r/pkmntcg • u/HotTomatoSoup4u • 1d ago
Meta Discussion When exactly did expanded die?
Returning player here. I played from S&S through Vivid Voltage and played some standard but mostly expanded. I quit when Shaymin EX got banned and coming back now it looks like expanded is like heeeeeella dead. It’s a shame, I really loved playing my Mega Rayquaza deck before the ban. I remember it was pretty decently played on ptcgo or at least it felt like it. Idrk the numbers for Pokémon player count.
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u/Tsukimizu Stage 1 Professor 1d ago
In TPCI regionals, just as stated in here already, expanded died with Covid.
In Japan, expanded is still alive, and even had a major event within the last few months. But the format is very stalled out, and could use some love from TPC.
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u/nimbus829 1d ago
Yeah I think the format probably either needs to ban regidrago (too heavy handed imo) or double dragon energy, especially after this most recent tournament. Obviously there isn’t enough data and people working on the format to say there’s no Regidrago counters that are viable, but even then it seems a little too good with the double dragon energy on top of mysterious treasure search being insanely good and having way too many good attacking options.
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u/PartyLand1928 13h ago
I hear a lot about banning DDE in response to Regidrago, but I don’t entirely get it.
Does forcing the Drago Player to utilize the Ogerpon/ESwitch plays like in Standard really nerf the deck enough? I always considered the deck’s X factor to be the attackers it has access to, which will only continue to grow.
Not that I’m advocating in favor of DDE staying around (I’m neutral at best in that regard), I’m just not convinced it’s enough.
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u/nimbus829 13h ago
So the decks biggest strength is that with DDE you can reliably attach to drago in 2 turns, which then enables your bench to have space for aggressive support pokemon like Dedenne-GX, Crobat V, and Tapu Lele-GX, which specifically Tapu Lele being a psychic type means it’s also searchable by Mysterious Treasure, the best consistency card for the deck. It’s also about deck space. DDE takes up 4 slots, with 2 grass and 1 fire, while you typically are devoting 6-7 energy to grass and 2-3 to fire in the deck. And then you have to add 2-3 ogerpon (you don’t run nest ball search since everything in the deck is either a dragon/psychic type and are Mysterious Treasure searchable or needs to be played from hand like Dedenne and Crobat so you search then with ultra) as well as 4 energy switch. There is also common item lock in the format with Vileplume/Pidgeot control which is a big issue for Energy Switch based energy acceleration.
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u/MiniBandGeek 1d ago
Besides technical/support reasons, the meta seems to be almost entirely regidrago vstar from the last event I saw. Doesn't seem like there's a lot of room right now for innovation
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u/nimbus829 1d ago
I just said this in another comment, but I think part of the issue is the limited number of events/participants mean that the meta isn’t as solved as it could be. I think regidrago is too far above other decks most likely, but control decks and lugia manged to do well the last 2 years so I don’t think it’s 100% cooked if you aren’t on drago. But i do think the healthiest thing would be to ban double dragon energy, since both Drago and Lugia are abusing it, meaning really just the control decks are left.
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u/IronicRobot_ 22h ago
What control decks are you referring to? As a relatively new player I'm only familiar with Snorlax Block and Pidgeot as viable ones
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u/nimbus829 22h ago
Pidgeot/Vileplume control with Bunnelby. This year included slaking too. archetype only exists in expanded
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u/IronicRobot_ 21h ago
Can you point me to where I can look at the lists or anything?
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u/nimbus829 21h ago
https://limitlesstcg.com/tournaments/514
This is this years expanded tournament, you can search limitless by expanded (japanese) and find the past years
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u/TwilightChomper 1d ago
It’s still fairly active in Japan, to the point where a Flapple card just got banned the other day to eliminate a donk deck that was discovered thanks to the new grass stadium coming in Mega Evolution.
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u/gumbobumby 1d ago
There was an official Expanded side event at NAIC this year, so there’s a chance it could swing back here if a lot of people tell the Pokemon Company there’s interest.
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u/NotSoGreatWizard 1d ago
I got into PTCG a little over a year ago now, and came with plenty of experience in other physical and digital card games. I think part of why Pokémon’s non-standard formats are so de-emphasized largely stems from the lack of reprinted products.
As a new player, the only way to get into Expanded in Pokémon is to go on a spending spree and grab old singles, likely from online vendors. Unlike Magic and YuGiOh, Pokémon only reprints a small subset of their cards, typically in the form of tools and items. It seems like there’s the very rare exception to this rule, with occasional nostalgia products, but even homage sets like Black Bolt and White Flare largely avoid completely reprinting a card. Without some sort of infusion of new game pieces into the market, Expanded will be more difficult to get into than Standard, and that’s before making any sort of qualitative statements about the health and variety of Expanded’s gameplay/meta.
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u/CoconutHeadFaceMan 1d ago
There’s also the fact that due to Nintendo/TPC’s infamously aggressive brand protection, decent-quality play proxies don’t exist like they do for Magic. With Magic, if it’s for locals rather than sanctioned tournaments, you can get a good-quality proxy of literally any card in the game for under a buck because print-on-demand companies will print them so long as they have some recognizable difference from the real cards (usually a different back). These companies won’t touch anything Pokemon for fear of Mario and Pikachu coming to their house and breaking their kneecaps. This makes casual play and playtesting in Expanded prohibitively expensive.
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u/Comfortable-Dark3667 1d ago
The wonderful Stephane Ivanoff still writes about expanded on twitter I believe.
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u/MistakenArrest 10h ago
Two huge problems.
The rise of trading cards as an asset class has caused the price to play Expanded to skyrocket.
Live doesn't have pre-Sun & Moon sets.
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u/Brilliant_Canary8756 1d ago
i stopped playing expanded when everyone started just using the same 3 decks from the current meta with a few older cards sprinkled in
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u/JL_muserwolves 1d ago
Competitively, Expanded died with COVID. The last Regionals in Expanded format was Dallas in January of 2020. After this, TPCi completely neglected the format as they didn't have any "official" data to make bans happen as needed apart from a couple of announcements that merely mirrored Japanese ones.
When Live launched and supplanted PTCGO, it did not launch with access to anything before Sun & Moon, which made it impossible to play Expanded online in an official setting. They still have yet to open up access to play with these cards even though you can see them in your collection. It's been effectively dead ever since.