The History of Pokemon TCG Power Creep

Exploring why Pokemon trading cards have become much more powerful over time, and how this has affected the game.

I've always been curious about this topic and finally decided to try making a video about it. 100+ hours of re-scripting and editing later, it's finally done! I'll definitely be making better content in the future now that I've learned what the process is like. Enjoy!

These are the main resources I used for research and images:

[CambriaBold]

Team Rocket's Dark Pokemon generally had attacks with strong effects and/or relatively low energy cost. Many of them also had Pokemon Powers, which up to that point had been relatively rare across the previous three sets. It was a unique little time in the game's history where they opted to try and make more offensively-inclined cards that were balanced around being frail. I kinda miss that, honestly.

[redwings]

The hp stat is the easily noticeable change, but the thing that bothers me more is the energy cost to respective damage output of attacks that have changed over time. Like, the early wailords with insane hp had pretty severe drawbacks, but 13:39 is a really good example of how the game truly underwent power creep.

Charizard originally had 120 hp, a move that dealt 100 damage for four fire energies, with the drawback of discarding two fire energies from itself on use. This was never a particularly good pokemon even in the original format, it was devastating but super expensive. Compare it to that emboar card, and we're seeing Emboar have a cheaper attack (2 colorless energies instead of fire) with no drawbacks that lets it deal 80 damage, with 30 more health. Then, compare that to the other emboar you put on screen, which makes the first emboar obsolete. Heat Blast is an even cheaper attack (only one of the energies needs to be fire) that deals twice as much damage with no drawbacks, and it has even more health.

As someone who has a lot of original cards, I want to combine my old cards with some various new cards in order to just play casually with myself or my friends/cousin, but that's kinda just... not going to work. All of my cards are just blatantly worse than the cards that came afterwards, with the lone exception of Mr Mime, which is pretty broken since nothing does 20 or less damage anymore. Its an unfortunate state of events, but the power creep has essentially made me not interested in the tcg anymore, since all the collecting I did as a kid feels functionally useless in the new world.

[NOLOAF-AR]

12:50 There is actually one exception to this rule, being the 2010 World Championship format. In 09, a decision was made not to have a yearly rotation, which lead to the 2010 World Championships being Diamond and Pearl Base to HGSS Unleashed - almost four years worth of legal sets. This was the largest card pool a standard format had ever seen, and is one of the many reasons 2010 is regarded as one of the best standard formats of all time. Goes to show that there isn't a need to rotation every year.

[aeneas]

I played this game for a while and I can see why people consider DPP the "end" of it.
The game just sped up so much that was impossible to play it without having a job to pay for the cards and I was really surprised by that, since it was meant for kids.
I tried to return to it last year, just before the pandemic, but I just wasn't having fun, even when playing with the best decks available.
I personally think that card game creators should keep the speed of the game in check, since when it goes too fast, it becomes significantly less fun and way more expensive.
I have the same problem with Yu-Gi-Oh for example, ever since late pendulums, the decks became so consistent that the objective switched from attacking for 8000+ damage, to just prevent your opponent from actually playing the game, so I quit.
Loved the video man, keep it up

[ascraeusorange]

YO this is INCREDIBLE, the editing is amazing especially for your first time holy shit

[xuanathan]

I absolutely loved the ORAS era of the tcg
My deck revolved around using a stage 1 medicham with only 90 hp, but it had a unique effect where it could attack twice in 1 turn. This was balanced out by its attack being only 30 power, but I'd attach 2 strong energies, set up machamps on my bench which passively increased fighting types' power by 20, and attached muscleband to be able to just fire off multiple powerful attacks per turn.

The metagame revolved around a 180 hp EX card, Seismitoad. This thing's meta defining attack, Quaking punch only did 30 damage, but it changed the way you built your deck. It prevented any item use from your opponent, while dealing chip damage that would add quickly. Before seismitoad, you'd make use of lots of items to utilise various effects, discard special energies, search your deck for mons, lure out benched pokemon, etc but after Seismitoad, you'd have to rely mainly on supporters.

Tbh the new power creep just makes me sad, as much as I hated Seismitoad back in the day, new powerful cards just win based on having 1 billion million power and hp, even stage 2s have gotten less and less interesting. I don't think there will be another Seismitoad, and there will definitely never be another Medicham.

Moving countries made it very hard to keep playing, but more than anything else the metagame shifted away from everything that made me enjoy playing it. Even if back then I would have called you crazy if you said I'd miss the days of Seismitoad.

[ThePKMNTrainerAndrew]

How does this not have more views? I used to play semi competitive in the pokemon tcg. Power creep in special cards is a huge problem. Its why I stopped playing.

[anonymone]

5:07 Oh damn, looks like Terastalize is a returning mechanic after all

[Kirbita]

This is the exact kind of content I was looking for tbh- I could watch this type of well-researched, scripted and edited informative video on just about anything, but I was specifically looking for a channel that had this sort of content on Pokemon TCG. Subscribed instantly, incredibly surprised that it's your first video??? Really looking forward to anything you do next!

[scaleonkhan]

Caught me off guard with the “this is my first time making a video!” at the end with how nicely this was made haha

[four-en-tee]

If this guy made an analysis on Yugioh powercreep, we'd be here for hours, lmao

[Lilacs]

The power creep and money burning reality of what Pokémon tcg has turned into is devastating to the hobby. I've played Pokémon since childhood with years long breaks, but what brought me back and kept me going is sealed leagues. I highly recommend it as it's very fun and low cost. My local game shop hosted it, we all bought a $12 starter deck and went to town. Each week we bought one $4 pack to modify our deck, and each week if you got 10 wins you'd get a free pack. I don't remember how many weeks it went but in the end 1st 2nd 3rd won great prizes, lots of packs, some cool merch, and store credit. Everyone felt very satisfied because we all started from a level playing field and the best strategists were rewarded with more cards resulting in better decks by the end.

My spouse and I do our own sealed league with each other, we buy elite trainer boxes on sale and save the packs, only opening one after x amount of wins. Also when we open packs, we do a "pack battle" which is like a simplified mini-battle, it makes opening the pack a much more exciting and rewarding experience than just ripping through the cards. By doing this we've been able to continue enjoying one of my treasured childhood hobbies without breaking the bank. I can't imagine ever doing standard format again.

[tanzolo]

Basically In terms of raw power the first Charizard was the strongest, with 120 hp and 100 damage. The latest set is called “151”. The charizard in that has 330 hp and 330 damage. That about sums up the entire video

[TheGloriousLobsterEmperor]

This is one of those videos that I desperately wish was longer. It's so enthralling.

[thebearnado]

Coming back to the game after playing as a kid, it was wild seeing how the game had pivoted to pumping up the chase cards. Both in terms of stats, and just the general number of "shiny reverse holo gold pikachu" cards. Special cards are probably the way they keep powercreep pushing, especially since timmy and his group of friends who just play with eachother wont really notice until someone opens one.

[sasir]

I would speak more about the attacks than the hp, since the biggest problem in the pokemon tcg is usually the one hit kos and broken effects

for example, in 12:40 the last two exeggutors could OHKO the first ones with the same energy cost, and they're not even special cards

and when you die in one hit, creating a strategy to work around the power difference becomes way harder, since you usually have to sacrifice pokemons just to charge one in the bench, giving your opponent around 3 extra cards just to connect one attack

[KingChiggy]

It's funny how now over a year later and they are kinda going backwards. The Pokemon VStar cards and kinda like GX instead of V and especially with the sets released recently a lot of single prize decks are coming out that are being able to compete with the VMax and VStar decks. It almost feels like they are trying to slow down the meta before the next series begins with Scarlet and Violet

[dovesr]

I think its very interesting how both Pokemon and Yugioh have experienced a similar type of power creep in favor of faster paced games. Pokemon shifted majorly towards EX cards and their variants, essentially removing the need to evolve from the game. Yugioh did the same when it transitioned away from traditional trap cards into hand traps. For Yugioh I get it, there needed to be a way to prevent the player who goes first from setting up an unbeatable board on turn 1. For Pokemon I really feel like EX cards are against the spirit of the game and are there specifically to power creep the game.

[yuumijungle]

so basically, the game used to be based arround 6 prize cards to mimic the 6v6 format of the videogames, but nowadays you knock out 1 or 2 and the game is over xD

[TehFoamy]

I was kinda hoping that the video would also go in depth about the gradual changes to attack damage, energy costs, additional effects, Abilities, etc., while also talking about the rebalancing of Trainer cards

Not to mention all the special energy cards