GRcade

Karl wrote:

Wrathy wrote:

Karl wrote:

Wrathy wrote:

Sadly I already waste much more money than I’m proud of on Pokemon cards every month... so I’m unlikely to acquire this.

How much does it cost to stay competitive in the pro Pokemon card scene? Just curious.

At my level? Couple of hundred a month. Travel to events and keeping up to date with the new sets (they have an annoying habit of releasing money cards every three months) along with the heroin-esque rush of buying packs (it's just glorified gambling) adds up.

Still, it stopped me drinking and kept me relatively mentally stable when I was out of work, so it's a price worth paying.

Cool, it seems expensive but I guess anything that involves travelling around to various tournaments would be a similar outlay. And it sounds like you get a lot of hours of enjoyment out of it!

You mentioned in another thread that you're hoping to compete internationally, right? Good luck!

Yeah that’s exactly it, anyone who plays sports for a team or whatever is probably paying around the same. If I had a little more self control I could probably save money by not buying sealed product but as it stands I’m okay. :p

And yup, probably be next season (from September) before I step up but I just won my first big tournament at the weekend which puts the World Championships within reach. I would need four more wins at that size of event over the next five/six months to do it which is possible but unlikely. I’m definitely going to the Uk Regional championship in June though

Johnny Ryall wrote:Is there a phone version of tcg? I'd be more likely to play that than hearthstone

Kind of, there’s a computer/tablet version which some people with androids can anger on their phones and stuff, though it’s not officially on there. I found the online game really tough to get into because you can’t really buy the good cards either through grinding for packs and getting mad lucky or by using codes from boosters to trade a bunch of sealed packs in the game for singles. Lots of fun once you do get set up tho!

Peaked at Blue for me.

Find it more inaccessible nowadays with the 10,000 pokemon and eggs and seeds and all that gooseberry fool

I find the opposite really. The 3DS versions are all easy to the point of being trivial. There's a lot of quality of life changes you take for granted, in my recent replay of Red I couldn't catch Moltres because my box was full and I wasn't about to reload. None of the moves have descriptions either.

I bought Black off eBay. It's definitely a legit copy as it's boxed but it's covered in sticky gunk and is the first DS game I've had fail to read without being cleaned. Gross. Wet wipe sorted it. The strawberry float do people do with these things dip them in Fanta?

I really loved Pokemon, growing up with it. Gen 1, 2, 4 (especially 4 with the online and everything), then I fell out of love with it for a bit. X/Y renewed my interest in it slightly and then I really took to Sun and Moon. Mostly just the games mind as I'm not really interested in playing the card game. But I occasionally play Showdown with a friend and just today I checked out that Pokemon MMO (Pokemon Revolution Online) which looked pretty cool. Now I'm pretty interested in what that Switch game will be like.

The funny thing about the card game is that there are so many Pokemon I totally missed from Gen 5/6/7 which are actually pretty good cards. So I end up in a position where I dont even recognise the strawberry floating Pokemon I'm playing. I didnt even know Buzzwole has four legs (wtf is that about?) and I only learned about Drampa because he was strawberry floatin OP as all hell for a while. There are too many of the strawberry floating things now, I just want my team of Gyarados / Charizard / Dugtrio / etc and leave me alone >_>

Twitch Plays Pokemon was one crazy event. Still never completed a Pokemon game.

Rocsteady wrote:Peaked at Blue for me.

Find it more inaccessible nowadays with the 10,000 pokemon and eggs and seeds and all that gooseberry fool

Madness. Gold and Silver were better in everyway.

Black and White were probably the best out of the newest ones. An all-new Pokedex and no old ones until you finished the game. Meant you weren't catching bloody Ghastlys and Metapods for the fiftieth time.

The problem is now that the Pokémon games don't have much lustre beyond seeing the new ones, and they account for about 10% of the total Pokedex. The games aren't challenging enough to be satisfying to beat, they don't prepare you for any PVP battles online and the story is gooseberry fool.

The first pokemon I owned was Pokemon Red, I got that near release and my best friend at the time got Blue, it was great trading and seeing who was further along in the game, it made it both competitive but also sort of co-op. I have basically brought all the main pokemon games from that point on and a few of the side titles.

My daughter took a real shine to pokemon when she was little and I actually used it to encourage her to learn to read, she started learning to read because she wanted to play pokemon on her own. She is almost 16 now and is far more into Pokemon than I am. I gave her all my old cards but she has also collected her own and has quiet a large number, shes played the card game with friends and at clubs and was starting to look at competing but has shelved it for now as she wants to concentrate on her GCSE's. Ever since she has been old enough whenever Pokemon has come out shes had one of the two games and I have had the other and we have played through them together, trading and racing each other so its been a really big deal for me. We also went to see the latest movie I choose you in the cinema together.

I enjoyed up to Gen 2. I did complete Fire Red, Crystal and Heart Gold. Ruby/Sapphire and beyond never interested me really.

My sister was far more into it than I was, but she didn't have much luck with them. Her first Pokemon game was Pokemon Diamond (For the Game Boy Colour. Not sure why Gamestation had it.) and later on her battery died as she was catching Kyogre in Sapphire, wiping the save completely.

And let's not forget that time in the TV series where people got guns and Meowth dresses like a detective from an old film.

I haven't touched the franchise since the fourth generation, but I played every game up until then and loved them all.

The only reason I haven't been back is because each one has ended up taking 60 to 80 hours from my life, not including the hours spent researching Bulbapedia and creating complex spreadsheets to ensure most efficient TM usage, best type coverage, no weaknesses unaccounted for, etc.

So I've been mopping up all the post game quests for the games I own and Jesus Christ I forgot how awful the main area in X/Y is. The main bulk of the post game quest is there and it's just constant running without actually seeing where you are going and no camera control. Guarantee the majority of people use taxis to get around that hell hole.

After Christmas Name Change wrote:I haven't touched the franchise since the fourth generation, but I played every game up until then and loved them all.

The only reason I haven't been back is because each one has ended up taking 60 to 80 hours from my life, not including the hours spent researching Bulbapedia and creating complex spreadsheets to ensure most efficient TM usage, best type coverage, no weaknesses unaccounted for, etc.

You should dip back in at some point if that endgame time was the issue. They've streamlined a lot of the process in terms of team building, with easier breeding, infinite use of TM's etc. Or has been previously mentioned, Showdown is a fun tool that would let you test teams out of game before you built them in-game.

Showdown eh? Is that an in game feature or an app / site?