Expanded’s Earliest Bans - Explaining Every BANNED Card in the Pokémon TCG’s Expanded Format

The Pokémon TCG’s Expanded format has had a varied reputation from facilitating exciting and unique interactions to downright degeneracy. Occasionally, the Pokémon Company was forced to step in and ban cards to prevent overpowered or game-breaking decks from flooding the competitive environment. This is the first installment of our series covering the history of every banned card in the Expanded format. Today we’ll focus on some of the format’s earliest bans, most of which targeted combos that could prevent your opponent from playing the game at all.

Script by Jake
Edited by Lily

-The List-
Intro: (0:00)
Lysandre’s Trump Card: (0:26)
Forest of Giant Plants: (5:09)
Wally: (9:30)
Maxie’s Hidden Ball Trick / Archeops: (11:16)

#pokemon #pokemontcg

[bencrandall-malcolm]

By far the funniest thing about Lysandre's Trump Card is that almost immediately after it was banned, Enrique Avila placed second at US Nationals with a 0-energy stall/mill deck that sat on Wailord-EX for 20 turns and waited for their opponent to deck out

[WhimsicottTCG]

"They would attempt to identify and ban cards that had the potential to make a major negative impact on an opponent before they get a chance to take their first turn" Boy how things have changed

[Folfire]

11:10 Maxx "C" traumatic name cameo

[iistonton]

What's cool is Pokémon bans the problem cards first instead of the supporting ones. Like how Konami waited so long to FINALLY just ban Halq instead of banning like 5 different tuners which is what made it so good.

[flagrama]

I feel like the video missed an important part of decks with Maxie or Archie. Exeggcute with the ability Propogation for hand-fixing. The ability allows you to return Exeggcute from your discard pile to your hand, and due to how private/public information works in Pokemon, you can use this ability multiple times on the same turn with the same card. This was an important hand-fixing card to get down to exactly Maxie/Archie in hand because some hands can be almost impossible to play down to a single card, but with Propogation you can do things like have a Maxie and an Ultra Ball in hand, Propogation two Exeggcute from discard and use them as the cost for the Ultra Ball to remain with just the 1 card in hand, whereas without that ability you'd be stuck with no way to get rid of the Ultra Ball and couldn't use the Supporter that turn.

[Kazmahu]

6:05 to anyone who got here from the sister-channels and is wondering, if a player is ever unable to place a pokemon in the active slot, they lose the game on the spot. Since placing a pokemon on the bench (to be able to take the active slot if needed) is an "on your turn" action, it doesn't matter if they're currently holding any reserves (which they probably wouldn't be since a full bench is useful and Shiftree sends victims to the deck), if the last active pokemon leaves play they're hosed. This usually only happens if you brick hardcore and most tournament decks are tuned to the point where it's impossible without significant disruption (which is half the reason disruption effects are so rare and tend to be ban-magnets), but Shiftree exploited this rule and the game's general lack of out-of-turn interaction (put simply, Pokemon does not have counterspells or hand-traps).

[CriAleMar]

I love that Pokémon actually explains why cards are banned. Wish Konami did the same thing.

[JeffKGaming]

Gotta tell ya, "Jean-sect" is a new one.

[stefzoneptcg]

I distinctly remember the Lysandre's Trump Card ban being a bit controversial at the time, after all it had been nearly 13 years (the previous ban was Neo Genesis Slowking in 2002, Sneasel was banned over a year earlier btw) since a card was banned from standard, but looking back LTC might genuinely be the worst designed card ever made.

[jamiechesnut]

I just found your channel and I've been enjoying your videos. It's taken me down memory lane of my competitive time throughout me playing competitive TCG. I get war like flashbacks every time i hear the phrase "quaking punch" keep up the good work I look forward to watching more of your videos and see what you upload in the future

[iriswav]

I played Lysandre's Trump card in a fire deck based deck and me recycling my energy and resources made games very long and I agreed with my bro to not play that card

[mathy]

Holy shit, and now I just learn you started doing Pokemon TCG vids? What a great start for the year!

[honeyham]

Cant wait for you to one day make a Digimon TCG channel as well

[Masahane]

So what I'm seeing here is you could theoretically use one vileplume (or omastar) to shut down item cards, another vileplume to shut down basic pokemon attacks, and then archeops to stop all evolution and prevent your opponent from playing the game.

I like it

[StormKidProductions]

LST is interesting in that it was banned immediately after arguably winning world's single handedly. The winning deck that year was able to draw the entire deck in one turn, then LST on the next turn to avoid deckout. This basically allowed the winning deck to play with a ~50 card hand.

[mdudegamer]

If this series does well, I hope you could cover any banned cards which were around in the pre-Expanded Format sets. Or maybe they'll get covered in those "Top 10 Cards from x Gen" videos I see you've already made one of.

[Sanninsuplex]

I had this steelix card that let you do 50 damage times the number of heads you roll consecutively. Stops on tails. I remember thinking it was sooo op. Then i see some of these. Geez

[SAMURIADI]

maxie
max ie
max "C"

same card- different name

[goosedamoose]

Love your d&d content, so I’m glad to find out you have a Pokémon channel!

[lancelee]

I’m foreign to the Pokémon TCG, but from the little I know about Magic and Hearthstone I can make sense of what you’re talking about and it’s really interesting. Keep it up!