u/Turbulent-Owl-7632

3 or fewer prize cards is only one Mega Ex KOed!! It seems almost every player will be adding copies of this card to their deck and it’s gonna make hand distribution overly convenient. Judge, unfair stamp, and a few other niche cards felt extremely balanced in the meta; the 2 best hand disruptions came in the form of a Supporter and an Ace Spec- both of which also disrupted the hand of the player who is playing the card. Now with this, you can screw your opponent, keep a massive hand, and only for a normal item. It could be justified if the decks that need huge hands, such as Alakazam or Doublade, were the most powerful decks… but they’re not. They’re the decks that need all the help they can get against the overpowered Dragapults, Lucarios, and soon, Greninjas. I run Doublade, a deck that requires well-coordinated hands and, sure sorta selfishly, feel this card will hurt me… but cmon it’s too convenient. My deck got to 1700 this season but when Special Red Card comes in this deck might just be unplayable, which sucks. Sure, I can make some adjustments but it’ll be rough regardless. What do y’all think? Here’s my decklist for ref:

Pokémon: 8
2 Smoochum SSP 75
1 Meowth ex POR 62
2 Latias ex SSP 239
4 Doublade POR 57
2 Genesect ex BLK 67
4 Honedge POR 56
1 Fezandipiti ex SFA 38
4 Aegislash POR 58

Trainer: 10
4 Buddy-Buddy Poffin ASC 184
2 Boss's Orders ASC 183
4 Poké Pad ASC 198
3 Night Stretcher ASC 196
2 Lana's Aid TWM 155
3 Lucky Helmet TWM 158
2 Cyrano SSP 170
3 Pokégear 3.0 SVI 186
4 Dawn PFL 87
3 Hilda WHT 84

Energy: 4
4 Basic {P} Energy MEE 5
1 Enriching Energy SSP 191
4 Ignition Energy PFL 124
1 Telepathic {P} Energy POR 88

Total Cards: 60

The whole idea with this Team Rocket’s Porygon I designed is that it would only be legal to play for a tiny sliver of time (maybe just during prerelease tourneys then it rotates out) but during that window it would absolutely cook people because of how Proactive Firewall works. If you go first and Porygon is your only Pokémon, it becomes untouchable for the entire game, so you can literally just sit there and refuse to play. And that’s where the trap comes in: most players are so used to autopiloting with stuff like PokePad, Lillie’s Determination, Buddy Buddy Poffin, all that early digging, that they’ll start thinning their deck without even thinking. The moment they do that, they’ve basically already lost… you just keep passing while they burn through their cards until they deck out. But if the opponent is actually smart and thinks it through, that can’t happen to them as the Porygon player has to draw the first card of the game. If the opponent doesn’t fall into the trap, it’ll act as a stall card for a bit, really only hurting the Porygon player as they cannot set up their bench. So if the trap fails, they’ll either have to switch Porygon to the bench or use the Offload attack to start battling. Thoughts on gimmicky cards like this being added during prerelease to twist with player’s default decision mode??