The fact that Digger says "keep doing this until" tells me they knew full well they were making a card that would result in a lot of coin flipping and no actual game happening
It's indicative of old pokemon design. A bug knowing bug type? No. Thats stupid. Load them up with poison and normal moves because we are hacks and idiots who go green should actually be purple white. Idk how they managed to make gold and silver with the same team. Must have hired some people who understood basic rpg mechanics.
@lucamckenn5932 That's not only irrelevant but also really harsh, Red and Blue were made over 5 years by like 10 people who didn't have any expectations of quality placed on them. All basically brand new to coding. It's a miracle the game was even made and it's even more a miracle the type chart remained more or less the same over this long of a period of time.
@@lucamckenn5932 maybe do some digging and you will be educated on why the 1st gen was a mess. Eaven fitting the sprites was a mess. You know why gen 2 was better? Gameboy color.... Complain about scarlet and violet... those deserved it
Gust of Wind is exactly WHY you'd play Lt Surge's Secret Plan. If you put something like an Energy card on your bench, the Gust of Wind just destroys it and doesn't actually gust anything. So, in theory, your opponent has no idea if the face-down card is a low HP basic Pokemon they don't want being Gust'd or if they're just baiting out a Gust. EDIT: Hell, looking over the rulings from the time, Gust doesn't even flip it over, so your opponent still has to waste a turn attacking it to see what it is.
Not only that, but the card might also come in handy if you ever end up in a situation where you have no Pokemon on your bench, and your active is close to being knocked out. If you have no basic Pokemon in your hand, you could use the card to put whatever onto your bench, preventing you from auto losing the game from having no Pokemon in play. This could give you an extra turn (or more if you play multiple LSSPs) to draw and hopefully get an actual basic Pokemon to put on your bench. Messing with the opponent and playing mind games with them is the key use for the card, but there's also potential for a more niche use like that as well I think.
@@Diabl0Mask I think a more likely connection might be MTG's Illusionary Mask, from the very first set Alpha. It has an extremely similar effect where you put a card from your hand face-down and flip it up if anything were to happen to it (it takes damage, deals damage, etc).
Trash Exchange was a backbone card in Feraligatr decks during the Rock-On Cycle. Use basically use the card to help fill up the discard pile with water energy straight from your deck. Fraligatr's attack deals increased damage based on the number of water energies in the discard pile. Trash Exchange was your "late game" card you used to get those water energies back into the discard pile from the deck. You usually have four of them... and since you can shuffle old Trash Exchanges when using Trash Exchange, you never run out. The deck was a nightmare to play against unless you were playing a SlowKing Deck.
Came to say the exact same thing same thing. But to the other commenters point, seems like we’re talking base to Gym Challenge. This card was totally worthless until Feraligatr came along in the 7th set (8th if you count base set 2).
Lt. Surge's Secret Plan works as a mindgame if you place down an energy card or such. Opponent could waste a gust of wind on it thinking it was something good and you could recover energy cards in the graveyard with cards like Mewtwo. If you play the same opponent then you could hide a good pokemon until you get the evolution.
I also don't see why gust of wind would even flip it. I don't need to know the name of a Pokemon to gust it into the active, it just needs to be a pokemon, and the card says to treat the facedown as if it were a basic pokemon. It makes sense to flip if it were attacked, since you need to check for hp for knockout.
It feels like Surge's Secret Plan was made to waste your opponent's resources. Making them play a Gust of Wind only for it to fail seems amazing, and you could also use it like a Poke-Doll. I kinda like it.
I feel like it accomplishes exactly what it intends to, which is pretty neat. I get the feeling Pokemon wanted to have their own Trap Cards and were inspired to have the mind game impact of early YGO traps.
So, fun fact about Brock's Ninetales: It actually got an errata to include the clause that it couldn't use Poke-Powers when released internationally. This is because in the original run in Japan, Ninetales led to an easy way to lock your opponent out of Trainer Cards with Dark Vileplume. Just get it in the discard and get Vulpix to Ninetales, eject most of your good Trainers by playing them, then set Vileplume, and watch your opponent cry.
When I used to have a card shop nearby, around first generation pokemon, when Charity came out in Japan, everyone believed it was mistranslated, and instead it allowed you to lower the amount of damage done to your pokemon to 10, if you wanted, and return it to your hand at the end of every turn. In essence, turning the game state into who could draw one of their four copies of Charity first. And since the local card shop allowed import cards in, it made games a nightmare until the official English release.
Yup, it was implied that your opponent was giving you Charity. Literally, so many for fun tournaments for shop prizes etc came down to who could draw their copies first. Just a total slog.
I never played it, it was more that they ruined it for me, because the shop pushed the falsehood and was selling them for like 50 bucks a pop.@@freddiesimmons1394
Trash Exchange was actually a staple in Riptide decks, letting you recycle key trainer cards (namely itself, Misty's Wrath and Secret Mission) and putting water energy into the discard to shuffle back into the deck with Feraligatr's Riptide attack.
I know I'm being that "well, actually" guy...but the math on Digger is that it's 2 in 3 to hurt you. The easiest way to think about this is to realize that it's 50% to hurt you after 1 flip, and 25% to hurt your opponent after two flips. From there on, it just repeats. It's twice as likely to hurt you as your opponent overall...so 2 in 3.
Charity is useful against cards that deal more damage the more counters they have, like rampage on tauros. if you can knock tauros in 2 moves, its best to limit the damage on the first move to be exactly one attack from fainting, that way reducing how much rampage damage it'll do to your active pokémon.
Honourable mention: Misty's Duel-a card that has both players play _janken_ (rock-paper-scissors). The winner shuffles their hand into the deck and draws a new hand of five cards.
I was hoping this would be in the list. It is a truly janky card. However, it’s not the only card in the game’s history with a rock-paper-scissors effect. My buddy and I like to play “open” games together. We build completely illegal decks with cards varying the game’s entire lifespan. Misty’s Duel is one of my favorites for those games.
There is a use case for Blaine's Quiz #1: You've maxed out on Bills, but still want further draw power. A full set of bills gives you 8 cards you can draw. A full spread of Blaine's Quiz #1 along side it gives you 16 total, which is nearly 1/4 of the deck being drawable. In a pinch, it's an extra set of Bill's, and the obscurity of the questions makes it more guaranteed to work compared to the other 2. This makes it better than Maintenance in that it potentially gives you 2 cards at no cost, better than Erika cause your opponent isn't guaranteed to draw 2, better than Computer error as it doesn't end your turn, and having a full spread of all 3 Blaine's Quizzes gives you a draw power of 28, the same as having a full set of Oaks without the discarding drawback. Though you are essentially replacing 4 cards with 12, so probably not the best exchange. So in terms of adding extra draw power beyond Bill and Oak, it's not a bad option.
I don't know why you'd ever need that much draw power though. There's no exodia combo in early pokemon that auto wins you the game, and games lasted long enough that decking out was a huge risk.
Do the Wave builds, Blaine's Charmander, Rain Dance, or any deck that calls for as much energy in your hand as possible, assurance that you are more likely to recover from an Imposter Oak's Revenge/ Rocket's Trap combo. Gym is the format where you appreciate any draw power you can get. And sure, you'll likely not need a full spread of the Blaine's Quiz cards, but having an extra 2/3 cards to draw on top of the Bills can be helpful, and there are certainly worse ways to get the cards into your hand.
You could use Charity to have the enemy Pokémon faint from poison damage at the end of their own turn, allowing you to get the first hit in on a fresh Pokémon. Or keep an unpowered Pokémon that is stuck in the active position while you attack with a Pokémon using its attack effect over and over again while keeping the enemy Pokémon trapped.
Poison knockouts bypasses most effects that go live when a pokemon is knocked out by being damaged the previous turn. I can't remember if said effects existed back then.
I was gonna comment on the trapping potential. I use it (yes, present tense) with a feraligatr with steel energies, which, afaik, is the only Mon that doesn't let your opponent retreat even with trainers.
I used this exact strategy back in the day. I often used attacks that would leave my opponents Pokémon poisoned and either paralyzed, asleep, or confused. If I was pretty confident that it would work out in my favor I’d use Charity to leave them with 20 HP, giving me a potential free shot next turn.
Trash Exchange is one of the most underestimated cards in the entire Pokemon TCG history. Even people who still play formats where it's legal do not realize how good it is. Consider this: Put 4 Trash Exchange and 4 Nightly Garbage Runs into your deck. Strategically using the Nightly Garbage Runs, then a Trash Exchange, then using the refreshed Nightly Garbage Runs will allow you to cycle your deck into a state where you can never deck out. This is huge for the era that the card was used in because stalling was a legit strategy that people used.
9:16 I love Blaine’s Quiz 1. I run 4 in my unlimited decks just to troll “what is the height of dark Vileplume”, etc. gets them every time. About Bill, it was ruled (at least where I was), that the supporter Bill from HGSS takes precedent, making the original Bill also a supporter. Even before then, though, 8 copies of Bill would never be bad.
There was also a card at the time called Chaos Gym that let you steal trainer card effects from the opponent. Blaine's Quiz 1 TECHNICALLY played around it, assuming you studied up on Pokemon lengths and your opponent didn't bother to. Unlike Bill, where they just get to draw 2 cards if they steal it, you can still get your effect back off it.
Digger played a key role in a puzzle. No matter who took the damage counter, Dodrio's Rage would have done enough damage to KO Scyther and win the puzzle. E: On the topic of Ditto, that Ditto was impossible to implement on the GB version of the game, so they had to come up with a replacement...and boy, was the replacement just about as weird. This Ditto had the Morph attack, which for 3 colorless morphed it into a copy of a different basic Pokémon (chosen "at random" by the GB). I remember when Jack, who piloted the Legendary Articuno deck, used this attack to morph Ditto into a Chansey.
mine became hungry snorlax then i drew it ,was really confused having 2 snorlax when i only played one and ditto said to put the pokemon on it (like an evolution)
Could make a video on the Gen 1 cards that didn't make it into either of the Pokemon TCG game boy color games, ditto is one. Could also take that time to talk about the cards that were exclusive to the GBC games (especially the second) and if those cards eventually got physically printed, some did
Porgygon is a really interesting card, even though it wasn't exactly great. About Trash Exchange: Correct me if I'm wrong, but wasn't there a strategy to use it along Feraligatr's Riptide attack that dealt damage depending on the # of water energy in your discard pile?
3:45 Trash Exchange has good synergy with Feraligatr (from Neo Genesis 5). "Riptide (three water energies): Does 10 damage plus 10 damage times the number of Water Energy cards in your discard pile. Then, shuffle all Water Energy cards from your discard pile into your deck." You can suffle the energies to your deck, then with trash exchange you can recover your trainers and pokemons and put energies from the deck back in the discard pile at the same time.
Charity could also be useful for maximizing the damage you deal while keeping control of the field, like if your opponent was trying to wall with a high HP, high retreat cost card while they build up their bench and you didn't want them to get the lead on your high damage attacking Pokemon.
I suppose if you had a bunch of Pokemon with Rage type attacks, which get stronger per the number of damage counters on your Pokemon, Digger would be a win-win. Since your opponent would either take a damage from Digger, or your Pokemon would deal an additional damage with their own attack. PlusPower would obviously be safer and more applicable, but since PlusPower disappears after one turn, while the damage counter would continue to boost your Pokemon's attack, it does have some form of niche.
Ditto and Mr. Mime were definitely among my favorites way back then. I still have a deck with multiple copies of Ditto and Mr. Mime in it, though I practically never play the Pokémon TCG anymore.
11:42 You are just looking at the 25% chance that you win on the second flip as being 75% that it works against you, but that isn't true. When you lay out the odds, the one playing the card has a 50% chance of losing on the first flip, 12.5% chance of losing on the third flip, 3.125% chance of losing on the fifth flip, etc. Meanwhile the other player has a 25% chance of losing on the second flip, 6.25% chance of losing on the fourth flip, 1.5625% chance of losing on the sixth flip, etc. When you go through these progressions and add up their chances, the player that played the card has a 2/3 chance (66.67%) of damaging his own pokemon and only a 1/3 chance (33.33%) of damaging his opponent. Still a bad call. Definitely would have made more sense if the card made your opponent flip first so the odds are in favor of the one playing.
someone at the pokemon company found blaine's quiz #1 while making the tyme supporter card for surging sparks and made the funniest decision of all time
Lt Surge's secret plan if it had a few modifications would be great, for example, if you evolved a Pokemon and it was stage one, but became Stage 2, you are allowed to keep it in play. It only discards it if it doesn't become legal by the end of action.
11:39 I thiink its 2/3 instead of 3/4. First coin is 50% for damaging my own. Its leaves 50% open. The second coin is again 50% for damaging the oponent, which makes 25% overall for the enemy. It leaves 25% open. So after the second coin its 50% for my own and 25% for the enemy to take damage overall. The residual 25% needed to be decided for the thrid, fourth, ... coin. This means after both have thrown a coin its 50% for my own and only 25% for the enemy. So 2/3 (50%) of the 75% already decided is my own and 1/3 (25%) gets the enemy. The residual 25% after the second coin are distributed in the same way. Which makes 66,66% to myself and 33,33% to the enemy.
I used to play with an Erika deck and made use of Charity. Leaving an opponent with 20hp meant that poison KO’d in the opponent’s turn. Combine with high retreat costs and the attack that does sleep and poison and she could take people off guard.
I think the niche use of Lt. Surge's secret plan is, at least, the opponent uses an attack on something that cannot give them a prize, as it's not a basic pokemon...but then you're throwing away a potentially useful tool or energy.
Was Blaine's quiz made before the suppoter separation? If so the card says "Either way, return the card back into your hand" so you could play it infinitely until you draw what you want or deck your opponent out
Blaine’s Quiz #1 best card, how often do you get to play a game within a game. That’s gameception. That’s Game Energy Squared. You’re not just playing a game anymore, you ARE the game. And who doesn’t wanna play the game of life? EXACTLY.
Lt. Surge's Secret Plan kind of reminds me of Yugioh's magical hats, where you can place 2 spell cards as monster cards which just get destroyed if attacked but act as spare defense position monsters that can't be tributed or anything. Though it's interesting how the same effects that'd be amazing in Yugioh are borderline useless in Pokemon TCG and vice versa due to differences in speed and mechanics. Though that being said, I dunno if Lt surges Secret plan would be useful in Yugioh either as it seems like a worse Magical hats anyway and odds are, most spells or traps in your deck are meant to be used to advance your game state so why would you waste a card as a distraction just to stall for a turn potentially? Course I'm strictly thinking OG Yugioh before the extra deck stuff cause in modern day such a card would be a detriment except that ONE card that is fused using a spell card...
I'd like to see a deck with Misty's Gyarados and Brock's Ninetales, but sadly I don't have that gyarados and only 1 Brock's Ninetales. The Gyarados would be super nice with Goop gas attacks and Muk on the deck. We usually play with decks with just the gen 1 and 2 cards and with 4 players instead of just 2, needs some ruling and the baby pokemon like Tyrogue are a bit too good.
Blaine’s Quiz never stood a chance in the meta. Even if the payoff was good, it would just force every Pokemon player to memorize every Pokémon’s height, and would eventually fall off. It’s a fun card though!
Wait, if Blaine's Quiz returns itself to your hand and original rules allowed as many trainer cards per turn as you wanted, couldn't you theoretically just use it repeatedly with every pokemon card in your hand for potential ludicrous advantage? Granted you'd run the risk of both giving away your strategy and also giving your *opponent* ludicrous advantage but still
Super energy removal was banned in our LGS pokemon tournaments. We also had a house rule that as long as your action didn't make you draw a card, flip a coin, look into your deck or something else similar, you could always comeback one step behind, like cancel a card you just played to do something else. Really helped the younger players.
We played where both the energy removal cards were banned for a bit. The first gen card game became a lot more fun honestly because of it. Felt like you could actually play a wider arrange of decks instead of big basic with cheap attacks.
Charity could be good in some weird alternate universe where there's some Wobuffet-style Destiny Bond or Mirror Move card tearing up tournament tables, and you're trying to lock the opponent out with some OP attack that has a strong status or control effect, but unfortunately deals damage which is a liability in this fake fictional scenario. Then this type of card could be a good combo for that nonexistent meta. It's a backwards way of designing cards. Like printing niche answers to nonexistent problems. Especially annoying that it's main use case is as a hate card for a hate card. (Mr. Mime)
The stupidest part about Porygon is how they didn't give it a free retreat cost. The idea clearly seems to be that you can use Conversion 2 before Conversion 1 to not have Porygon be a free prize card for your opponent while still changing the opponent's weakness. But as clunky as that idea already is in the first place, the fact you constantly have to discard an energy to retreat makes it all the more clunky, since each turn you spend re-attaching an energy to Porygon is a turn you're not preparing another Pokemon, and it also makes your deck require more energy than it could otherwise function with.
Same with the Fossil Ditto, which isn't in the Game Boy video games either. Instead, they put in a different Ditto that's exclusive to the Game Boy games, due to it making use of RNG for its transformation effect.
Weird card for me is Misty’s Duel simply for mentioning playing Rock-Paper-Scissors and having a clause if you don’t know how to play it. Sure, I know the intricacies of the Pokémon TCG, but not the simplicity of Rock-Paper-Scissors.
Mybtrain of thought was like at number 2: ok but if the opponent has a mewtwo and sees my ditto on my bench, cause i still need to attach energies he can play around it maybe. Is there any way to attach energy without himbrealising what it is? "Numer 1 spot: Surge's Secret Plan" Oh yeah its all coming together
The weird thing about it is that it's one of the few times shape-shifting has been associated with Ninetails, despite it being based on a creature notorious for shape-shifting.
I would run Ditto in my Blastoise deck. Many times I played other opponents with their own Blastoise decks. If they got Blastoise out first, I would put Ditto in the active position juat to rain dance water eneegy on my Fossil Articuno.
I have an idea for a video that would branch all of your TCG channels Mr. Logs. How about making an analysis of the first sets of the big three TCGs and then make a competition on who has the most of some specific kinds of cards you'd see on a game's infancy. I have almost no experience with Pokemon and i know i little bit of MtG so my examples may be weird. No future sight cards (Ancestral Recall, Pot of Greed), wacky card design (Chaos Orb, Yu-Jo Friendship), ruling nightmares (Lion's Eye Diamond, Last Turn), walls of text/bizarre wording (Chains of Mephistopheles, Toon Dark Magician Girl), do nothing cards not just plain bad (Great Wall, Zone Eater). Love your vids, 🌕🕷
The fact that Digger says "keep doing this until" tells me they knew full well they were making a card that would result in a lot of coin flipping and no actual game happening
That card would be way more interesting (maybe op?) if the damage would amplify by 10 each time the coin is tossed
It's indicative of old pokemon design. A bug knowing bug type? No. Thats stupid. Load them up with poison and normal moves because we are hacks and idiots who go green should actually be purple white.
Idk how they managed to make gold and silver with the same team. Must have hired some people who understood basic rpg mechanics.
@lucamckenn5932 That's not only irrelevant but also really harsh, Red and Blue were made over 5 years by like 10 people who didn't have any expectations of quality placed on them. All basically brand new to coding. It's a miracle the game was even made and it's even more a miracle the type chart remained more or less the same over this long of a period of time.
@@lucamckenn5932 maybe do some digging and you will be educated on why the 1st gen was a mess. Eaven fitting the sprites was a mess. You know why gen 2 was better? Gameboy color....
Complain about scarlet and violet... those deserved it
@@lucamckenn5932 "Green should actually be purple white"
Funnily enough this is almost how the Apple II computer's screen works
i remember as a kid trying to figure out what the utility was for porygon and i was like damn i must be dumb because this card seems useless lol
Gust of Wind is exactly WHY you'd play Lt Surge's Secret Plan. If you put something like an Energy card on your bench, the Gust of Wind just destroys it and doesn't actually gust anything. So, in theory, your opponent has no idea if the face-down card is a low HP basic Pokemon they don't want being Gust'd or if they're just baiting out a Gust.
EDIT: Hell, looking over the rulings from the time, Gust doesn't even flip it over, so your opponent still has to waste a turn attacking it to see what it is.
Not only that, but the card might also come in handy if you ever end up in a situation where you have no Pokemon on your bench, and your active is close to being knocked out. If you have no basic Pokemon in your hand, you could use the card to put whatever onto your bench, preventing you from auto losing the game from having no Pokemon in play. This could give you an extra turn (or more if you play multiple LSSPs) to draw and hopefully get an actual basic Pokemon to put on your bench. Messing with the opponent and playing mind games with them is the key use for the card, but there's also potential for a more niche use like that as well I think.
Lt. Surge's Secret Plan feels like someone liked Yugioh's Trap and Flip effects and wanted to implement that into the game.
@@Diabl0Mask I think a more likely connection might be MTG's Illusionary Mask, from the very first set Alpha. It has an extremely similar effect where you put a card from your hand face-down and flip it up if anything were to happen to it (it takes damage, deals damage, etc).
Trash Exchange was a backbone card in Feraligatr decks during the Rock-On Cycle. Use basically use the card to help fill up the discard pile with water energy straight from your deck. Fraligatr's attack deals increased damage based on the number of water energies in the discard pile. Trash Exchange was your "late game" card you used to get those water energies back into the discard pile from the deck. You usually have four of them... and since you can shuffle old Trash Exchanges when using Trash Exchange, you never run out. The deck was a nightmare to play against unless you were playing a SlowKing Deck.
This was the exact example I was thinking. But then I remembered this a gen 1 overview.
Came to say the exact same thing same thing. But to the other commenters point, seems like we’re talking base to Gym Challenge. This card was totally worthless until Feraligatr came along in the 7th set (8th if you count base set 2).
@@msayre029 nobody talks about Base Set 2
Lt. Surge's Secret Plan works as a mindgame if you place down an energy card or such. Opponent could waste a gust of wind on it thinking it was something good and you could recover energy cards in the graveyard with cards like Mewtwo. If you play the same opponent then you could hide a good pokemon until you get the evolution.
I also don't see why gust of wind would even flip it. I don't need to know the name of a Pokemon to gust it into the active, it just needs to be a pokemon, and the card says to treat the facedown as if it were a basic pokemon. It makes sense to flip if it were attacked, since you need to check for hp for knockout.
It feels like Surge's Secret Plan was made to waste your opponent's resources. Making them play a Gust of Wind only for it to fail seems amazing, and you could also use it like a Poke-Doll. I kinda like it.
I feel like it accomplishes exactly what it intends to, which is pretty neat. I get the feeling Pokemon wanted to have their own Trap Cards and were inspired to have the mind game impact of early YGO traps.
So, fun fact about Brock's Ninetales: It actually got an errata to include the clause that it couldn't use Poke-Powers when released internationally. This is because in the original run in Japan, Ninetales led to an easy way to lock your opponent out of Trainer Cards with Dark Vileplume. Just get it in the discard and get Vulpix to Ninetales, eject most of your good Trainers by playing them, then set Vileplume, and watch your opponent cry.
Cheating out a floodgate? A tale as old as time.
When I used to have a card shop nearby, around first generation pokemon, when Charity came out in Japan, everyone believed it was mistranslated, and instead it allowed you to lower the amount of damage done to your pokemon to 10, if you wanted, and return it to your hand at the end of every turn. In essence, turning the game state into who could draw one of their four copies of Charity first.
And since the local card shop allowed import cards in, it made games a nightmare until the official English release.
So they thought they created a card that made you invincible for the rest of the game? And that it was called ‘Charity’?
Yup, it was implied that your opponent was giving you Charity. Literally, so many for fun tournaments for shop prizes etc came down to who could draw their copies first. Just a total slog.
@@angrynightmob funny that you guys ruined your own experience rather than just trust that they actually printed a strange card.
I never played it, it was more that they ruined it for me, because the shop pushed the falsehood and was selling them for like 50 bucks a pop.@@freddiesimmons1394
Trash Exchange was actually a staple in Riptide decks, letting you recycle key trainer cards (namely itself, Misty's Wrath and Secret Mission) and putting water energy into the discard to shuffle back into the deck with Feraligatr's Riptide attack.
no amount of decking out made me realise i should play this card
i though this was the other trash exchange (the one that just shuffles back)
I know I'm being that "well, actually" guy...but the math on Digger is that it's 2 in 3 to hurt you.
The easiest way to think about this is to realize that it's 50% to hurt you after 1 flip, and 25% to hurt your opponent after two flips. From there on, it just repeats. It's twice as likely to hurt you as your opponent overall...so 2 in 3.
Charity is useful against cards that deal more damage the more counters they have, like rampage on tauros. if you can knock tauros in 2 moves, its best to limit the damage on the first move to be exactly one attack from fainting, that way reducing how much rampage damage it'll do to your active pokémon.
Nintetails Poke Power got damn near modern effect monster Yugioh card text for some reason.
Honourable mention: Misty's Duel-a card that has both players play _janken_ (rock-paper-scissors). The winner shuffles their hand into the deck and draws a new hand of five cards.
I was hoping this would be in the list. It is a truly janky card. However, it’s not the only card in the game’s history with a rock-paper-scissors effect.
My buddy and I like to play “open” games together. We build completely illegal decks with cards varying the game’s entire lifespan. Misty’s Duel is one of my favorites for those games.
Lt. Surge's Secret Plan: _exists_
Infernity players: 👀
There is a use case for Blaine's Quiz #1: You've maxed out on Bills, but still want further draw power. A full set of bills gives you 8 cards you can draw. A full spread of Blaine's Quiz #1 along side it gives you 16 total, which is nearly 1/4 of the deck being drawable. In a pinch, it's an extra set of Bill's, and the obscurity of the questions makes it more guaranteed to work compared to the other 2.
This makes it better than Maintenance in that it potentially gives you 2 cards at no cost, better than Erika cause your opponent isn't guaranteed to draw 2, better than Computer error as it doesn't end your turn, and having a full spread of all 3 Blaine's Quizzes gives you a draw power of 28, the same as having a full set of Oaks without the discarding drawback. Though you are essentially replacing 4 cards with 12, so probably not the best exchange.
So in terms of adding extra draw power beyond Bill and Oak, it's not a bad option.
I don't know why you'd ever need that much draw power though. There's no exodia combo in early pokemon that auto wins you the game, and games lasted long enough that decking out was a huge risk.
Do the Wave builds, Blaine's Charmander, Rain Dance, or any deck that calls for as much energy in your hand as possible, assurance that you are more likely to recover from an Imposter Oak's Revenge/ Rocket's Trap combo. Gym is the format where you appreciate any draw power you can get.
And sure, you'll likely not need a full spread of the Blaine's Quiz cards, but having an extra 2/3 cards to draw on top of the Bills can be helpful, and there are certainly worse ways to get the cards into your hand.
Also the fact that everyone seems to have missed the last line on Blaines quiz which says either way it goes back to your hand!
@@ozzymand1as "It" meaning the Quiz target.
You could use Charity to have the enemy Pokémon faint from poison damage at the end of their own turn, allowing you to get the first hit in on a fresh Pokémon.
Or keep an unpowered Pokémon that is stuck in the active position while you attack with a Pokémon using its attack effect over and over again while keeping the enemy Pokémon trapped.
Poison knockouts bypasses most effects that go live when a pokemon is knocked out by being damaged the previous turn. I can't remember if said effects existed back then.
I was gonna comment on the trapping potential. I use it (yes, present tense) with a feraligatr with steel energies, which, afaik, is the only Mon that doesn't let your opponent retreat even with trainers.
I used this exact strategy back in the day. I often used attacks that would leave my opponents Pokémon poisoned and either paralyzed, asleep, or confused. If I was pretty confident that it would work out in my favor I’d use Charity to leave them with 20 HP, giving me a potential free shot next turn.
I used Charity on my Blastoise deck back in the day because Mr. Mime was so popular.
Trash Exchange is one of the most underestimated cards in the entire Pokemon TCG history. Even people who still play formats where it's legal do not realize how good it is. Consider this: Put 4 Trash Exchange and 4 Nightly Garbage Runs into your deck. Strategically using the Nightly Garbage Runs, then a Trash Exchange, then using the refreshed Nightly Garbage Runs will allow you to cycle your deck into a state where you can never deck out. This is huge for the era that the card was used in because stalling was a legit strategy that people used.
9:16 I love Blaine’s Quiz 1. I run 4 in my unlimited decks just to troll “what is the height of dark Vileplume”, etc. gets them every time.
About Bill, it was ruled (at least where I was), that the supporter Bill from HGSS takes precedent, making the original Bill also a supporter.
Even before then, though, 8 copies of Bill would never be bad.
There was also a card at the time called Chaos Gym that let you steal trainer card effects from the opponent. Blaine's Quiz 1 TECHNICALLY played around it, assuming you studied up on Pokemon lengths and your opponent didn't bother to. Unlike Bill, where they just get to draw 2 cards if they steal it, you can still get your effect back off it.
I’m confused how Trash Exchange is a rulings nightmare? Wouldn’t any card be a rulings nightmare if you didn’t do the effect correctly?
I think the argument is that it could be particularly easy to mis-count the cards.
Man, those Gym sets were so unique. Definitely among my favourites.
If I could add Trash Exchange into my Beelzemon deck, in Digimon TCG, I'd be so happy.
Digger played a key role in a puzzle. No matter who took the damage counter, Dodrio's Rage would have done enough damage to KO Scyther and win the puzzle.
E: On the topic of Ditto, that Ditto was impossible to implement on the GB version of the game, so they had to come up with a replacement...and boy, was the replacement just about as weird. This Ditto had the Morph attack, which for 3 colorless morphed it into a copy of a different basic Pokémon (chosen "at random" by the GB). I remember when Jack, who piloted the Legendary Articuno deck, used this attack to morph Ditto into a Chansey.
mine became hungry snorlax then i drew it ,was really confused having 2 snorlax when i only played one and ditto said to put the pokemon on it (like an evolution)
@@some2043 replaced, not put on top of. does that explain it?
There was another card that had the text "Take a price card". Kartana GX had a GX attack for 1 metal energy with that exact same text.
Could make a video on the Gen 1 cards that didn't make it into either of the Pokemon TCG game boy color games, ditto is one. Could also take that time to talk about the cards that were exclusive to the GBC games (especially the second) and if those cards eventually got physically printed, some did
Another example: Jungle Fearow use 4(!) energy cards for a 40 damage attack without any effect other than the damage. This is unique
I used to rock Misty's Gyra in a Raindance deck that played three Og Muks. Turn off Defiance and Opp poke powers at the same time.
Porgygon is a really interesting card, even though it wasn't exactly great.
About Trash Exchange: Correct me if I'm wrong, but wasn't there a strategy to use it along Feraligatr's Riptide attack that dealt damage depending on the # of water energy in your discard pile?
Digger's effect actually gives a 2/3 chance to inflict self damage not 3/4. It's still pretty bad but that's slightly better.
3:45 Trash Exchange has good synergy with Feraligatr (from Neo Genesis 5).
"Riptide (three water energies): Does 10 damage plus 10 damage times the number of Water Energy cards in your discard pile. Then, shuffle all Water Energy cards from your discard pile into your deck."
You can suffle the energies to your deck, then with trash exchange you can recover your trainers and pokemons and put energies from the deck back in the discard pile at the same time.
Charity could also be useful for maximizing the damage you deal while keeping control of the field, like if your opponent was trying to wall with a high HP, high retreat cost card while they build up their bench and you didn't want them to get the lead on your high damage attacking Pokemon.
I'm surprised not to see the Imakuni card in this list 😅
I suppose if you had a bunch of Pokemon with Rage type attacks, which get stronger per the number of damage counters on your Pokemon, Digger would be a win-win. Since your opponent would either take a damage from Digger, or your Pokemon would deal an additional damage with their own attack.
PlusPower would obviously be safer and more applicable, but since PlusPower disappears after one turn, while the damage counter would continue to boost your Pokemon's attack, it does have some form of niche.
Ditto and Mr. Mime were definitely among my favorites way back then. I still have a deck with multiple copies of Ditto and Mr. Mime in it, though I practically never play the Pokémon TCG anymore.
If you reduce damage with Charity for attacks like take down that have recoil, you can negate that same amount of recoil.
mr mime : that looks reasonable
So many of these confused me as a kid 😂
As a seasoned TCG player, looking back at that Ninetails is a trip! That's crazy powerful!
11:42 You are just looking at the 25% chance that you win on the second flip as being 75% that it works against you, but that isn't true. When you lay out the odds, the one playing the card has a 50% chance of losing on the first flip, 12.5% chance of losing on the third flip, 3.125% chance of losing on the fifth flip, etc. Meanwhile the other player has a 25% chance of losing on the second flip, 6.25% chance of losing on the fourth flip, 1.5625% chance of losing on the sixth flip, etc. When you go through these progressions and add up their chances, the player that played the card has a 2/3 chance (66.67%) of damaging his own pokemon and only a 1/3 chance (33.33%) of damaging his opponent. Still a bad call. Definitely would have made more sense if the card made your opponent flip first so the odds are in favor of the one playing.
I can only see a use for Porygon in some kind of poison stall deck... but it's still a bit weird
someone at the pokemon company found blaine's quiz #1 while making the tyme supporter card for surging sparks and made the funniest decision of all time
Lt Surge's secret plan if it had a few modifications would be great, for example, if you evolved a Pokemon and it was stage one, but became Stage 2, you are allowed to keep it in play. It only discards it if it doesn't become legal by the end of action.
One of the top videos on UA-cam for me. Zdraví Nogy. Greetings from Czech Republic.
11:39 I thiink its 2/3 instead of 3/4. First coin is 50% for damaging my own. Its leaves 50% open. The second coin is again 50% for damaging the oponent, which makes 25% overall for the enemy. It leaves 25% open. So after the second coin its 50% for my own and 25% for the enemy to take damage overall. The residual 25% needed to be decided for the thrid, fourth, ... coin. This means after both have thrown a coin its 50% for my own and only 25% for the enemy. So 2/3 (50%) of the 75% already decided is my own and 1/3 (25%) gets the enemy. The residual 25% after the second coin are distributed in the same way. Which makes 66,66% to myself and 33,33% to the enemy.
I used to play with an Erika deck and made use of Charity. Leaving an opponent with 20hp meant that poison KO’d in the opponent’s turn. Combine with high retreat costs and the attack that does sleep and poison and she could take people off guard.
I think the niche use of Lt. Surge's secret plan is, at least, the opponent uses an attack on something that cannot give them a prize, as it's not a basic pokemon...but then you're throwing away a potentially useful tool or energy.
Was Blaine's quiz made before the suppoter separation? If so the card says "Either way, return the card back into your hand" so you could play it infinitely until you draw what you want or deck your opponent out
What? It means to return the pokemon you used for it, not the trainer card itself xD
It’s not infinite lol that would be insanely OP
Charity would have been better if it had a benefit like, “if you reduced damage by X or More, draw a card”.
Dear writers: please stop putting the word “albeit” into the script. Mr logs cannot pronounce it and ends up sounding like a goat
Blaine’s Quiz #1 best card, how often do you get to play a game within a game. That’s gameception. That’s Game Energy Squared. You’re not just playing a game anymore, you ARE the game. And who doesn’t wanna play the game of life? EXACTLY.
Sharhazad from MTG did it first and better
I'd love to see this for all generations
trash exchange was pretty cool, id play it in my feraligatr deck to put water energies back in the discard pile after using riptide the previous turn
Lt. Surge's Secret Plan kind of reminds me of Yugioh's magical hats, where you can place 2 spell cards as monster cards which just get destroyed if attacked but act as spare defense position monsters that can't be tributed or anything. Though it's interesting how the same effects that'd be amazing in Yugioh are borderline useless in Pokemon TCG and vice versa due to differences in speed and mechanics. Though that being said, I dunno if Lt surges Secret plan would be useful in Yugioh either as it seems like a worse Magical hats anyway and odds are, most spells or traps in your deck are meant to be used to advance your game state so why would you waste a card as a distraction just to stall for a turn potentially? Course I'm strictly thinking OG Yugioh before the extra deck stuff cause in modern day such a card would be a detriment except that ONE card that is fused using a spell card...
I'd like to see a deck with Misty's Gyarados and Brock's Ninetales, but sadly I don't have that gyarados and only 1 Brock's Ninetales. The Gyarados would be super nice with Goop gas attacks and Muk on the deck.
We usually play with decks with just the gen 1 and 2 cards and with 4 players instead of just 2, needs some ruling and the baby pokemon like Tyrogue are a bit too good.
I instantly knew that number 1 spot. As a child I never understood the effect but know I guess it can work well
Lt surge card can be used to turn any useless item into a free retreating promotion after a knock out.
Blaine’s Quiz never stood a chance in the meta. Even if the payoff was good, it would just force every Pokemon player to memorize every Pokémon’s height, and would eventually fall off. It’s a fun card though!
Wait, if Blaine's Quiz returns itself to your hand and original rules allowed as many trainer cards per turn as you wanted, couldn't you theoretically just use it repeatedly with every pokemon card in your hand for potential ludicrous advantage? Granted you'd run the risk of both giving away your strategy and also giving your *opponent* ludicrous advantage but still
It doesn't return to you
@@freddiesimmons1394 ...oh wait. I misread 'the' as 'this' lol
For those who don’t know, Misty had a rebellious Gyarados in the main manga adaptation of Pokémon.
Super energy removal was banned in our LGS pokemon tournaments. We also had a house rule that as long as your action didn't make you draw a card, flip a coin, look into your deck or something else similar, you could always comeback one step behind, like cancel a card you just played to do something else. Really helped the younger players.
We played where both the energy removal cards were banned for a bit. The first gen card game became a lot more fun honestly because of it. Felt like you could actually play a wider arrange of decks instead of big basic with cheap attacks.
I think it works out to 2/3 chance of dealing 10 to you, 1/3 chance of opponent. Flipping first makes this card rough though.
I definitely had that Porygon. I thought it was useless. I guess I wasn't far wrong.
Honestly, this Ditto's Poke Power reminds me a LOT of its hidden ability in game: Imposter.
Charity could be good in some weird alternate universe where there's some Wobuffet-style Destiny Bond or Mirror Move card tearing up tournament tables, and you're trying to lock the opponent out with some OP attack that has a strong status or control effect, but unfortunately deals damage which is a liability in this fake fictional scenario.
Then this type of card could be a good combo for that nonexistent meta. It's a backwards way of designing cards. Like printing niche answers to nonexistent problems.
Especially annoying that it's main use case is as a hate card for a hate card. (Mr. Mime)
Neat analysis video! Thanks for uploading!
I have a singular copy of the 99 print ditto card and I like throwing it in fringe expanded decks for fun
The most important question is "how does ditto's transform interact with blaines quiz 1?"
The stupidest part about Porygon is how they didn't give it a free retreat cost. The idea clearly seems to be that you can use Conversion 2 before Conversion 1 to not have Porygon be a free prize card for your opponent while still changing the opponent's weakness. But as clunky as that idea already is in the first place, the fact you constantly have to discard an energy to retreat makes it all the more clunky, since each turn you spend re-attaching an energy to Porygon is a turn you're not preparing another Pokemon, and it also makes your deck require more energy than it could otherwise function with.
Porygon in the TCG was the True Strike cantrip of Pokemon.
Although Misty's Gyrados sucks, I like that the card reflects the anime. I remember Misty's Gyrados was highly rebellious in Pokémon Chronicles.
"Yeah I'm a Pokémon Master." "Ok how long is Pikachu?" "U-Uh, is that head to feet or head to tail-" "ANSWER THE DAMN QUIZ!"
If your opponent managed to answer blaine quiz 1 correctly, just give him 2 prize cards man. Who the hell managed to remember the length of pokemons??
No base set Electrode? KOing your own Pokemon and attaching it as an energy card is so weird they didn't even try to code it into the video games.
Same with the Fossil Ditto, which isn't in the Game Boy video games either. Instead, they put in a different Ditto that's exclusive to the Game Boy games, due to it making use of RNG for its transformation effect.
Top 10 competitive promo cards
Blane's quiz 1 returns itself to your hand allowing you to draw 2 and then do it again on a later turn.
It returns the revealed card
@@freddiesimmons1394 Ah I see I miss read that. Never mind then lol.
stopped watching at porygon since this guy is just talking out his ass lol
Weird card for me is Misty’s Duel simply for mentioning playing Rock-Paper-Scissors and having a clause if you don’t know how to play it. Sure, I know the intricacies of the Pokémon TCG, but not the simplicity of Rock-Paper-Scissors.
charity looks like the designers way of saying we hate mr mime
Id be curious to know how Trash Exchange would function in something like MTG in any era.
Mybtrain of thought was like at number 2: ok but if the opponent has a mewtwo and sees my ditto on my bench, cause i still need to attach energies he can play around it maybe. Is there any way to attach energy without himbrealising what it is?
"Numer 1 spot: Surge's Secret Plan"
Oh yeah its all coming together
Ditto's "and so on"
What is the piano piece in the background? It's very nice.
Porygon was not bad to set up Pokémon like Exeggcutor or Kangaskhan on your bench.
Imagine being a kid, getting to open a new pack, something you can rarely do, and the rare card you get is charity.
I was that kid.
To be fair the downside to Misty’s Gyarados hardly ever hit for me and I loved the card
In before Jason Klaczynski makes a top tier meta deck using Porygon.
I remember owning digger! :D
We actually play ALL bench pokemon are face down unless retreated, using a PP, etc., so #1 does nothing for us.
weirdest thing about the ninetales card is that it isn't a ditto imo
The weird thing about it is that it's one of the few times shape-shifting has been associated with Ninetails, despite it being based on a creature notorious for shape-shifting.
I would run Ditto in my Blastoise deck. Many times I played other opponents with their own Blastoise decks. If they got Blastoise out first, I would put Ditto in the active position juat to rain dance water eneegy on my Fossil Articuno.
i wish i really collected these cards, wouldnt care about the game, but just to collect them, i wish if i could do it all over again, i would
Charity would be decent in modern trap strategies.
Charity is the official "homie drop" card
Couldn’t Lt. Surge’s Secret Plan be used to waste your opponent’s attack on a decoy while you set up?
I genuinely forgot you had this channel. But that’s probably cause I play vgc pokemon not tcg
Where was Misty's Duel? It is the strangest card I've ever seen in any card game, not just Pokemon.
I love digger art and i don t know why
I have an idea for a video that would branch all of your TCG channels Mr. Logs.
How about making an analysis of the first sets of the big three TCGs and then make a competition on who has the most of some specific kinds of cards you'd see on a game's infancy.
I have almost no experience with Pokemon and i know i little bit of MtG so my examples may be weird.
No future sight cards (Ancestral Recall, Pot of Greed), wacky card design (Chaos Orb, Yu-Jo Friendship), ruling nightmares (Lion's Eye Diamond, Last Turn), walls of text/bizarre wording (Chains of Mephistopheles, Toon Dark Magician Girl), do nothing cards not just plain bad (Great Wall, Zone Eater).
Love your vids, 🌕🕷
You have a better than 1/4 chance for winning digger..its 1/4 + 1/16 + 1/64 + ... AKA the sum of 1/2^(2n) for n from 1 to infinity.
Ditto was great until Baby Pokemon came out
Tldr: Flip a coin until you lose
Trash Exchange would be so Broken in Yugioh that it would get banned immediatly xd