Pokemon TCG History - 1999 Competitive Meta

are you ready to be the ultimate Pokemon master trainer then join the Pokemon Trading Card Game lead you'll do awesome activities learn Wicked strategies earn cool trainer Badges and meet new friends as you begin your journey to become a Pokemon master trainer to find out more about the Pokemon Trading Card Game League log on to wizards.com go for it and be a master in January 1999 the Pokemon Trading Card Game debuted in the US with the release of base set stores couldn't keep the product on the shelves as fans rushed to open packs and pull their favorite Pokemon but as these fans opened more and more boosters they began to realize this wasn't just about pulling their favorites there was a game Behind these cards I'm the Ruby retro historian and this is the story of the first era of competitive Pokemon [Music] thank you [Music] [Music] thank you simply named base set Pokemon's first set contained 102 unique cards featuring 69 Pokemon 26 trainers and seven types of energy what's exciting about this first era of Pokemon is that cards from subsequent expansions Breathe new life into base set upon release so many of the cards players first focused on were not the ones that later would become Power Cards but I'm getting ahead of myself let's first look at the important cards that made up the base set only format each of the three starters received cards with powerful attacks and Pokemon powers Venusaur could deal a reasonable 60 damage and was able to move your grass energy around to maintain a steady stream of attackers Charizard dealt massive damage and didn't care what type of energy was attached to it thanks to its power but the best was Blastoise with its iconic rain dance ability to continually dump water energy onto your Pokemon other iconic cards included Alakazam which wasn't for attacking but moved damage around on your Pokemon Chansey with its massive HP and playability with double colorless energy and Zapdos which like Charizard dealt massive damage for a basic Pokemon in synergized with electrodes bizap power to fulfill its large energy costs players were no doubt excited to see some of their favorites given a chance to succeed in gameplay however they quickly realized that these cards paled in comparison to two Pokemon who would prove to be the kings of the base set format Hitmonchan and Electabuzz at first glance Hitmonchan is such a simple card jab does 20 for one fighting energy and special punch does 40 for three energy neither with an effect but when few Basic Pokemon had more than 50 HP and were attacking for 10 for one energy cost Hitmonchan proved more aggressive and efficient though weak to fighting types like Hitmonchan Electabuzz dealt 10 damage with paralysis chance for one lightning energy and could deal 40 for only two energy again Electabuzz was everything Hitmonchan was aggressive and efficient with both having 70 HP their one energy attack costs made it easy to Splash both in the same deck and leave room for the plethora of trainer cards base set gave us speaking of trainer cards base set gave us all variety of strong ones each could be played during your turn without restriction other than the printed cost because trainer types like supporters did not yet exist staple rares included computer surge which gave the player unlimited access to the deck and it was so strong that it was later reprinted as a one allowed per Deck card item finder that allowed the player to get back key trainer cards later in the game last which disrupted both players Hands by removing all their trainer cards and super energy removal that removed two of your opponents energy cards for the cost of one of yours that's balanced right other powerful cards included scoop up to pick up damaged or hard to move Basic Pokemon Pokemon Trader which functions like Pokemon communication trading one revealed Pokemon for another and Pokemon breeder the precursor to rare candy that let you skip a Pokemon's middle stage next The Uncommon trainers featuring The all-powerful Professor Oak that allowed you to discard your hand and draw seven new cards Defender and plus power modified how much damage you dealt or took energy retrieval recovered energy cards lost in your opponent's barrage of energy removal cards what may surprise a lot of modern players is that many powerful cards were Commons bill allowed you to draw two cards for no drawback trading one card for two is incredibly powerful on its own but when you can play Bill only to draw another bill and keep the train going now that's incredible also strong is energy removal which removed an energy attached to an opposing Pokemon for no cost when you consider during the game's history that people played the coin flip version of this card you know this was too powerful continuing with the theme Here gust of wind was a no drawback means to attack weaker benched Pokemon that worked automatically no flip required lastly we have the most obvious effect in the set switch notably there was no great way to recover Pokemon in this era only trainers and energy cards though revive could grab back Pokemon it only targeted Basics and cut their HP in half when revived this simply was not worth the deck space back in these days dark steel and fairy R.I.P didn't exist yet so the only Basic Energy cards players had to work with were grass fire water lightning psychic and fighting rounding out base set was the classic double colorless energy card the first Stacks contained a similar spread of powerful trainer cards combined with Pokemon like Electabuzz and Hitmonchan as their attackers there is no doubt that players quickly realized that these were the best Pokemon to run and results from the time indicate that now I want to be very clear these lists are anything but refined many decks ran over 20 energy cards it's easy now to look back at modern deckless repositories like Jason klosinski's blog or ptcg archive both Linked In the description below and laugh at how bad we were back then and how obvious good lists should have been but you have to remember this was early on in the game players only had had cards for a matter of months most were playing with what they had cracked from packs limited game knowledge and supply of cards definitely showed these early months but part of the fun of card game history is seeing lists as they were created and improved and meta games as they developed not our modern takes on them with that in mind let's take a look at some decks from the era and how they progressed early on players were still experimenting with cards other than Hitmonchan and Electabuzz a look at killer reports on pojo from early 1999 indicates players were willing to try just about anything during the game's first months even trying to make cards like B drill and Ninetales work one of the earliest Dax players caught on to was rain dance William Hung yes the William Hung from American Idol took home first place at an April 1999 tournament with his rain dance deck featuring Gyarados a similar list took home another tournament around that time as well and there are reports of rain dance decks popping up with dugong in place of Gyarados because seal had more HP than the lowly Magikarp however dugong suffered from the same issue players would associate with Blastoise a weakness to lightning and you know what that means [Music] Gyarados was actually the safer option given its grass weakness that is if you could avoid losing turn one from a carp start Haymaker was the Undisputed bass stack the combination of Electabuzz and Hitmonchan was just too much for most of the early format to handle a lot of the early lists played around with the cards used finding success encountering other Haymaker decks with psychic type attackers like the variant running jinx players would also experiment with including Mewtwo to try and take advantage of hitmonchan's psychic type weakness but this was soon dropped in favor of more consistent builds given the lack of energy search and format to find that third energy type for the most part players stuck to playing four copies of Hitmonchan and Electabuzz around four total copies of far-fetched and Doduo to resist opposing hitmonchan's Jabs with -30 as well as the high HP Chansey to tank several hits from Electabuzz as you can see the only real Variety in these lists are the trainers that were run but that's honestly more of a symptom of limited access to cards than it is with players trying to get creative now it may come as a shock to players that the famed Mulligan Mewtwo was not actually a viable deck the premise was simple continue using barrier until your opponent decked out before you did the issue well a lot of smart players were running energy removal from what I can find this deck while rumored had absolutely no success during this time outside of rain dance and Haymaker a lot of the deck's early players focused on just wouldn't have been viable had the tournament scene been more fleshed out I don't think players running Alakazam and Venus or in the same deck or Magneton backed with psychic attackers were going anywhere fast in this era again a lot of this is just a result of the limited card Supply and lack of a singles Market at the time that said it's really exciting to see players even from the game's earliest days being so willing to push the boundaries of the meta and try whatever cards were in their binders thankfully in revisiting this format Jason klosinski has presented a few additional archetypes that will not totally viable against Haymaker are certainly better positioned than a Gyarados nine tails deck or whatever that conglomeration of cards was meant to do the zapodos focuses on loading the board with electrode that KO themselves to attach as a special energy card to Zapdos that provides two of any energy type hit opponents with last to take away their removals and mow down opposing low damaging Pokemon Alakazam Gyarados focuses on stalling the opponent out moving damage around the board and consistently healing with Pokemon Center Alakazam the champ does something similar but focuses on dealing damage from time to time via machamp's ability so you can stall and ping them straight into submission unfortunately all of these decks suffer from running a lot of low HP Pokemon making them easy prey to Haymaker and its quad plus Powers so it makes sense that early players gravitated so heavily towards the Haymaker archetype Hitmonchan and Electabuzz were meta-defining in The Game's first few months but that would all change in mid-june 1999 with the release of the first expansion set jungle foreign [Music] jungle is one of the smallest expansions in the game offering only 48 new cards Wizards of the Coast who distributed the set in the U.S made all rare cards have non-hollow alternate Arts just to increase the set size to 64. what jungle lacked in size it made up for in its impact to The Meta no new energy cards debuted in the set and the only trainer was the iconic Pokeball so what made this set so important Scyther a 70 HP free retreater with an attack able to utilize any energy type especially double colorless was incredibly strong but scyther's biggest asset was its fighting resistance allowing it to completely wall opposing hitmonchans and slow the Haymaker onslaught in the same vein Mr mime also slowed the game down forcing attackers to deal no more than 20 damage to it or else steal no damage at all while meditate could take a bit to deal big damage its invisible wall power ensured it would remain safe until then comboed with the previously useless potion card Mr mime could stay around for some time and maybe even turn into Mr rhyme await wrong generation jungle was notable for completing some of the evolutionary lines missing from base set for example base set contained Ponyta but no Rapidash well not amazing ponytun Rapidash gave players a fire type attacker to counter opposing fireweek scythers for the cost of a mere double colorless energy [Music] jungle also contained the first clefable card breathing new life into Clefairy from base set using metronome for one energy would prove incredibly strong against Pokemon requiring multiple energy to deal big damage Kangaskhan gave Alakazam decks a big HP Pokemon other than Chansey to move damage to with damage Swap and Kang doubled as a great starter with its fetch attack to dig deeper into the deck but these colorless Pokemon paled in comparison to the other meta-defining card from the set Wigglytuff though weak to fighting and a slower stage one attacker it featured easy to power up attacks due to their colorless cost Wigglytuff also reached damage numbers only previously achievable for big energy costs or on stage twos fill your bench and you're dealing 60 damage keep adding plus power and the only Pokemon you can't KO are Charizard and Chansey interestingly some of the best cards in the set were overlooked back in 1999. Jason klosinski notes that players miss the potential of dodrio to continue cycling between attackers as well as Lickitung one of the best Pokemon in these early sets the weak to fighting its 90 HP demanded Haymaker find a plus power to deal the additional damage needed to take jab or special punch Kos it also made for one of the best early ways to stall players to deck out with its tongue wrap attack forcing players to dig for their switch cards while paralyzed in such a grindy slow scyther-based format would have proven powerful even though our friends dodrio and Lickitung didn't quite make it into deckless at the time we have some good variety to go back and look at shortly after the release of jungle Kevin Nguyen took down a tournament with his rain band stat going 6-0 it ran a tech 1-1 clefable line to catch opposing players off guard and look to capitalize on haymaker's low damage output mid to late game by running super potions to heal away 40 damage for the cost of one energy add in lots of consistency cards and removals and this deck looks pretty good the one strange thing is that the deck lacks Pokemon breeders instead opting to run a thick Wartortle line perhaps so he wouldn't have to dig early on to find breeder and Blastoise in the same hand at the same tournament a master's side event Was Won by Haymaker player Andreas Rodriguez what was notable about his deck was that it completely cut Hitmonchan in favor of Scyther signaling we're deck building during this era was headed while the many other choices in the list are a bit suspect like running 24 energy or still running far-fetched it's clear Andreas read the room and knew Scyther was the best way to counter opposing Haymakers running Hitmonchan a few weeks later another Haymaker deck took home a local event again opting to cut Hitmonchan entirely for Scyther looking to try and utilize scyther's sword stance attack the deck had a heavier focus on grass types even including the seldom used Nidoran male from base set to try and hit heads to deal big damage while Pokemons still didn't have an official tournament scene Gen Con ran a rather large Pokemon tournament that year Tyler grun took home both the Saturday and Sunday tournaments with a tucked out Haymaker list running Jigglypuff to deal with Mr mime yet running no Wigglytuff he also leaned heavily on card Advantage running Kangaskhan as well as Max cows of both removal cards clearly he knew what this format was all about as the summer went on deckless turned into what many players will undoubtedly recognize as the iconic or cookie cutter Haymaker Trio of Hitmonchan Electabuzz and Scyther results from events demonstrated that players recognize this offensive core as the keys to any viable deck instead of making separate decks around clefable or Wigglytuff they Jam them all in there with the rest of Haymaker finally starting to cut energy cards down to around 20. trainer lines are still dictated by what players had access to hence the absence of heavier counts of computer search item finder and last non-cookie cutter versions of Haymaker involve switching out Electabuzz instead of Hitmonchan for Tauros to try and deal big damage with Rampage the best speculation I have is that this player's meta was devoid of Hitmonchan and he wanted to punish opposing Electabuzz poking his bull another Haymaker cut Electabuzz entirely replacing the lightning energy with grass and adding three Ponyta with dces to try and score big damage on opposing scythers talk about horsing around Scott Gearhart one of the great minds of this early era dominated a room of almost 100 trainers with his potpourri deck which featured three energy types almost unheard of at the time his list is unique in that it was basically Haymaker with an added Trio of Mr mine to keep the pace of game slow and more easily handle attackers like Wigglytuff he was definitely onto something with his meta countering lists capitalizing on the emerging cookie cutter Haymaker lists using a similar list Ryan trong dominated his locals in September placing in the top two every week that month potpourri was on the rise as the dominant force in local scenes but with many players having limited cards and limited access to results and lists from elsewhere they continued running what worked Haymaker one of the final lists from the base jungle era is an odd take on Haymaker called tri-color that definitely is as anti-meta as it comes running Rattata to counter Mr mimes and attackers of all types but water this player took down a 50-person tournament preying on unsuspecting players by hitting for weaknesses against all major attackers in his report he writes electabuzz-dominated Blastoise rattata's resistance took out an Alakazam stall deck and Magmar easily dealt with scythers well we can question some of the cards included he definitely had a strategy in mind that he executed to a T after a summer of Haymakers many players were undoubtedly excited for the fossil expansion releasing in October of 1999. [Music] success my first Pokemon fossil s don't get it fossil only contains 62 cards but like jungle it featured Hollow and non-hollow variants of all rare cards so it really only added 47 cards to the game but fossil marked the Milestone of having all original 150 Pokemon in print sorry Mew you'll have to wait just a little bit longer though small fossil added multiple competitive cards to players decks rain dance finally reached its peak with the release of two strong basic water attackers Articuno and Lapras Articuno had 70 HP strong big damage attacks and boasted resistance to Hitmonchan lapras's water gun attack was essentially a weaker version of blastoise's hydro pump but finally gave the deck an answer for Mr mime other than attacking with Squirtle another strong water type was Psyduck whose headache attack shut down opponent's trainers in a format with only trainers and no supporters this was incredibly strong to delay your opponent while setting up your own strategy behind the confused duck Alakazam received tentacle allowing it to move 20 damage a turn to Tentacool before adding tentacle back to your hand essentially healing damage right off the board Haymaker and potpourri received new toys and energy search to seek out the energy type needed and Magmar another high HP low-cost attacker whose moves had powerful secondary effects causing attacks to fail or poison maltrace breathed life into the stall archetype paired with Chansey this deck focused on using Wildfire to deck your opponents out before they could take all six prize cards fossil also contains some of the strongest Powers the game had seen to date Aerodactyl stopped all Pokemon evolution ditto literally became the opposing Pokemon giving players and judges a headache Dragonite could switch itself with the active Pokemon from your bench Gengar could move your opponent's damage counters and Haunter could avoid attacks altogether with a coin flip best of all was muck whose power turned off all other powers in play except for mucks stopping decks like rain dance in their tracks upon fossil's release most players opted to keep doing what had been working and that was plain Haymaker the first known tournament with fossil legal Was Won by a basic Haymaker Deck with a 2-2 dodrio line included finally the three-headed bird was getting the credit it deserved other players moved away from the original Haymaker Trinity to try and use the new Magmar card probably to try and counter fireweek scythers while eroding opposing wigglytuffs ditto variants of Haymaker also started popping up opting to cut Hitmonchan and play Heavy double colorless counts to try and abuse ditto's ability to make energy attach the energy of any type tournament reports from October indicate players stuck to what they knew rain dance and Haymaker with the occasional psychic deck thrown in for good measure but deck building was turned on its head in mid-november when Mewtwo Strikes Back premiered at box offices and gave moviegoers new promo cards while three of the four were nothing to write home about one would change the direction of the game entirely Mewtwo boasting 70 HP a big damage attack but more importantly energy absorption which allowed the player to recover energy cards from the discard and attach them to it Mewtwo is the strongest card the game had seen yet it made it safe to burn energy cards with your discard cost trainers knowing you would be able to recover them and power up Mewtwo in just one turn it also weakened energy removal because the energy taken off could be absorbed right back immediately upon release Scott Gearhart used his iconic sponge deck featuring the new Mewtwo to take home a tournament win using High counts of bills and Oaks to plow through his deck he all but guaranteed he could pull off a turn one energy absorption requiring the opponent to react immediately or risk losing the game variants of sponge started popping up all over the country Rico reines took home a tournament using an aggro psychic version of the deck focusing on a fast Mewtwo for himself and cards like Lickitung and Mr mime to slow down opposing Mewtwo notably this is finally a deck list from 1999 that had under 20 energy cards people were learning is Mewtwo continued its assault on the metagame Haymaker deck started cutting the psychic weak Hitmonchan altogether opting to instead run Electabuzz Scyther and Magmar while some Hitmonchan based versions still placed they ceased winning tournaments like they had done earlier in the year additionally a new version of Haymaker emerged set on running only eight Pokemon 12 energies and the rest trainers that deck was called Insanity because of its rapid play style that was designed to win the game in the early turns hearkening back to the early days of the game Phil H took down a tournament with only Electabuzz and Hitmonchan running through his deck to last his opponents before jabbing thundershocking and thunder punching them into submission likely recognizing the deck's weakness to opposing Scyther Calvin Jameson opted to run Magmar over Hitmonchan winning his tournament with the same strategy lass was just too strong wrong of a card when your opponent hadn't even played a turn yet instead of opting to add Mewtwo to the deck potpourri continued its anti-metaways running Mr mime and Magmar to try and slow down early Mewtwo pressure as well as psychic resistant attackers like Lickitung and Jigglypuff well Scott Gearhart had moved on from his initial creation to his new sponge deck Ryan Tron continued refining potpourri and dominating his local scene though diminished rain dance was still a force in The Meta with Brady Watkins winning a tournament with the deck finally cutting Wartortle in favor of breeder this list focus on what Blastoise did best getting a fast turtle into play and flooding your articunos and Lapras with water energy Wigglytuff was also still around thanks in part to its psychic resistance Ned M's list is proof that players were finally starting to understand deck building moving away from 20 energy and running more important trainers like item finder this was thanks in no small part to websites and magazines like the legendary pojo finally getting up and running for competitive players though still without Lickitung Stahl started notching results in local scenes capitalizing on chansey's resistance to the psychic type Mewtwo winning back-to-back weeks at locals this energy heavy build focused on Milling your opponent with Mall Trace sitting behind Mewtwo using barrier and hitting your opponent with a barrage of strong defensive trainers you have to remember in these days fossils gave up no prizes for being ko'd Clefairy doll also did not count as a KO for prize purposes with players likely not aware how to play around stall yet and being used to oaking for whatever they needed it's easy to see how this archetype could run rampant on an unaware player base the fabled cleaner deck also popped up during this time cleaner focused on using Lickitung Magmar coughing and Tangela for early pressure while setting up an Arcanine behind them to clean up the board the deck was not top tier struggling with the presence of gust of wind and energy removals to slow it down but it's easy to see how an unsuspecting player might Overlook the Arcanine on the bench focusing on the coughing whittling away at its attackers until it was too late it's definitely a unique concept and it seems to have taken some players by surprise performing well for the deck's creator in January of 2000 players were finally treated to the 151st card at their local leagues finally obtaining the promo card Mew well no doubt players were excited to complete their pokedexes Mew was a long-awaited counter to Mewtwo players dealing 10 times the number of energy on the opposing Pokemon after an energy absorption all Mew needed to KO the psychic weak Mewtwo was a plus power following its release it was an immediate inclusion in Scott's sponge deck that he used to once again take down his locals I am curious as to why he chose to run one Gambler however players began transitioning away from potpourri Decks that were popular earlier in the format moving to sponge variants that capitalized on the new Mew card with many running heavy counts of ditto Wigglytuff started creeping back into decks making it into late stage potpourri variants as well as Haymaker Dax and started to recapture some of its earlier success undoubtedly players discovered that ditto's resistance to Mewtwo and its ability to use dces as two psychic energy was the best way to counter sponge decks this list was used in the last recorded Tournament of the base fossil era to win the whole event focusing solely on fighting types to deal with Electabuzz and colorless attackers to beat back opposing Mewtwo clearly this proved too much for his opponents to overcome well this list is perhaps not viable given what we know now of the base fossil format it's definitely one of the best I've seen while going through old tournament reports so I have to give credit where credit's due up to this point the only set to be released in 2000 was base set too a reprint of many of the original cards from base jungle and fossil by April players were clamoring for Change and with the arrival of April Showers so too blew the Winds of Change a new expansion was on the horizon and it would set the stage for one of the most degenerate formats the game would ever witness the game was about to get disruptive hey guys thanks so much for watching if you enjoyed learning more about the first year of the game and seeing the deckless players actually use during that time consider liking and subscribing so that we know you like this kind of content we're looking forward to presenting more on the years of retro Pokemon and are really excited for the next installment this is the Ruby retro historian signing off

Channel: Ruby Retro

Views: 207,168

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Id: w9Rz8uu98Z0

Length: 33min 14sec (1994 seconds)

Published: Fri Dec 02 2022