This actually happened a few days ago.
Mary is a staple in the vintage format “Base-Neo Point Buy,” it’s extremely popular in Japan and gaining popularity in NA. There’s rumors that a big NA store is behind it that plans to start promoting these tournaments.
This is the first and only buyout that has occurred so far, so if anyone is interested in playing this format I’d suggest now would be a good time to start gathering staples. There’s a retro Pokémon discord that’s been playing point buy for several months called Pokémon 1999. Very friendly people and very resourceful.
I’m personally excited for this. Not for the buyout, but for the emergence of this format. Since it’s based on a point buy system, the meta is balanced and it allows for great competitive gameplay. This is way better than playing other vintage formats where everything is broken (or solved). It’s also nice to have a niche in a hobby where you can actually play the cards and be safe from them depreciating.
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I also forgot to mention there’s a huge point buy tournament happening in japan soon. I’ve heard people mention they’re flying out to it. This is most likely the biggest catalyst for the English buyout.
I never ran Mary in any vintage decks. If the format is 1999-2001 or so, why play Mary over Bill? Both draw 2 cards, but Mary has ya shuffling 2 cards back into the deck
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@eeveeteam I don’t know any vintage formats, but maybe it’s to preserve resources before you discard via Oak?
@TheVisioN Out of curiosity, what is the Point Buy format? Tried looking it up, but the keywords aren’t that great.
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Mary sets up Professor oak. Shuffling two back in is crucial to preserve cards before oaking. Bill is rarely ran in point buy since you have both oak and elm.
Standard base-Neo didn’t run Mary because it was a format dominated by cleffa. Cleffa in point buy costs you 2 points and you only have 8 to spend.
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Got it, I figured there was something I was missing. That is a good combo to have.
Here is the English adopted version that we use in the discord. It’s different from the Japanese point buy format slightly due to their legality of vending machine promos that did not have English prints.
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Cool, thanks for the breakdown! I’ll have to look up what a number of these cards actually do (and see if their semi-brokeness is obvious on first glance).
If pokemon made an offical base to eseries format, I’d be soooo happy lol. They’d 100% have to implement bans and restrictions to avoid the cancer decks.
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The comeback of an old retro block? I’m sold! Will definitely build a deck to play when I have time. Do people play this online with something similar to (MTG) SpellTable?
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I guess Mary was overlooked because Oak was rotated out not that long after Neo Genesis was released (ok, half a year actually is a decent amount of time as far as TCG formats go). No point in playing Mary alongside Cleffa or Elm.
On another note, what’s with Unown U?! I’d have thought that one was pretty much unplayable, is there some devious deck idea that makes use of it.
Addendum: interestingly, Mary is available on Cardmarket (EU alternative to TCGPlayer) from 0.08 Euro.
Tcgone is available but I don’t think there’s much action on it. The discord I mentioned above runs their leagues via webcam.
Me and my friends sometimes play vintage format tournaments. No one plays Mary.
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This is very interesting to me because I still have all my WOtC cards and multiples of most. I was getting ready to sell alot of them.
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Take a look a Fossil Aerodactil’s Ability along with Black star promo #8’s (Mew) attack
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I probably will sell alot of them
So…outside of these cards, all other within the set range are allowed and don’t count towards these points? Or is it something else?
Correct, everything else not pictured is 0 points (must have an English print, base-Neo, English black star promos acceptable as well)
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