whenever they Knock Out an opponent's Pokémon, winning when they claim all six. The players then play any Pokémon they have (redrawing if they don't have any) and the game officially begins. In a given turn, the players can add Pokémon to their bench (up to 5), evolve their Pokémon (although they can only evolve one stage per turn), play Trainer cards that have various benefits, add an Energy card to one of their Pokémon, retreat their active Pokémon for one in the bench, or attack with their active Pokémon.

The game relies heavily on "Energy Cards", 9 (initially 6, later 8) cards representing the different Pokémon types (though there is an 11th Dragon-type with no Energy equivalent outside of Roaring Skies' Double Dragon Energy card, and the much earlier Colorless energy which has no Basic energy card, but serves as a "Wild Card", being fulfilled with the other energy types, as well as having the oft-reprinted Double Colorless Energy card), and the only cards the player is allowed to have more than four copies of in a deck. In general, a Pokémon of a specific type will have attacks that require Energy of that type, although some do have "Colorless" energy requirements, which can be fulfilled by any of the 11 types. Because the player is limited to only playing one Energy Card per turn, it's important for them to manage their energy distribution wisely, as a benched Pokémon that already has energy on it will be able to start fighting much quicker than one that doesn't. Stronger attacks will require more energy, with the strongest attacks requiring the player to remove one or all of the Pokémon's attached energy, limiting their use. Pokémon also have retreat costs, the number of energy cards that must be removed in order to switch out for a Pokémon in the bench, which is also (usually) proportional to the Pokémon's power.

Can also be played online, though there's software to download first. Physical booster packs and decks now come with a digital code that allows players to redeem them in the online version.

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This series provides examples of:

• Adaptational Badass: Certain Pokémon are much more powerful as cards than they are in the contemporary games.
  • Scyther and Hitmonchan in the generation I games were both terrible Pokémon — Scyther suffered from a lack of any powerful Bug- or Flying-type moves to properly use its high attack and speed, while Hitmonchan was a slow, frail Fighting-type in a game where Psychic was one of the best types. Meanwhile, in the TCG, both of them were an integral part of the Haymaker deck. Scyther's free retreat cost and Fighting resistance made it flexible to use, while it could deal consistent damage with Slash; meanwhile, Hitmonchan could hit for 20 damage from turn 1 with its Jab, hit harder with Special Punch later on, and take out Lightning and Colorless Pokémon.
  • Unown VSTAR is on par with the other Pokémon VSTAR in terms of power, with a powerful VSTAR Power that lets it change the weakness of all your opponent's Pokémon to Psychic as long as it's in play — a far cry from the Joke Character Unown is in the games. Other Unown cards are more of a downplayed example, with their unique abilities occasionally seeing some use in decks built around them, but generally being gimmicky at best.
  • Sneasel, when it was first introduced in generation II, was a fairly weak Pokémon due to there being no physical Dark- or Ice-type attacks, forcing it to go without STAB. In the TCG, however, Sneasel was so overwhelmingly powerful as part of the Beat Up archetype that it became the first Pokémon card to get banned outright.
  • Delcatty was an integral part of the Infercatty deck archetype, which achieved good success in competitive play until its counters became more prevalent. Its regular form was able to quickly gain the energy needed to power Infernape's Flare Blitz, while its ex form was able to recycle that energy and discard cards to fuel Infernape LV.X's Flare Up Finishing Move. Contrast this to the video games, where Delcatty is one of the weakest fully-evolved Pokémon out there and isn't even functional as a Support Party Member.
  • Wailord has been a fairly weak Pokémon since its inception, since its other stats are quite low to balance out its gigantic HP stat. In the TCG, though, defensive stats aren't a thing and bulk is purely decided by HP, so most Wailord cards take serious effort to knock out. Some decks even rely on Wailord cards with the highest HP stats, such as Wailord EX or Magikarp & Wailord GX, to soak up damage and stall out the opponent.
  • Zigzagged by Regigigas. Some of its cards, like its initial Legends Awakened print, attempt to recreate its crippling Slow Start ability. Others, however, such as Regigigas V, give the Colossal Pokémon a break and allow it to use its legendary-level power without any drawbacks, or with different caveats that are easier to play around.
• Adaptational Wimp:
  • Charizard is an odd mixture of this trope and Adaptational Badass, especially in older sets. While Charizard is fairly strong in the video games, most Charizard cards have been hard to use due to having some form of crippling drawback such as Fire Spin from Base Set requiring four Fire Energy cards and having the player discard two every time they attack, despite their high HP and powerful attacks. Charizard cards that have been released starting in the late SM era have less restrictive costs and effects, with many of them finding notable competitive success.
  • Legendary Pokémon cards are often still powerful, but because they’re basic Pokémon, they often have inferior HP and damage to evolved Pokémon they could easily crush in the video games. This is most prevalent in the early sets, with Mewtwo being a good example — it’s the most powerful Pokémon in Red and Blue, with incredible power, speed, and bulk, but its Base Set incarnation had only 60 HP and was mostly used to stall with its Barrier attack.
• Anti-Frustration Features: The online game gives players an unlimited amount of Basic Energy so that players won't be barred from using their favorite cards by a lack of Energy.
• The Artifact: Pokémon Powers, due to pre-dating abilities, maintained their original name for years before being split into Poké-Powers and Poké-Bodies in Generation III and finally being renamed to a consistent "abilities" in the first Black and White set, almost nine years after their introduction!
• Ascended Meme: PTCGO gave players six free copies of Ancient Origins Magikarp, despite the game only letting you have four copies of any card in your deck other than basic Energy, likely as a nod to the Fishermen with teams of six Magikarp in the main series games.
• Alone Among Families: Card art of the Pokémon Cubone often showcases the Pokémon's orphaned state, such as an image of one alone on a bench while, in the background, several happy human families are shown enjoying their time together.
• Armored But Frail:
  • Jungle Mr. Mime has only 40 HP, less than even some first-stage basic Pokémon at the time, but its Invisible Wall Pokémon Power makes it impervious to attacks that deal more than 20 damage.
  • Fossil Kabuto has a Pokémon Power which lets it take half damage from attacks, stretching out its mere 30 HP. Strangely, its evolved form Kabutops has only 60 HP and lacks this power, so it's even frailer than its basic form.
  • Shedinja cards tend to exemplify this trope. EX Dragon Shedinja is a good example — it's shielded from attacks performed by evolved Pokémon, but with only 30 HP, basic Pokémon will have no trouble quickly taking it out.
• Awesome, but Impractical:
  • There are several "huge" cards that are as big as a book, or are made of 4 regular cards. You cannot play these cards, but often, their stats are so awesome you wish you could.
  • Cards with large numbers printed on it tend to fetch high prices among collectors, even though most of these cards have large downsides due to Competitive Balance. Chansey from the Base Set is like this (though at least it had some value as a Damage Sponge for stall decks), sharing Charizard's then-high HP, as well as most Wailord cards.
  • Charizard has traditionally been like this, with high HP and attacks that cause enormous damage (in the 100-300 range) but are way too slow to set up and usually have crippling drawbacks. However, Charizard cards tend to fetch high prices (despite their low competitive value) due to the big lizard's popularity combined with the "wow" factor of its damage output. A running joke in the community is that any new Charizard card is bound to be an unplayable "collector card" rather than one that can be used to good effect in battle. This is subverted with Charizard released after Generation VII as some have seen a degree of tournament success.
  • The Pokémon Trading Card Game Fossil Expansion Player's Guide has a deck called Ferocious Commons, which tosses Base Set Rattata, Staryu and Machop into a deck for a Zerg Rush strategy. Running a deck with all common Pokémon that can hold its own is undeniably cool, but the Pokémon TCG is not the right sort of trading card game for this strategy to be effective, since only one Pokémon on each side can attack at a time. All three cards also have very low health points and attacks that only deal 20 damage — and the two most popular decks at the time, Haymaker and Rain Dance, had Pokémon with high HP and damage, leading to very fast knockouts. The deck tries to get around this with a variety of Trainer cards like Bill and Gust of Wind, but it still doesn't make up for the very weak Pokémon.
  • Another deck from that guide is Monster Swap with the strategy of using Mr. Mime and Onix to block against high and low-damage attacks (with the aid of Dodrio's Retreat Aid) and not realizing that the opponent could swap out their own Pokémon or use Gust of Wind to take down Mr. Mime and Onix with the opposite Pokémon (low-damage for Mr. Mime, high-damage for Onix).
  • Some cards have the effect of healing all of your Pokémon, but each of them has a drawback. Undaunted Togekiss is a Stage 2 (which means the player has to have evolved it twice from Basic Pokémon and then a Stage 1) and requires the player to shuffle the Pokémon and all cards attached to it into your deck. Dragon Majesty's Altaria-GX is a Stage 1 evolution and uses your possible GX Attack for the game. Quad Stone, finally, requires you to play 4 copies at once. Needless to say, it's easier to use cards like Max Potion or Rough Seas if you're in need of lots of healing.
  • EX Mega Evolutions were this in general; they have high HP and strong attacks, but the player's turn ends when they evolve and some have difficult Energy requirements for their attacks, sometimes paired with insane drawbacks. Both of Charizard's Mega Evolutions are textbook examples. Because they (unsurprisingly) have attacks that deal 300 damage, some have noted that their unplayability prevents their price from shooting through the roof on the secondary market. The Pokémon Company seemed to have noticed that last one, hence why as of Phantom Forces, they started to print Tools called Spirit Links which allow EX to Mega Evolve without needing to skip a turn. The only drawback is the inability to put a different Tool on the Pokémon (unless you remove the Link afterwards, or have Theta Double like Mega Tyranitar EX). On top of that, Mega Pokémon started to receive more efficient attacks in terms of energy costs, and thus they skyrocketed to competitive relevance almost immediately.
  • Rayquaza VMAX. When set up properly, you have a very powerful and consistent all-in-one draw engine and beatstick with no weakness... emphasis on when. The Pokémon is ultimately too slow and inconsistent to set up properly, requiring the Dragon-type standard of two different Energy types as well as multiple evolutions (for both itself and the Flaaffy used for energy acceleration), and the speed of the format it's in means the player needs to get very lucky and set up quickly or else they lose the game. Additionally, some Basic Pokémon V^note meaning they don't need to evolve to reach their full potential released in subsequent sets do Rayquaza's beatstick job but better, such as Raichu V and Garchomp V^note both deal slightly less damage, but are more versatile overall.
• Backbench-Hitting Attack: Some moves are able to deal damage to Pokémon that are on the Bench, which sometimes affect multiple Pokémon at once. Dealing damage to a Pokémon on the Bench that exceeds its max HP causes them to be Knocked Out and allows the Attacking Pokémon's player to take 1-3 Prize cards the same way Knocking Out an Active Pokémon would.
• Beat Them at Their Own Element: Many older Psychic Pokémon have Psychic as a type weakness. As a result, whichever Active Pokemon gets Knocked Out first essentially boils down to who manages to do more damage with their attacks.
• Bilingual Bonus: Of the accidental variety: some English-language error packs of the Vivid Voltage expansion contained unreleased cards from the 2021 McDonald's Happy Meal promotion... in French.
• "Blind Idiot" Translation: The Pokémon Trading Card Game Fossil Expansion Player's Guide translates cards from the Gym Heroes, Gym Challenge and Team Rocket based off the artwork rather than the names. For instance Blaine's Quiz 3 is called Blaine's Stare and Misty's Duel is translated as Misty's Peace due to the author thinking that Misty was giving the peace sign instead of doing the Scissors sign. Misty's Wish also doesn't have its effect listed.
• Boring, but Practical:
  • Base Set Ninetales could put out 50% more damage per turn, took one evolution instead of two, still had respectable HP, didn't have a ridiculous retreat cost, fit into the same types of decks, and... wasn't a flying, fire-breathing dragon like the most infamous card from the set.
  • In general, Colorless Pokémon qualify. They often lack flashy effects and usually are a bit lacking in power, but can use any kind of Energy for their attacks, allowing you to splash them into any deck if needed. Of note is Rayquaza's cards in particular; while it often gets very powerful Dragon-type cards as a selling point for expansions it's in, the most successful Rayquaza card of all time (within its format) is the Colorless-type Mega Rayquaza-EX.
• Bowdlerize:
  • Some of the attack names are Bowdlerized; for example, God Blast was changed to Supreme Blast, Death Sentence was changed to Fainting Spell, and, rather cleverly, Goddamn Punch was changed to Profane Punch.
  • "Misty's Tears" was completely redesigned outside of Japan because the original, "Kasumi's Tears", featured Misty nude (and the fact the artwork didn't have her crying).
  • "Sabrina's Gaze" was also redesigned, as the original illustration featured her doing a gesture that could be easily misinterpreted as flipping the bird.
• The Bus Came Back: The Dragon type was absent throughout some of the Sword and Shield era. Given that the Fairy-type was merged into Psychic, many assumed that it would be merged back into Colorless. However, it was revealed that the type would return in the Evolving Skies set, this time with no Weakness or Resistance.
• Canon Immigrant:
  • Flail, Destiny Bond, Rain Dance, and Nightmare started out in the TCG before appearing in the second generation. However, TCG Nightmare is only similar in an "affects sleeping targets only" clause with game Nightmare. Focus Blast is another move from the TCG which later appeared in the games, though not until the fourth generation. Many other moves are introduced in the TCG before appearing in the games, such as Raging Bull and Make It Rain (originally "Gold Rush" in Japanese).
  • After items gained actual appearances in FireRed and LeafGreen, they all (bar TMs) appear as they did in the TCG.
  • The crazy useful "dash" on the overworld debuted in the GBC game before it appeared in generation 3.
  • The "Pokémon Power" mechanic, which was around since the card game started, is extremely similar to the Ability mechanic the games introduced in their third generation.
  • And in a case of reversal, starting with the Black and White expansion, PokéPowers and PokéBodies were thrown out and replaced with Abilities.
• Card Cycling: Playing "Professor's Research" makes its player discard their entire hand and draw seven new cards as a replacement.
• Cloud Cuckoolander:
  • Imakuni? is an extremely weird guy — best illustated by the Game Boy Color game, where he dances around the clubs at random, asks kids whether he or Pikachu is cuter, and threatens to make you dance with him if you lose. And yes, the question mark is part of his name.
  • As well as some card illustrations. Search "Pokémon Picasso Touch," and you'll be confused... Very, very confused.
• Color-Coded Elements: The game simplifies the elemental types from the game series from 18 to 11 by lumping them together by color; Normal/Colorless (including Flying) is white, Fire is red, Water (including Ice) is blue, Grass (including Bug) is green, Electric/Lightning is yellow, Fighting (including Ground and Rock) is brown,^note one of the weirder groupings, which was apparently made with the logic that "Fighting is brown, Ground is brown, and Rock is similar to Ground" Psychic (including Ghost) is purple, Dark/Darkness is black, Steel/Metal is gray, Dragon is gold, and Fairy is pink.
  • Poison types were previously grouped in with Grass types (which made some amount of sense, due to how many Grass/Bug types are also Poison). As of Diamond and Pearl, they were moved into the Psychic category, seemingly under the logic of "Poison and Psychic are both purple." As of Sword and Shield, they are grouped under Darkness (likely due to associating Poison's subterfuge-based nature with the Combat Pragmatism of Dark/Darkness). Fairy also got lumped into Psychic, presumably because there are only 51 Fairy-type Pokémon as of Gen VIII.
• Color-Coded for Your Convenience: At first glance, code cards are practically useless outside of the online games. However, BREAKpoint gave them a hidden secondary purpose: they denote what type of Rare card is in the pack. A code card with a green background means that the pack has a Regular Rare, or at best, a Secret Rare if the set has one. A white code card means that the pack is guaranteed to have either a Holofoil Rare or an Ultra Rare.
• Comeback Mechanic: Several cards, such as Reversal Energy and Counter Catcher, can only be used or become more effective if the opponent has less prize cards; i.e., closer to winning the game.
  • Some Pokémon cards deal more damage and/or has an additional effect if the opponent has less prize cards. Most notably of them are Ultra Beast cards, since all of them has an ability that affects or be affected by Prize cards (though only several fulfills the Comeback part of this trope).
  • The cards N and Reset Stamp makes the opponent (and in the former's case, the user as well) shuffle their hand into their deck and draw cards for each prize card they have remaining, which can cripple the opponent's hand if they are close to winning. The card Iono works similarly to N, except it makes both players shuffle their hands and put them on the bottom of their decks instead.
• Continuity Nod:
  • PTCGO let you give Lance's hairstyle to male avatars and Misty's hairstyle to female ones.
  • There are many cards that reference others through their illustrations.
• Cool Key: As part of her character design, the Ciphermaniac (of the Ciphermaniac's Codebreaking card) wears a necklace upon which hangs a large, ornate key.
• Copy Protection: As with the industry standard, real cards will not be translucent if held up against a light. This is due to a black layer of paper put in-between the sides of the cards. It's more expensive to produce, which is why fake manufacturers don't bother doing it.
• Cute Clumsy Girl: Miriam's Special Illustration Rare card depicts her tripping and dropping a stack of books.
• Darker and Edgier: Compared to other cards, Pokémon Prime makes heavier use of shadows, and gives closeups of Pokémon with them generally looking very serious, or sometimes downright evil.
• Dark Is Evil: The Dark Pokémon cards (introduced in the Team Rocket expansion) have a darker character window, evolution box, and Pokédex box compared to a normal card, and generally look much more intimidating in the art box. Each have different justifications based on the sets they are in:
  • Team Rocket is corrupt and this in turn corrupts the Pokémon they train.
  • Neo Destiny revolves around the potential path a Pokémon can follow depending how they're brought up, in contrast to the Light Pokémon introduced in that set.
• Digital Tabletop Game Adaptation: The game can be played online on Pokémon TCG Live and formely on Pokémon Trading Card Game Online. Some physical products come with codes that can be redeemed for digital cards.
• Distracted by the Shiny: Collectors put a premium on the "holo" cards, allowing the competitive players to easily trade one valuable card with little game utility for multiple (much more useful) Trainer cards.
• Drafting Mechanic: The "Build & Battle Draft format" where four players look at their 23-card Evolution packs (which are kept), and then do a "pick a card and pass it on" closed draft with the booster packs they received.
• Draw Extra Cards: Multiple cards can draw more cards, and their precise effects on card advantage has changed through the lifetime of the game, due to rules and card type changes. Bill for example started as a Trainer Card that allowed the player to draw two cards with no cost, and Trainer Cards don't use up the turn, so if a player had all four allowed copies at once, they could end up drawing 8 cards from Bills alone.
• Early-Bird Cameo: Great Tusk and Iron Treads first appeared in the first Scarlet and Violet set as Pokémon ex, three sets before the Paradox Pokémon officially debuted in the Paradox Rift set with the latter being labeled as Ancient Pokémon or Future Pokémon on their cards.
• Early-Installment Weirdness:
  • The Base Set had the card PlusPower, which was attached to a Pokémon, before Pokémon Tool cards were created. Since it was a Trainer card and not a Pokémon Tool, this created a loophole where PlusPower was not bound by the same rules as a Pokémon Tool card, such as being able to equip more than one of them to the same Pokémon or combining PlusPower's effect with a Pokémon Tool's. PlusPower would continue to be reprinted again and again, making it nearly always relevant in tournament play.
  • Early sets were full of cards that could outright discard Energy cards from the opponent's Pokémon, most notably Poliwrath and Energy Removal. This was found to be such a Game-Breaker that Energy destruction in sets from Generation II and onwards either had drawbacks or relied on chance. On top of that, more Energy accelerators were introduced, which allowed easy access and rapid attachment of Energy cards.
  • Initially, Trainer cards in the western-language versions came in every rarity, but over time, most of them would be classified as Uncommon, with a few Commons out of tradition (though these were sometimes Uncommon anyway) and a few Holo-Rares as collectors' cards.
  • Originally, Pokémon that were considered Poison type in the video games were grouped under Grass type for the TCG (This was represented by the Science Club in the Pokémon Trading Card Game for Game Boy); beginning with the Diamond & Pearl set they would instead be grouped under Psychic, while the Sword & Shield set moved them into Darkness. Also, before Dragon was its own type, Dragon-type Pokémon were considered Colorless, though they still frequently used the type's gimmick of relying on multiple Energy types to attack. Fairy type was introduced as its own type in the XY sets before being folded into Psychic in Sword & Shield.
  • When the Darkness and Metal Energy types were first introduced, they were only printed as Special Energy cards. Thus, a player could only have four of them in a deck, limiting the ability of players to use Pokémon that used those energy types. Later sets, starting with Diamond & Pearl, would include basic energy versions of those types with the XY sets introducing Basic Fairy-type energy straight away.
  • During Generations I-IV, many Water-type Pokémon had "Water Gun", "Hydro Pump" or "Hyper Pump" which allowed you to attach more energy cards to the Pokémon to power the attack up, but only up to 2 extra energy cards could be attached this way. Starting in Generation V, this was dropped and the player can attach as many extra energy cards as they like.
• Extra Turn:
  • In the Generation I era, this is what playing Bill amounted to. You drew 2 cards upon playing him, essentially turning your one draw for the turn into two and giving you twice as many cards to work with. As such, this eventually led to most cards with this effect being labeled as Supporters, so you can only play one per turn.
  • Two GX Pokémon cards, Dialga-GX and Togepi & Cleffa & Igglybuff-GX, have Time Walk's effect from Magic: The Gathering for their GX attacks in that you skip your opponent's next turn, with the text even saying "Take another turn after this one. (Skip the between-turns step)".
  • This is also present in Origin Forme Dialga VSTAR's "Star Chronos" VSTAR Power attack, which lets you take another turn; and Medicham V's Yoga Loop attack, which puts two damage counters on 1 of your opponent's Pokémon and allows you to go again if that Pokémon ends up Knocked Out (note that you can't use Yoga Loop in succession).
• Eye-Dentity Giveaway: One of the expansions includes cards of Ditto mimicking various Pokémon. They all have in common Ditto's wide mouth and dotty eyes, being based off the anime where Duplica's Ditto in its first appearance could not fully set its face to the correct one when Transforming.
• Fake Ultimate Mook: There are several cards that have intimidating art, huge HP, and powerful attacks, but are Awesome, but Impractical due to high energy costs and steep drawbacks to using them. The textbook example is the iconic Base Set Charizard — it has the highest stats of any card in the Base Set, with 120 HP and an attack that can One-Hit KO many lesser Pokémon, but its attack costs a whopping 4 energy to use, and 2 of those energy cards have to be discarded after each hit. Later Charizard cards aren't immune to this either, even with heavy Power Creep in play.
• First-Player Advantage Mitigation: The player who goes first is not allowed to attack or play Supporter cards on their first turn. This helps compensate for their tempo advantage.
• Gratuitous English: The Japanese versions of the Mega Evolution cards in the XY series set has the Pokémon's attack name written across the card art in English. Likewise, the Single and Rapid Strike labels have the names rendered in both English and hiragana as ICHIGEKI and RENGEKI, respectively. Fusion Strike is listed as just FUSION in both English and Katakana instead.
• Gratuitous Japanese: Meanwhile, the English (and subsequent non-English western) versions of the same Mega Evolution cards have the attack name written out in katakana. While the Japanese cards' English attack names are a bit Engrish-y, the English cards' Japanese attack names are lifted right from the Japanese versions' attack text.
• Heads or Tails?: Each player has a coin of his or her own. Players flip to see who decides the starting turn order. Then there are several cards where the player flips his or her coin to determine the number of cards they draw from their deck, the amount of damage a move will do, and so on.
• Heart Is an Awesome Power: Anything that doesn't do anything but discard cards won't be useful outside of some potent decks that focus around it.
  • Battle Compressor, from the Phantom Forces expansion, which lets you search through your deck for three cards... and put them in the discard. Sounds useless on paper, but if used alongside cards that draw from, attach energy from, or otherwise rely on the discard pile to work, it suddenly becomes a very effective item to use.
• Highly Specific Counterplay: The game tends to introduce counters to dominant cards instead of banning them:
  • The Heatmor from the Dark Explorers expansion has an attack that does 60 damage if the opposing Pokémon is Durant, and 10 damage otherwise. It was introduced to counter Durant Mill decks, but it does have the justification that Heatmor is a predator of Durant.
  • No Removal Gym from the Gym Heroes expansion makes it so that a player must discard 2 cards from their hand to play Energy Removal or Super Energy Removal. It was introduced because these cards were considered overpowered.
• Ice Magic Is Water: For its Color-Coded Elements, Water includes what were originally Ice-types in the video games.
• Inconsistent Dub:
  • Several attack names are translated differently from the video game series. This could be argued as Woolseyism in some cases — for example, a move called Confusion in the games causes confusion, but was renamed Psyshock in the card game, where it causes paralysis (it was called Willpower in both cases in the Japanese games). However, others are just different for no discernible reason, such as a move called "Teeter Dance" in the video games and "The Hula-la" in the card game.
  • It also doesn't help that the fifth generation games added a separate attack named Psyshock, a Mind over Matter shockwave that runs off of Special Attack and physical Defense.
• Infinity +1 Element: While the Dragon type was intended to be this from the beginning, it was fully reworked into this in the Sword and Shield era, having no weaknesses and no resistances while retaining the type's powerful mixed-Energy attacks.
• Informed Attribute: The Pokémon Trading Card Game Fossil Expansion Player's Guide classifies "Ferocious Commons" as a "tournament-winning" deck that should earn its player "plenty of respect". Said deck tosses 3 weak Basic Pokémon (Rattata, Staryu, Machop) and multiple Trainer cards into a deck with no strategy beyond "Deal 20 damage and try and use the Trainer cards to mess with your opponent". With their low health, all three can be easily knocked out, and it would have zero chance of competing in a tournament even then. "Monster Swap" is also classified as a "tournament-winning" deck that has no strategy outside of "Use Dodrio's Retreat Aid to swap Mr. Mime and Onix to stall out your opponent" even though the opponent can pretty obviously swap out their own Pokémon to take care of Onix and Mr. Mime (such as the fact that the duo are still vulnerable to status conditions).
• Informed Flaw: The Pokémon Trading Card Game Fossil Expansion Player's Guide claims that expending all the time and effort to get Omastar (Mysterious Fossil, Omanyte) for a weak Water Gun will result in your opponent feeling sorry for you. However, the attack starts at 20 damage and deals 40 damage with two more Water Energy cards attached which was a lot of damage at the time, particularly if hitting a Fire-type.
• Item Amplifier:
  • Magnezone has the effect "Double Brain" that lets the player use 2 Supporter cards per turn instead of the usual 1.
  • Some Pokémon, such as the Shining Legends Venusaur, have abilities that make energies of a certain type count as two energy instead of one.
• Joke Character: Imakuni? is an incredibly weird guy. He has his own rap group to promote the series, specifically the card game, called Suzukisan, which consists of him, an enka singer named Sachiko Kobayashi, and an American guy named Raymond Johnson (who also had The Danza as a minor character in the Japanese versions of Pokémon: The First Movie and Mewtwo Strikes Back—Evolution) who speaks English well. He also makes some joke cards and does illustrations for serious cards. He has a blog at imakuni.com. Whenever he shows up in the game itself, whether it's on a promotional card or as an opponent in the video games, you can count on him to be useless at best and actively harmful to his own player at worst.
• Joke Item:
  • The Imakuni? card, which just confuses your own Pokémon... There's even a card just to tell you that it's useless!
  • The Abareru-kun card, featuring a person who appears on Pokémon TV shows in Japan. It lets you draw 3 cards, making it similar to the already-existing Hau and Cheren... but, for the effect to take place, you have to tell a joke your opponent laughs at, making it a literal joke card.
• Kung Fu-Proof Mook: Certain Pokémon have Abilities that make them completely immune to attacks from certain kinds of opponents, such as Alolan Ninetales from Burning Shadows being impervious to the attacks of Pokémon-GX or Xurkitree-GX taking no damage from opponents with Special Energy attached.
• Lethal Joke Character:
  • The original Baby Pokémon from the Neo and e-Card sets, especially the ones from the Neo sets. At first glance, they look pretty bad, especially due to their horrific HP and the fact that you don't necessarily have to use them in order to use their "evolved" forms. However, they often proved to be nasty annoyances due to their Baby Pokémon Powers, which caused every single attack — even those that don't inflict any damage — to have only a 50% chance of succeeding (if the attacker flipped heads). Combine the original Baby Pokémon Power with Focus Band, and one would have a whopping seventy-five percent chance of having to deal with the Baby Pokémon again the next turn. To make matters even crazier, the Babies usually had troublesome attacks that only cost one Colorless Energy and they had free retreat. After Ruby and Sapphire were released, all new Baby Pokémon no longer had to be attacked on a coin flip. However, especially destructive Babies like Cleffa (which was like a Professor Oak that DIDN'T discard your hand that you could re-use, potentially multiple times thanks to the Baby Pokémon rule) were so influential on the game that they were "reprinted" 10 years later in the HeartGold/SoulSilver sets; however, these new versions weren't anywhere near as chaotic as their G/S/C era counterparts, as they were only impervious to damage if they were asleep.
  • Exeggcute from Plasma Freeze also looks pretty terrible with only 30 HP and one attack that is bad, even for a Basic Pokémon. However, its ability, Propagation, allows it to come back from the discard pile if it is ever discarded, which makes Exeggcute extremely manipulable in combos that involve discarding cards to deal extra or reduce damage or draw extra cards.
  • Joltik cards are generally jokes, being 30 HP basics. But one Joltik has an attack called Night March that does 20 damage times the amount of Pokémon with Night March in the discard pile, allowing it to hit absurd damage totals when combined with the other Pokémon that have Night March. Night March was arguably the best deck in many formats where it was and is legal until Power Creep set in during the Generation VII era.
• Lethal Joke Item:
  • Pokémon Flute, a Trainer card where you choose one of your opponent's discarded Pokémon and put it on their bench. It seems like it would only help your opponent, until you realize that it actually has several uses: You can combine it with Gust of Wind, using the former to revive a Pokémon with very low HP and using the latter to force the opponent to switch to it. Then you could effortlessly kill the poor Pokémon AGAIN and score another prize. You can also use Pokémon Flute to fill your opponent's bench with low level "junk" to prevent them from playing their intended Pokémon.
  • There are some extreme examples from Team Rocket Returns, a set with crazy-sounding names such as "Pow! Hand Extension", "Surprise! Time Machine", and "Swoop! Teleporter" — all cards that would break every format they were legal in.
  • The Imakuni? card, which confuses your own Pokémon, can be combined with the Pokémon like Machamp EX that actually benefit from being confused.
  • Surprise Box, from Unbroken Bonds, adds a card from the opponent's discard pile to their hand. This is especially unhelpful to the player, as the opponent can use the card they got back in a future turn, but can be comboed with other cards that rely on an opponent's hand cards, like Gengar & Mimikyu GX's Poltergeist attack.
• Lightning Bruiser: Donphan Prime from "HeartGold and SoulSilver" became popular for this reason. It had 120 HP (a very large amount for a Stage 1 at the time) and an ability that made it take 20 less damage from every attack, and could also attack for 60 damage for just one energy (again, a very large amount for the time).
  • Some of the Stage 1 Pokémon GX in SM sets certainly qualify. Golisopod GX can hit for 120 damage for a single energy (though it has to have just came into the active position that turn) and has 210 HP, and the damage output of Zoroark GX (also 210 HP) is based on the amount of Pokémon in play, meaning that in the Expanded format where Sky Field (which allow you to have up to 8 Pokémon on your bench) or Eternatus V-Max is legal, it can hit for up to 200 damage for one Double Colorless Energy.
  • Reshiram & Charizard GX, from Unbroken Bonds also qualifies. Despite having a hard-hitting, but expensive attack in Flare Strike, it has plenty of Fire-type support, like Welder, which attaches 2 Fire energy from the player's hand to one of their Pokémon in addition to drawing 3 more cards. Thus, decks built around this Tag Team aim to draw through most of their deck while accelerating energy at a fast rate.
• Limit Break: GX Attacks and VSTAR Powers. You're only allowed one of each per game and only certain Pokémon can use them, but they're all rather powerful. TAG TEAM GX Pokémon took this to a whole new level; their GX moves had an optional additional energy or specific card usage requirement that, if fulfilled, enabled an even stronger effect when used.
• Loophole Abuse: Each time someone tries it and is caught by a judge (or the opponent calls a judge over), it's recorded and a ruling given in case it happens again. As of date, there are over 300 cases of this. There haven't been any cases nearly as extreme as Chaos Orb in Magic, though.
  • A specific example that led to a general rules change in organised play was people deliberately breaking the rules, in order to award the other player Prize Cards and thus satisfy the activation conditions of cards such as Counter Catcher and Counter Energy.
• Luck-Based Mission: There's a lot of factors that rely on coin flips and nothing else. While tournament standard requires all coins to have an even 50/50 chance of landing on either side, outcomes can still be stacked against players. Just ask anyone who's flipped two tails on a Timer Ball, for example.
• Luck Manipulation Mechanic:
  • Sabrina's ESP lets you re-flip coins for the Pokémon it's attached to once. Trick Coin does the same thing, except it can be attached to any Pokémon, can be done once per turn, and will remain on that Pokémon on subsequent turns.
  • One Victini's Victory Star Ability allows a player to take a do-over on coin flips related to their Pokémon's attacks once per turn (and it actually means "once" — multiple Victory Star Abilities don't stack).
  • Shiftry from the set "Rising Rivals" had a Poké-body that made the opponent's coin flips always tails.
  • Sableye from "Stormfront" and the item First Ticket both allow you to bypass the opening coin flip and always go first.
  • Will from the Dream League/Cosmic Eclipse set allows you to flat-out choose the result of a coin flip.
  • Misdreavus from "Legend Maker" could put the opposing Pokémon to sleep, but that sleep requires the opponent flip a coin twice and both land as heads to wake it up instead of just one.
• Magikarp Power: Most Pokémon that are meant to be evolved tend to be pretty bad by Basic Pokémon standards, with low Energy and attacks that do Scratch Damage at the best of times but whose evolved forms become much more formidable than your ordinary Basic Pokémon. (And yes, this includes Magikarp itself, whose cards rarely go above 30 damage and can often count themselves lucky to even have an attack that does something.) This goes double for three-stage evolution lines, where the Basic is awful, the Stage 1 is almost passable but still well below par, and the Stage 2 is very strong.
• Mana: Energy cards. Most attacks will require at least one. Unlike traditional Mana, though, it isn't consumed unless the attack you use says otherwise.
• Manipulating the Opponent's Deck:
  • Judge allows you to force your opponent to shuffle their hand into their deck and draw four new cards (which is usually less than they'd have before).
  • Peeking Red Card not only makes your opponent shuffle their hand into their deck and draw a new one, but makes them show you what their original hand was first.
  • Jessie and James makes you and your opponent discard two cards from your hands.
  • Reset Stamp forces your opponent to discard their hand and draw as many new cards as they have prize cards remaining, making it much more punishing for someone close to winning.
  • Giratina from the United Minds set allows you to discard a special energy card attacked to your opponent's active Pokémon when you first place it onto your bench.
  • Milling is a common strategy - or the act of forcing the opponent to send cards directly to their discard pile until they no longer have cards to draw.
• Mass Card Removal: Togepi & Cleffa & Igglybuff-GX's Supreme Puff-GX clears the opponent's bench back into their deck if there's 16 Fairy Energy on the group when the attack goes off.
• Mighty Glacier:
  • Most Charizard cards are an Awesome, but Impractical exaggeration of this archetype. They have high HP and attacks that deal inordinate amounts of damage (often in the rarely-seen 200-300 range), but have high energy costs and are very slow to set up.
  • Primal Groudon decks rely on this trope, using cards to stall the opponent while they set up Primal Groudon with the 4 energy needed to attack, which can then proceed to hit for 200+ damage and be nearly impossible to KO in one hit itself.
  • Magikarp & Wailord GX has a whopping 300 HP on a Basic — most Stage 2 Pokémon don't even breach 200 HP — but, as a tradeoff, it's ridiculously slow to use its very strong attacks. 5 Water energy to use its normal attack for 180 damage, and 8 to use its GX attack^note Well, technically, one. But, without the seven extra energy, it'll only deal 10 damage without any other effects.
• Mini-Game: At the tail-end of Generation II, cards (including the Expedition, Aquapolis, and Skyridge sets) had dot codes that allowed minigames to be played on the Game Boy Advance e-Reader peripheral, as well as giving card game strategies. After that, while dot codes remained on the cards until the EX Team Magma vs. Team Aqua set, they consisted only of Pokédex information rather than including minigames and strategy tips.
• Mythology Gag: Though mainly based on the games, the cards sometimes take influence from the anime, such as an Erika card showing that she's involved with perfume making.
• Night Parade of One Hundred Demons: The illustration rare print of this Gastly from the Temporal Forces expansion features the entirety of Gastly's evolution line marching in hordes on the street, in reference to this trope.
• Non-Standard Game Over:
  • The stadium card Lost World lets a player whose opponent has 6 Pokémon in the Lost Zone (like the discard pile, but impossible to get cards back from it) win the game on the spot.
  • Slowbro from Breakpoint's attack, "Walk-Off Homer", automatically wins the game if you only have one prize card left to take. There is also Unown V from the Silver Tempest expansion, with its "Victory Symbol" attack that works the exact same way.
  • The three Unown cards from Lost Thunder all let their user instantly win if their (rather awkward) ability conditions are met. Unown DAMAGE has the condition of requiring a total of 66 damage counters across all your Pokemon, Unown HAND has the condition of needing 35 cards (which is just over half your whole deck) in your hand at once, and Unown MISSING requires 12 Supporter cards to be in the Lost Zone.
  • The Three Strikes attack from the Unbroken Bonds Slowbro causes the player to automatically lose the game if all three of its coin flips are tails.
• Obvious Rule Patch:
  • You're only allowed four of any card, but the exception is Basic Energy (Special Energy is still restricted). A deck that runs only four energy — unless it has some major other gimmick to make up for it — would be ridiculously slow and overly reliant on finding that energy.
  • The XY expansion features Professor Sycamore, whose effects (discard your hand then draw 7) were functionally identical to Professor Juniper of the Black and White expansion. Keeping in line with the aforementioned "maximum four copies of a card in one deck" rule, decks aren't allowed to run Juniper and Sycamore at the same time.
    • Starting from Sword & Shield expansion, all professor cards with that effect are named "Professor's Research." Likewise, Lysandre of the Flashfire expansion^note Switch the opponent's active Pokémon with one of their benched ones. was succeeded by "Boss's Orders" in future expansions.
  • After the addition of Comeback Mechanics involving having more prize cards than the opponent, penalty rewards in organised play were changed from picking up prize cards to only needing to take less prize cards than normal to win the game.
  • To prevent players from auto-losing due to failing to draw any basic Pokémon in their opening hand, they are permitted to "mulligan" — reveal their hand, shuffle it into their deck, and draw a new one. As a penalty, the opponent is allowed to draw a card for each mulligan. That "allowed" is very important — the original mulligan rule required the opponent to draw two cards, which led to the Mewtwo Mulligan deck: 59 Psychic Energy and one Mewtwo, mulligan repeatedly hoping your opponent decks out before the game even starts, and if that fails, spam Barrier to stall them the rest of the way.
  • When a Pokémon's attacks have an effect applied onto itself, it used to refer to that Pokémon by name. It was eventually changed to the phrase "this Pokémon" due to issues with Pokémon with Power Copying skills, as players were confused if that effect should apply to the Pokémon that copied the power, as should be logical; or the original owner of the attack, in a case of Exact Words.
  • Some cards are banned, due to either balance issues or other obvious reasons:
    • "_____'s Pikachu" (more commonly known as "Birthday Pikachu") cards are banned due to them having an attack which is more effective on the player's birthday. Of course, nobody wants to have to go through the issue of having to verify whether or not it's someone's birthday for tournament legality.
    • "Ancient Mew" is banned due to the card being written in Runic (and even if the card is deciphered, the card is all but unviable anyway).
    • Jumbo Cards are banned due to their sheer size, being easily-identifiable within a deck of normal cards. That said, a deck consisting entirely of jumbo cards was allowed, and one 2022 player brought an entirely-jumbo deck into a tournament.
    • Most Imakuni? cards are straight up banned due to their outlandish nature; Imakuni?'s Whismur, for example, prevents the players from speaking when its on the field, and Imakuni?'s PC has an "effect" that's just a weird anecdote about him. Most of the cards straight up tell you that they're banned.
    • In the Phantom Forces expansion, there was a card called "Lysandre's Trump Card" which has each player shuffle every card in their discard pile except for the "Lysandre's Trump Card" back into their deck. In June 2015, due to this card being ruled to create an unbalanced playing environment, this card ended up being banned.
• One-Hit KO: Some Pokémon like Shining Fates Yveltal have attacks that knock out the opponent's Pokémon if they're able to connect, regardless of how much HP it has, but require big energy costs and/or specific requirements like coin flips.
• Pinball Scoring: All Pokémon have HP that is a multiple of 10, and damage is always done in multiples of 10 as well, making the extra 0 at the end of damage or HP totals effectively irrelevant.
• Pink Girl, Blue Boy: The Beginning set for the Japanese Black and White expansion is split into a "boys" set and a "girls" set. The boy set is black and contains cool-looking Pokémon; the girl set is bright pink and contains cute-looking Pokémon. Obviously, though, there's nothing stopping you from buying a set of the opposite gender.
• Portmanteau: Approximately three quarters of all competitive deck themes are the names of the central Pokémon of the deck put together. The remaining quarter either involve too many important Pokémon to avoid a confusing portmanteau or becomes associated with something among tournament players before a portmanteau name is formed.
• Power Creep:
  • The bar is raised with each generation. It's gotten to the point where the best decks when the TCG started some 15 years ago (like Haymaker, for example) would be absolutely unplayable against ANY legal deck today that has seen any play. A good comparison would be 7th-gen Celestial Storm Sneasel to its original 2nd-gen Neo Genesis version; the original Neo Genesis version was incredibly strong since it needed only two energy to deal an average of 90 damage in a time when 150 HP was a lot, but the Celestial Storm version — which is a very slightly nerfed version of the Neo Genesis one — didn't make nearly as much of a splash, since 90 damage was to be expected of a heavy hitter that didn't rely on RNG, and was only really good for evolving into stronger cards.
  • Trainer cards initially inverted this, as Trainer cards from the first few sets were so incredibly powerful that you could dig through half your deck in a single turn and freely switch your opponent's Pokémon around, leading to incredibly restrictive rules on the number of Trainer cards allowed in decks and the introduction of Supporter cards in the Expedition base set, of which only one could be played in a turn, as well as a massive downswing in the effective power of Trainer cards. In more recent years, Trainer cards have slowly crept back up in power; while never quite reaching the same levels of power that the original Base Set did^*Many Base Set cards had effects reprinted in a more limited format, such as 'Bill' having the same 'Draw 2 cards' as the Supporters Cheren, Tierno, and Hau, Professor Oak sharing effects with Supporters Professor Sycamore and Professor Juniper, Gust of Wind's effect going to Supporter Lysandre, and Computer Search being reprinted as an Ace Spec (you may have a single Ace Spec card in your deck — not one copy of, one Ace Spec card) with the same name but often improving in other ways from the Expedition Base Set onward; such as cards with a near-identical effect simply being more effective^*HeartGold & SoulSilver's Moomoo Milk card heals 10 more damage per heads than the otherwise-identical Neo Genesis Moo Moo-Milk, BREAKthrough's Brigitte being better than the Holon Mentor card, Professor Kukui outclassing Buck's Training, etc., having effects previously on Supporter cards become Item cards^*Professor Elm's Training Method compared to Timer Ball, Pokémon Nurse, and Max Potion or both ^*XY's Evosoda is a strictly superior version of the Wally's Training Supporter card.
• Promoted to Playable: Eternatus's Eternamax forme is uncatchable in Pokémon Sword and Shield, but appears as a Pokémon VMAX in the card game.
• Promotional Powerless Piece of Garbage:
  • _____'s Pikachu, where you are supposed to write in your name and birthday, and if it's your birthday, then you can flip a coin to potentially do more damage. Banned pretty much from the start to avoid complications such as actually having to verify the birthdate is correct. In actuality, this card was only a non-playable promotional piece back in Japan. The most common theory is that they simply didn't catch on when bringing it overseas and hastily banned it to fix the mistake.
  • Ancient Mew, which came with movie tickets to Pokémon: The Movie 2000, doesn't even look like a proper Pokémon card on the front or back (and once deciphered, has rather poor stats, anyways), and thus can't be used.
  • Some of the promo cards you win in the game from the Cups, such as Farfetch'd and Mankey, have the EXACT SAME STATS as their alternate (and easier to get) cards. Only real difference is their art and level descriptions. Unless you're going for full completion, you really like the artwork, or you want a Bragging Rights Reward, you should probably skip any Cups giving them as prizes.
  • The promotional cards received by participating in pre-release tournaments are identical to the card in the set except for a shiny stamp reading "Pre-Release" indented into the lower-right corner of the illustration (or a shinier stamp reading "Staff", if you were one of the people helping run said tournament). In EX series sets and the most recent sets, the stamp is replaced with the set's logo.
  • Averted with some of the Pokémon Detective Pikachu cards; Mewtwo, Charizard, and Greninja were mildly useful, and their GX versions are about on par with normal GX cards.
• Recurring Element: Certain Pokémon species and evolution lines have traits in common as more cards for them are released.
  • Hoppip, Skiploom, and Jumpluff almost all run on just one Energy for their attacks and never more than two. In return, they have low damage output and low HP. Gossifleur and Eldegoss, being Spiritual Successors to the Hoppip line, also have this trait.
  • Unown will always have a Pokémon Power, Poké-Body, Poké-Power, or Ability that pertains to the letter(s) depicted in the illustration.
  • Every Magikarp card has 30 HP except for Magikarp & Wailord GX due to being accompanied by a high-HP Pokémon.
  • Consequently, Wailmer and Wailord will always have very high HP and expensive attacks, requiring three Energy to even start attacking and asking for 8 or more to bring them to their fullest potential, but these attacks have immense power. In a way, this makes Wailord a Foil to Jumpluff and Eldegoss.
  • Most Blastoise released from "Platinum" and onwards either has the capacity to move large quantities of Water Energy around or has a different form that has that capacity,^note For instance, Blastoise V does not have Water Energy manipulation, but it can upgrade to Blastoise V-Max, which does a call-back to Base Set Blastoise's Rain Dance.
  • Most of Delcatty's cards are based around Energy cards in some fashion, such as recycling, searching or moving Energy cards around, giving it a defining niche that its video game incarnation lacks.
  • Early Exploud cards tended to have much more text on the card than usual, either through having a large amount of different attacks and/or abilities (with the Exploud from EX Hidden Legends and EX Emerald both having four attacks), or attacks with a large amount of rules text, such as Great Encounters Exploud. Later on, it lost this trait, with Exploud cards printed from Plasma Storm onwards having about the same amount of text as other cards.
  • Most Scyther cards tend to have a low retreat cost of just 0 or 1 energy, as a reference to the original Jungle Scyther card which had free retreat.
• Retraux:
  • Along with the reprints of Base Set, Evolutions also includes brand new cards that are deliberately designed after Base Set's art style.
  • The official page for the set was deliberately designed to resemble 90s webpage design, down to an Amiga style song playing in the background and unfinished "Under Construction" subsections and the ability to watch Pokémon: The First Movie.
  • There are several cards that are redesigns of old cards featuring newer art.
  • Celebrations goes several steps beyond Evolutions, featuring cards not only stylized after Base Set, but also various other out-of-print sets.
• Rock–Paper–Scissors:
  • The Trainer cards "Misty's Duel" and "Team Galactic's Wager" make the players do this. Zig-Zagged on Misty's Duel, where players have the option to flip coins in case of the very unlikely chance the opponent "does not know how to play Rock-Paper-Scissors".
  • A Xatu card from the Legendary Treasures set has an attack involving this.
• Rule of Cool: One card — Flashfire Mega Charizard X — seems to have been designed with this in mind, as it's a Dragon-type version of Breakout Character Charizard with one of the strongest attacks in the game, to the point of being Awesome, but Impractical. Mega Charizard Y, Charizard-GX, and the Dragon-type Mega Rayquaza aren't too far off, having equally damaging attacks but lacking the whole "fan-requested typing" vibe.
• Running Gag: A recurring trend with Cleffa cards is that they all have only one attack named "Eek", with various amounts of E's.
• "The Scream" Parody: The TCG once did a collaboration with the Tokyo Art Museum to create an exhibition of cards that were inspired by the painting. Characters exhibiting the Scream included Psyduck, Eevee, Mimikyu, Pikachu, and Rowlet, whilst the other backgrounders in the painting are replaced by Pokémon (such as the Gastly family and Mimikyu) as well.
• Self-Damaging Attack Backfire: Many cards require coin flips, and you sometimes get a negative effect on a tails. An example is Platinum Vigoroth's Reckless Charge, which inflicts 10 recoil damage on a failure (though the enemy still takes 30 damage).
• Serious Business: Valid in the real world with tournaments, but taken to near-Yu-Gi-Oh! levels of extremes in the video game adaptations.
• Shout-Out: The former online simulator let you give Aerith's hairstyle to female avatars.
• Spotlight-Stealing Squad: Charizard, Mewtwo, Gardevoir, Rayquaza, and Darkrai have been noted to receive an inordinate amount of high-rarity cards. For starters, all of them boast 2-5 different Pokémon-EX cards and two Mega Evolution cards if applicable, each with several prints, and all of them received Pokémon-GX cards as well. Darkrai also received a Prism Star card treatment.
• Status Effects: Akin to the games, Pokémon can be put to sleep, confused, paralyzed, poisoned, or burned. Unlike the games, status effects can be cured when the afflicted Pokémon retreats or moves to the bench by a card effect, and the specific effects are changed. The one-status limit has also been loosened (Sleep, Paralysis, and Confusion are mutually exclusive, but no others), so you can stack several of these on a single Pokémon if you can set it up.
  • Sleep: The Pokémon can't act or retreat. Between turns, you flip a coin, and if it lands on heads, the Pokémon wakes up.
  • Confusion: When the Pokémon attacks, flip a coin. If it lands on tails, the Pokémon deals 30 damage to itself instead of attacking.
  • Paralysis: The Pokémon can't attack or retreat for one turn.
  • Poison: Deals 10 damage to the afflicted Pokémon between turns.
  • Burn: Deals 20 damage to the afflicted Pokémon between turns and forces a coin flip afterwards; if the coin lands on heads, the burn is healed.
• Stone Wall: Base Set Chansey has 120 HP, a very large amount for a Basic Pokémon at the time. However, its only means of dealing damage is the Awesome, but Impractical Double-Edge — which, while powerful, requires 4 energy to use and deals 80 damage to both Chansey and its opponent. Instead, Chansey is used to soak up damage with its damage-negating Scrunch attack, or in conjunction with Alakazam's Damage Swap power and Scoop Up to continuously move damage over to it and heal your other Pokémon.
• Symmetric Effect:
  • Stadium cards tend to affect both players. However, quite a few of them only do anything for certain decks, or only shut down specific cards.
  • N has both players shuffle their hands into their decks, then draw a card for each prize card they have yet to claim.
• Takes One to Kill One: Psychic-type Pokémon not based on Ghost-types used to be weak to other Psychic types in the card game. This is because Pokémon that are normally Poison^note from Diamond/Pearl until Sword/Shield, at least, Psychic, and Ghost type are all classified under Psychic type, and those three types are all weak against each other.^note Poison is weak to Psychic, Psychic to Ghost, and Ghost to itself.
• Technicolor Magic: The Psychic type is represented by the color purple.
• Uniqueness Rule:
  • The Awesome, but Impractical Shining Pokémon, as well as their successors Pokémon Star, could only be used at one copy per deck.
  • Prism Star cards are powerful cards with the restriction that you can only have one of each Prism Star card in your deck, and if it would normally go into the discard pile, it goes into the Lost Zone instead, ensuring that you won't get to use it again. They also come with the risk of your sole copy ending up among your Prize Cards, which makes accessing it awkward at best.
  • Ace Spec cards are so powerful that you can only have a single copy of one of them in your deck. You have to both pick a card carefully and use it wisely.
  • GX attacks are powerful attacks with the special rule that you can only use one of them in a game, so you have to make it count. VSTAR Powers have a similar restriction.
  • There can only be one Stadium card in play at a time. An existing Stadium card is discarded when a new one comes into play.
  • Players can only play one Supporter card per turn. This rule was introduced to Nerf powerful Trainer cards by keeping players from playing multiple powerful ones per turn.
• Useless Item: Named "orphaned cards" by the fandom, they're cards that were intended to have some sort of useful effect, but due to bans or changes to the game's ruleset, they end up being unplayable or completely useless. For example, the First Ticket lets you skip the opening coin flip to always go first if you have it in your opening hand... but a later rule change caused the coin flip to happen before the players draw their cards, so the card no longer has an opportunity to take effect. In most cases though, these cards can still be used just fine in casual games if the players don't care about the official set rotations.
• Vanilla Unit:
  • Most attacks have some sort of secondary effect, or at least something like conditional extra damage, but there are also a few simple ones that just deal a flat sum of damage. Some Pokémon even have no abilities other than vanilla attacks.
  • Basic energy cards are the vanillas of energy cards. They provide one energy of one type, and have no further bonuses or drawbacks. In contrast, Special Energy cards tend to have drawbacks like restrictions on what you can attach them to, or additional costs to attach them. There are also Special Energy cards that provide utility (e.g. drawing you a card) at the cost of only providing colorless energy.
• Victory by Endurance: Stonewalling the opponent until they run out of cards causes them to lose the match. See also Wins by Doing Absolutely Nothing.

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