The BRUTAL Pokemon Board Game - Master Trainer

cainy said no fans HJ was here and today we're going to talk about a board game as you guys know I love board games absolutely cherish them I don't care if it's a family game or a hardcore game if I can bring something down to the table and make even remotely interesting strategy decisions I'm gonna have a good time that being said a lot of those classic games from our childhood also leave a pretty bitter taste by the time you're done with them I'm talking classic games like the salaries of Catan and monopoly these are all about horrible dice rolls that can just destroy you land on a wrong property or never get to buy properties and you're done the stuff you're trying to produce never gets rolled people roll sevens and destroy you you're done but today I want to talk about a game that is pained me even more than both of those two combined and believe it or not to go there we get to visit the world of Pokemon this is Pokemon master trainer and it will destroy you right off the bat pokemon master trainer was compelling to me as a kid because it just had so much stuff the huge map of Kantos your board tons of item and event cards based on things from the games and locks I mean lots of unique pokemon chips there's a chip for every single first generation Pokemon 150 colorful coins for you to collect trade slam oh wait that was pogs but in short because pogs were so popular and pokey Nam was so popular this game was just really appealing to kids in the 90s unfortunately one thing I barely did in the 90s was actually playing his game correctly in the same way that a lot of kids never actually played the real Pokemon Trading Card Game with their own cards and growing up most of my friends just made up the rules as they went this one no Twilight Imperium but it is a mildly complicated game for kids to play and the adults that were able to comprehend all those rules didn't want to play the game because they didn't understand a thing about Pokemon her evolution lines for the few of us that did learn the rules from front to back though we quickly learned that we had opened Pandora's box Pokemon master trainer while charming and cute on the exterior is a cruel chaotic long game where players consistently backstab each other with no mercy players have the choice of playing as ash ash Ketcham Takashi Garry's rival this kid and the guy from the anime that looks a little bit like red just like the main franchise players go on their journey from Pallet Town with a starter Pokemon to help them battle and capture a team on the long road to becoming a master trainer because this game is for up to 6 players they had to take a few liberties and adding the starter Pokemon beyond the classic 4 if that Bulbasaur Charmander squirtle Pikachu Meowth and Clefairy and it does matter which chip you randomly get because some of them are literally better than others each chip in this game has two values the big number is your power points your entire team must have at least 20 total points to enter the indigo plateau at the end of the game a small number below is your base attack value which represents strengthen battle for some cruel reason not all starters are created equal Bulbasaur Charmander and squirtle are the only starters with 4 attack but for some reason Bulbasaur get shafted and only has 4 power points instead of 5 but if you're stuck with any of the other three chips good luck they all have only 3 power points and 3 attacks that's off of that bonanno g3 are also the only starters that only evolved once giving them even less overall potential we'll get to the evolution mechanic in a second but in general this game immediately gives you a reason to despise the people around you the lowest power point player gets a very small concession prize by getting to go first and then you're off to the races the opening section is a game the calm before the storm is actually pretty enjoyable you start by rolling your dice in a linear path collecting items triggering event cards and attempting to collect Pokemon along the way once you hit Cerulean City the world opens up and you actually have the freedom to choose your direction of travel and hop between the different cities the core gameplay almost half of the spaces on the board are wild Pokemon that grow stronger the deeper you get in the game rising in strength from pink to green to blue to red and finally the mysterious yellow legendary chips when you land on a ketchup space you flip the token on over and it's up to capture it if you roll any of the numbers shown on the chip you add it to your team if not too bad it remains face-up for another player tippet Leeson egg event spaces pull a random card from the green deck which can activate anything from healing to legendary Pokemon encounters either spaces give you items which fill your maximum hand size of seven offering you tools that even captures battles and more both of these piles offer some absurd benefits that completely break the game typically only one trainer can take of the space at a time but any given point you pass by another player you have the option of stopping next to that player to offer a trade or declare a battle trading in this instance rarely works you offer a deal that doesn't include one of your starter Pokemon and the other player has the option to accept or decline it if they don't like it it's usually declined the far more sinister way to trade though the trade event card this one allows the team rocket's cool of trades you put a gun near Conan's head and force them to trade with you no matter how long I did the offer is magic art from you two it doesn't matter if you don't have a polka dot item in your hand to protect you from these cards your best Pokemon could be stolen from you at any moment battles are a bit more unique two players compete by throwing up a single Pokemon of their choice and entering a competition of numbers it's a battle for the highest overall number each player starts at the base attack strengths at the bottom of your Pokemon chip you'll also get a bonus if you have a complete evolution set plus three points if you have a set of two and plus five to feel the full set of three then each player can commit up to two attack bonus cards in secret finally each player rolls a die and adds the number that they rolled to their total power once you've added your ludicrous combination of cards chips and bonuses together the highest number wins to item cards at random from the losing players hand and the losing player has to flip their battler over losing it from their power point total until you've revived it believe it or not I think that's every major rule in the game you'll travel in a pack throughout the land searching far and wide powerful items events and Pokemon in your quest to twenty color points though there's plenty of rude exchanges through mandatory metals and trades but what really crushes your soul is the end game the indigo plateau Pokemon master trainer is a race you're scrambling to be the first player to collect 20 power points worth of Pokemon enter the plateau and be a member of the elite to claim victory the biggest problem is that the odds are stacked against you the entire time for starters just entering the indigo plateau doesn't buy you a challenge not yet entered a 14 space purgatory ring with only two openings that actually attempt the final challenge so it can take several turns before you even get to start once you finally land on an entry point your final battle begins with one of five randomly selected challenges this is it this is the Texas moment and that's when you realize this game doesn't mess around battling works the same your base power plus evolution bonuses plus up to two bonus cards plus one dime roll your opponent gets something like this here's how to get them there are two trainers stronger than her and two trainers weaker than her she's right in the middle I figured I'd show you guys the average these trainers get a base value a dive roll bonus and an additional bonus on top of what they rolled I'm gonna try and paint a realistic scenario for how the endgame usually goes you were lucky enough to find a legendary chip which has nine power well the maximum power you can get in the game comes through the evolution bonuses they're really hard to actually maintain because of all the mandatory trades which can break up your lines throughout the game as far as power cards go the best you can usually hope for is around eight total bonus power there are very few plus 5 and plus 4 cards in the deck so getting +8 from two cards is pretty dang good that will give you seventeen power plus whatever you rolled on your dime I'm going to say to the math here and just spell out what Agatha's results mean for you if she rolls a three for five or six in this situation it doesn't even matter what you roll you won't have a high enough total to beat her all four of those rules will give her twenty three or higher points long story short you could have a good offensive bonus a legendary Pokemon roll a six and still only have a one-in-three chance of beating the third-best endgame trainer it gets worse let's say you rolled a six that gives you 23 total power and Agatha rolls a measly one cutting her down to just 19 you win right high machine wait what what was the time machine this this insane car takes what little hope you once had and shatters it it allows any player to force every roll from anywhere they roll your own stuff re-roll your opponent's stuff we roll the Elite Four goal re-roll an attack movement and attempt to capture whatever you want the moment someone has won the game you're typically met with one or more of these bad boys instantly re rolling whatever gives you the biggest chance to lose winning against any of these trainers is already rough don't even get me started on Gary who averages a gargantuan 25.5 power after his roll but when your opponents can force a reroll at any given time smell you later everytime someone loses their pokemons knocked out they're kicked out of the indigo plateau and they have to try and roll their way back in all over again it's the Polka Hunger Games out there you're trying to save valuable time missions and +5 power cards but if you don't have a poke at all you might get battled forcing you to lose items from your hand the seven cart hands maximum prevents you from having everything you could ever want at once where maybe your best pokemon gets traded away and there's nothing you can do to block it the depth is stacked against you and if everyone is playing the wind you're going to be in for a long night may the odds be ever in your favor I played this game with a couple of bright friends recently and it ended up taking us four and a half hours before a player was crowned champion but despite its cruelty the insanely broken fourth train the time machine and the questionably powerful end game trainers of god is saying I usually have fun when I played this game you definitely need the right group to play it though one that's not going to take it too seriously one that's cool trash-talking and betrayal and one that knows the frustratingly long RNG heavy experience that they're about to jump into but with that kind of group of friends and a lot of time it's a blast it's a comedy of errors you'll laugh every time someone whips a big roll or gets time machined into the Shadow Realm you'll lose so many battles it'll begin to make sense that every single player is forced to play as Ash Ketchum and most of all you'll reminisce about the fun times that you've had through Pokemon over the years insanely questionable design aside it's just really fun to revisit Pallet Town and see what new adventure is in store for you it's deceptively kid-friendly deceptively friendly period it's not a friendly game but I've got to say every time that crisis may be open I actually end up having a pretty good time if you have a copy of this that's just been sitting around since the nineties er we have a friend of the copy of this I highly recommend checking it out you need to know what you're getting yourself into you need to just accept that it's going to be a treacherous backstabbing painful journey but if you're willing to accept that and you love Pokemon I think that you're actually going to have a pretty fine day with this one is different even the only game in the Pokemon Master Trainer set there's actually a second and third generation version of the game and both of them are slightly different from what I can tell if you guys enjoyed this video and it gets enough traction I would love to check those ones out as well in the future or really any other kind of Nintendo themed board game that exists there's a ton of them that I've never played I'm sure they are equal parts trash and treasure and I just think it would be fun I love board games and this was a really fun different style video to do I hope that you guys enjoyed it and as always I'll see you guys next time with more Nintendo content

Channel: TheJWittz

Views: 2,067,963

Rating: 4.9012547 out of 5

Keywords: pokemon, Pokémon, Gen 1, 150, 151, Original Pokemon, 90s, Board Game, Pogs, Collectable, Switch, 3DS, Sun Moon, Legendary, Classic

Id: zQKZ8XX9UBw

Length: 12min 14sec (734 seconds)

Published: Sat Apr 22 2017

Reddit Comments

[u/Crystal__]

That childhood is my game.

[u/TheFlashGod]

Haha I love that game XD

[u/ShinyRaticate]

They apparently have a sequel too