The land system in MTG is both its greatest problem and what makes the game so unique. However if we wanna get technical, as much as the Pokémon don't have a mana cost so they can be fatal pushed, their attacks also aren't activated abilities as abilities have the ability keyword in Pokémon(like Bibarel's drawing ability) and are different from attacks. A Propaganda could work because it requires an additional cost be paid to declare the attacker, but turning off activated abilities wouldn't work against "activating" an attack because in Pokémon, that's just attacking. Just like tapping to declare an attacker isn't an activated ability but you tapped it as you would to activate some abilities.
I specifically got myself some early copies where they don't have the limitations written on them - and figured that's good enough for a silly MTG-vs-Pokémon game to showcase how broken they were at first
Fun Fact: In the lore of MTG, whenever a game of Magic is played, it's actually two Planeswalkers battling with summoned creatures and spells. All of which is represented by the cards. Planeswalkers are powerful spellcasters that can jump between worlds, many of which can be WILDLY different. And yet, despite these differences, these worlds all use the same rules and magic. Seeing this video's kind of cross-game play, with completely different game systems & rules, ACTUALLY feels like a Planeswalker battle. Picture this: You've gone to another world. The magic feels weird and different, or may not even be there at all. But your own spellcasting mechanics still work, so it's no big deal. Then you get into a fight with some random guy on the street, and he starts busting out creatures & abilities you've NEVER seen before. Worse, NONE of the rules you know seem to apply to him or his creatures. Literally a case of "HOW DID YOU DO THAT?! YOU CAN'T DO THAT!!" Now you're scrambling to figure out the new rules before he gets you. The best you can manage is to hold him off, one spell at a time, as you wrack your brain for an answer. Then, opportunity strikes. You figure out a limitation in how he's approached you, and you exploit that to get a victory. You adapt your known strategies to make use of this new exploit, and continue on your way exploring this strange new world. A REAL Planeswalker Moment.
dude this comment is full of cool ideas itd be cool if there was a cardgame like this, where both players played by different rules and it still somehow worked
@@shieldgenerator7Netrunner comes to mind. Fantasy Flight updated it and released it as a non-collectable card game. It's not quite as disparate as OP's example, but the two players have dramatically different objectives and methods of achieving them
Also, consider for a moment that Pokemon typically fight (in trainer battles), not to the death, but to unconsciousness, and the Planeswalker turns around and casts Abrupt Decay.
It's pretty solid for any situation where you can't get hit at all. Also, unlike the MtG vs Yugioh matchup, I don't think you can as easily massage the rules to make it a not touch of death situation for the Magic player.
I like these videos but they're very disingenuous; you could easily play these games from your card game of choice's point of you and abuse rules that don't properly interact
I think a lot of that is based on how the mechanics are translated. Calling all cards from other TCGs 'spells with a manacost of 0' means you just need to find the counter to spells with no cost. If you did the reverse, like call all MTG cards 'items', then a VIleplume could lock out the MTG player in one turn. We're just more likely to try and fit other games into MTG rather than the opposite because its easier than trying to translate MTGs depth of mechanics into another system. Not saying this video isn't good. I think it really shows how wildly different the games are, and the rulings are reasonable enough assumptions. But from a game design perspective, a real challenge would be to try and make rules that are fair for both sides. Even if you limited the cardpools to each games standard rotation, you'd be hard pressed.
@@moloy559Especially with yugioh, having so many spell/generic negates, one turn wins, and the ability to play through multiple negates. Ocg/tcg yugioh would almost always win, yet their video showcased a weak normal monster beat down deck against mtg.
@@Pembolog It's not really disingenuous, they've just gotta keep things kinda close so the content isn't boring. If the goal is to make a super cutthroat deck for each TCG, then probably one will just win 100% of the time and that's not super fun to watch. It's a fun thought experiment, and fun to talk about, but not the best for video content.
8:50 You can only play one Supporter card during your turn. This is Jamin's second Supporter card. (If you don't count Bill, if you count Bill, it's like, the 5th.)
Jamin got screwed. Either the Pokémon deal combat damage or they deal noncombat damage through an activated ability, in which case either the fog plan or the cursed totem plan should have not worked. Fun game though!
Obviously putting two different games with two different rulesets together doesn't actually work and needs some loose interpretation. But you could make Pokemon work in mtg as played here by saying the attacks are activated abilities which set the creature's base power until the end of turn and skip your next main phase this turn.
@@cad97nah, many pokemon have actual abilities and the definition for pokemon abilities is "An Ability is an effect on a Pokémon that is not an attack." which means cursed totem is a very good card but doesn't do what Carl wanted it to do. Fog does work but you can't just ignore ragavan and hit face, pokemons should attack opposing creatures or at least Carl should be able to block thus the monkey dies not the Carl. And of course oak and Bill are supporters and only one can be played per turn so all in all... This needs to be redone
@blueplayer6197 The combat sequence bit I think is where I'd have ruled this differently too. There is no concept in Pokemon of attacking the opponent directly, nor in Magic (you declare attacks and the defender blocks or allows damage through). So the Pokemon should attack and the Magic deck responds normally. Meaning any deck with a way of generating tokens each turn should be pretty safe, since no Pokemon have trample, just chump block all day long.
In the token swarm example, the Pokémon player wouldn’t be able to attack through to make the magic player lose by life loss, but they should still be able to win by earning their own prize cards.
@@beefpelican I absolutely agree the prize cards are pokemon wincons not losecons. The mtg player should not get prize cards they need to aim to a mtg wincon or a pokemon loss con. So 20 damage to player or alt win cons to mtg, then having no more mons benched for pokemon as a loss con as well as drawing from empty deck. Then pokemon can't attack life points directly and must grab prize cards, if no creature is present on attack pokemon gets a prize card anyway. Then win if mtg player trigger a loss for himself such as paying life to 0, self mill etc
@@jaythepizza7600 bill wasn't a supporter back in the day, neither was prof. oak. They got turned into supporters later on when the pkmn company realized that it might be a bit broken without limitations ^^
So the thing with Pokemon, is you can draw like 20 cards a turn, and both of you churn through cards really quickly, but at the same time you're bottlenecked by only being able to do 1 attack a turn no matter what, and your turn ends on the spot after you attack, no exceptions. There's also nothing you can do during your opponent's turn. This means that it still takes like 3-4 turns to win unless your opponent gets unlucky and only has 1 basic on the field and you kill it quickly enough.
Actually, your turn doesn't end after you attack. After you attack, all you can do is either end your turn, or activate Radiant Venusaur's ability to draw until you have 4 cards in hand
Surprisingly it makes the gane very skill based despite the notoriety of coin flipping, both players basically get to play with there entire decks and as a result the way tou set up your board and the plays you make are extermely important
Jamin also played two Oaks in a single turn (can only play one Supporter per turn) and had Carl discard three cards to Rocket's Trap instead of shuffling them into the deck.
OG bill, Prof oak aren't supporters - supporters were added to the game in gen 3 iirc. I think they just used the wrong version of the card on the overlay
The cards in question were only made supporters later on - I got myself some base set copies where they don't have the limitations written on them - and figured that's good enough for a silly MTG-vs-Pokémon game
Lol I love these videos every time, the creativity coming out of cardmarket is unrivaled. And editing ridiculously on point to the point where it's easy to follow along, even with a game you've never played
Jamin just *straight-up* cheated, Bill was errata'd to be a Supporter, which means you only get to play one each turn. This is a retroactive change that applies to older versions of the card.
It's not legible because it's in neither English nor German, but the land Carl drew off the top on the turn he played the Cursed Totem is a Woodland Cemetery, which would have entered tapped since he controlled neither a Forest nor a Swamp. Meaning he would actually have been off by one turn and lost. But that does not detract anything from the fun of this video! Nice! I loved it hehe
8:57 althought most of the cards hes played so far arent supporters, professor oak is indeed a supporter, meaning he wasnt allowed to cast it for the second time
Damage via fight effect isn't combat damage. Combat damage from additional combat step.. comes from actual combat damage step and not from ability itself
@@egoalter1276 deathtouch isn't a trigger, it's a static ability that causes any damage from a source to be lethal (works with both fight and bite effects... And with Lightning bolt too! If given somehow, like by Judith from MKM). Check the card to see the source of damage
I feel that Jamin should have won. Abilities in Pokemon are a specific thing separate to attacks. There are cards in Pokemon (eg. Garbodor with the Garbotoxin ability) that say "All Pokemon except this have no abilities" and that doesnt stop other Pokemon from attacking.
Of course if we’re strictly templating the attacks, then the Pokémon should have an inherent rule they can only attack other creatures. That would have been even more problematic for Jamin
@@tk421eatmyshorts do the Pokemon attack other Pokemon though? It's not like hearthstone where you click one of your guys and then click their guy. In Pokemon you just attack the same way you do in Magic and then the game rules take over. In Pokemon their active Pokemon takes the damage listed by the attack, and any other effects are written out. In magic your opponent gets to block and if they don't they take the damage. So I think the way they did attacking still makes sense
@@FineOtter I would say yes, they do attack other Pokemon, which is the reason the rule where you lose if you have no active Mons exists. If Pokemon just attacked and it was game rules after that, I think it would be similar to Yu-Gi-Oh where you attack a life total after that. I know there are also attacks that do damage to your opponent's benched Mons, so there's examples of it not just being "Hit in front of me" but also "Hit bench" but nothing of "Hit trainer"
@@tk421eatmyshorts the reason for the no Pokemon you lose rule is because they were trying to be analogous to the video game, where if you run out of Pokemon you lose. That's also why you can have max 6 Pokemon out at a time (1 active, 5 bench). As for the attacks to bench Pokemon, those are specifically formatted differently. If there is a damage number to the right of the attack that damage is always dealt to the active Pokemon as per the game rules, you don't get to choose. After that, an attack with an effect that deals damage to benched Pokemon lets you choose where that damage goes, but that effect is spelled out on the card not in the main rules of the game.
@@FineOtter I get that, which is why Pokemon don't attack the player, only other Pokemon (or creatures for MtG). The attacks hitting benched Pokemon being formatted differently doesn't change the fact that the bench is still "in play" and thus a wrath is going to hit all creatures in play, regardless of whether they're active or not. Further, the attacks being formatted differently reinforces the idea that a Pokemon would need a specific attack that says it deals damage to the player to actually hit the player.
As both a Blue Black Magic player and a Water Dark Pokemon Player let me tell you some rules you missed. Pokemon has a ruling where you are only allowed 1 Supporter card per turn....Unless it says otherwise. Furthermore, Bill has been errata'd to be a Supporter. In pokemon there are 4 types of trainer cards; Supporter, Item, Stadium, and Tool. Supporters are like Sorceries that do very strong stuff hence the once per turn. Items are weaker versions of Supporters that do things though Red Carding a Magic player is still very strong. Stadiums are like World Enchantments that affect both players. Only 1 stadium card allowed on the field at once so playing another discards the current one. Some have passive abilities while others have an activated ability. Tools are the pokemon equivalent to Equipment without the equip cost. Only 1 tool per pokemon.....Unless it says otherwise. However technically if you have a card that says destroy target equipment you can target a tool but if its destroy target artifact that wont work. One last thing I want to mention with Mill in pokemon is you only lose to self deck at the begining of your turn. If you are forced to draw from an empty deck nothing happens unless that draw is because its the start of your turn. Happy gaming to all the Planeswalkers and Trainers out there.
This series has to continue so we can eventually see magic vs competitive Yugioh and Pokémon decks, or atleast decks that do more then vorse raider pass
The issue is that, if a magic deck tries hard, they can just win before the other deck gets to play. YGO can do the same. So we have to dumb down both decks or there would be no video
@CardmarketMagic fair point, I don't mean pulling up with a fully optimised yugioh deck such as fire king snake eye, I more meant a deck that summons more than once a turn, as old and new yugioh are practically different games. Also if you don't think 1 magic deck could win, you could do a competitive deck vs 3 magic decks at once ie 1v3 Commander.
*Jamin:* On turn 1, I will spend 5 minutes playing 4 Pokemon, 10 spells, draw 22 cards and force you to to discard 6 cards *Carl:* * surprised Pikachu face * (and yes, I counted these. I am like that)
I really love this format and would hope so much to see more of it. Especially I'd like to see a magic deck facing off against a Vampire: the Eternal Struggle or a Netrunner deck, as those were also invented by Richard Garfield.
It's not as big as magic obviously, at least in the west, but it's decently big for playing still. I don't find it as interesting for similar reasons to why I don't like yugioh, but its certainly a card game a good number enjoy
Counter for the Cursed Totem: Stealthy Hood (Unbroken Bonds) - Prevent all effects of your opponent's abilities done to the Pokémon this card is attached to. Remove any such existing effects. Why would you look at that, whatever this gets attached to now CAN attack. And I don't know MTG well enough, but I believe this also means it also gets around the destruction and fog effects because those are spell abilities.
Y’all should this series against Shadowverse evolve. It’s similar enough to magic to not make the rules a nightmare and has some powerful cards and interactions
Really? One of the cards even has "You may only play one trainer card during your turn". I really like the idea of this series but i also hate some of the choices. Like in the yugioh video i think it would make sense to count stars a or at least tributes needed as converted mana cost. That video would really have benefited if you did a meta deck for the second round or something like that. I just cannot stand these little things when they act like they are unstoppable for the other game to prevent with their deck but there are either obvious parallels or they just forget a core part of the game.
I don't understand why did Carl instantly lost game one? Pokemons don't attack the trainer directly he is supposed to attack ragavan and presumably get a prize card for his troubles or because of magic rules if there are no creatures for Carl then he can also lose by taking 20. Carl's win con would be Pokemon's loss conditions of losing 6 mons or having no Pokemon active or banched or magic alternative wincons like taking 10 poison counters You gotta make sense with your decisions.. You can't just "I ignore ragavan I win" Also both Bill and Oak are supporters and only one can be played each turn, not one each, not 5 each, one. Absolutely absurd that rocket trap isn't a supporter and can be used multiple times but that whole turn was just cheating over and over again Retreating is an activated ability in a sense too. But I am not sure I'd rule cursed totem does that as pokemon do have abilities and the literal definition is "An Ability is an effect on a Pokémon that is not an attack." so... The attacks are not activated abilities but activated attacks so cursed totem doesn't work. Yeah well.. I think you guys can do better with a rematch.
11:45 only one problem: the totem only works if they’re abilities have an activation cost. Most Pokémon don’t have costs to activate their abilities. They’re just activated.
Would like to see Magic v Lorcana someday soon. Would like to see more Lorcana content in general, lol. Two sets have released since your inaugural video with a third on the way!
If the Pokémon deck is allowed to point its damage face instead of at the creatures in play, it feels like a way to easily win would be to just add two Galarian Zigzagoon to the deck. "I play this Zigzagoon to put a damage counter on you - that's 10 damage - and another Zigzagoon, for the full 20. Good game?"
I wonder how the first match would have turned out, if the pokemon damage was divided by 10. Luvdisk dealing 2 instead of 20 sound reasonable. Or other way around and multiply magic life by 10.
"I used this because maybe I thought if you don't play any pokemon I could give you monsters to destroy" "Oh if I don't play pokemon I'm dead. I literally just lose" "It would've been way more convenient if I knew that" Love that. Great vid!
1. You cannot play a trainer supporter card on your first turn if you go first 2. You can only play 1 trainer supporter card per turn 3. Bill was errata'd to be a supporter I would love to see a competitive pokemon deck face off that turbo fog/insta kill deck.
10:53 Carl probably shouldn't have been able to respond to the end of the turn: if this were MTG and Jamin activated a Sundial of the Infinite, Carl could respond to the activation but couldn't do anything after the ability resolves (unless something causes a trigger to happen in the cleanup step, but that's not happening here).
8:50 So, it says right on the card you can only play 1 supporter card per turn, which Professor Oak is, since they realized the many cards that did things like that were a bit OP without restrictions. Maybe there's some exception about it being the same card, but that would seem odd to me.
I would like to see a video for this series with digimon. Also an idea I think would be fun for a diffrent series of videos is conversion rules, trying to make different card games play nicely with each other without just having high base damage equal murder.
11:41 T1 Pokemon Judge here, there are actual Abilities in Pokemon that can be activated once per turn! (though some abilities differ). Attacks and abilities operate separately, so would this play technically work, or are they counting attacks as "abilities"? 🤔 Fantastic video nonetheless! Keep it up!
In MTG, activated abilities are "effects that can be manually activated by paying a cost". Energy counters would function as that cost in Pokemon. Ultimately, it'd depend on rulings. If we consider attacking as NOT using an ability, there are other cards in MTG that just say "X thing can't attack or block", or even "Nothing can attack you" that would shut the attacks down instead. But if we're operating under MTG's combat rules, Pokemon wouldn't be able to attack until a full turn rotation after a player gains control of them. So you can't play a card and instantly attack with it (unless it has Haste, which negates this rule). Effects that gain control of creatures are ALSO affected by that rule, so I can't steal your things and then instantly attack you with them. Again unless the thing I take has Haste or gains it from something. Ultimately, I think their take is the better one, because otherwise, the Pokemon player would have to sit there waiting to attack whenever they switch a pokemon in, and the MTG deck would be full of Pacifism style effects that prevent the pokemon from attacking or blocking. There are LOTS of ways to keep things from attacking you in MTG. Cursed Totem's effect is incredibly rare.
@@terratrox7180 If you go by MTG rules pokemons abilities would be activated abilities, so their ability to deal damage would not count as combat damage and would not be affected by summoning sickness. Not to mention the act of putting them in your "bench"/battlefield at the beginning of the game would be a pre-game action, like chancellor of the annex, leylines and gemstone cavern type of effects.
attacks arent abilities technically, and you cannot deck yourself. if a card says draw 7 and you have 6 left un deck you would draw 6. on your next turn if you draw for turn with no cards in deck you would lose
The rules simply dont work? Carl is allowed no active mons (Magic), but also draws a prizecard and Carl wins by attacking directly (Magic) but doesnt take an prize when the frog dies? Isnt Bill a supporter card and thus one a turn?
You will run into a billion rulings conflict with Chalice, it's funny once, doing it again will not be a good idea Not to say that deck will need to have a lot of other things to stop the Basic pokemons that comes down turn 0, and you'd get clowned for trying to rule that attaching energy to a pokemon gets countered by chalice, then due to how the attacks literally cost energy to use, Chalice under no sensible ruling can counter that, so you'd just get destroyed by a fish spitting at you.
@@adamxue6096 also even if chalice could counte pokemon cards, the pokemon themselves a "put onto the bench" so it wont counter them and trainers are "played" chalice only works on cast cards
@@hellwombat Unfortunately there are no satisfying way to rule counter spell type effects between games, it's honestly for the better to drop the obviously more controversial ruling shenanigans See the issue comes from how you word these things and what counts for what, because it runs into the "should we equate it as if it's summoning a creature in mtg?" Even extra fun is try to figure out whether a Wrath should hit every pokemon including ones on the bench, which are in another zone in comparison to the active pokemon zone. Meaning an instant game over. I am glad they kept it somewhat more simple
"every time I defeat a pokemon I get a prize card?" Me, as someone that has played against blue control and black discard/kill decks: "oh that poor Pokemon player."
11:48 idk if i agree with this ruling. good for the storytelling of the episode, but since there ARE activated abilities in the pokemon TCG (which are labeled) and anything with an energy cost is Explicitly called an attack, i wouldnt have handled it that way. but it does make a really funny end to the game.
as a magic player who learned pokemon recently, him being so amazed at the amount of card draw in pokemon is exactly what happent to me, pokemon decks are SO crazy xD
Fun video. I'll say this, for anybody wondering about playing Pokémon, decks really can be that fast and at the competitive level people often have to purposefully slow themselves down if a game goes long to keep from decking out. Also, a competitive Standard deck in Pokémon at its cheapest is usually around 100 USD (or about 93.63 Euro) with the possibility of building out fancy pants holo decks for around 250 USD (or about 234 Euro) at the most. Pauper is really the only format with a comparable price point, everything else is just insanely expensive by comparison, so Pokémon might be fun if you're wanting something quick and fairly easy to learn while on a budget.
Next up : I said I could beat a Magic player with a Vampire, The Eternal Struggle deck, and they asked me wtf was that, but now im not so sure anymore or, I said I could beat a Magic player with a Netrunner deck, and they asked me wtf was that, but now im not so sure anymore btw if you want to make a deck, consider Amaranth V:TES , you probably wont find any online :( (for V:TES) Deckbuilder.Netrunner for well... netrunner I hope these obscure TCG will be back to life thanks to a video from this channel.
If Cursed Totem works, that means that Pokemons deal damage through an activated ability, but then it wouldn't be combat damage so fog wouldn't work no?
Unless it's an activated ability that does combat damage. Which obviously would be a rules nightmare in Magic, but it's a pretty good approximation of what is happening in Pokemon.
Find the decklists here: bit.ly/4bXg1jw
The land system in MTG is both its greatest problem and what makes the game so unique.
However if we wanna get technical, as much as the Pokémon don't have a mana cost so they can be fatal pushed, their attacks also aren't activated abilities as abilities have the ability keyword in Pokémon(like Bibarel's drawing ability) and are different from attacks. A Propaganda could work because it requires an additional cost be paid to declare the attacker, but turning off activated abilities wouldn't work against "activating" an attack because in Pokémon, that's just attacking. Just like tapping to declare an attacker isn't an activated ability but you tapped it as you would to activate some abilities.
@@JimmyR42 There's lots of ways to interpret things. The key is for both players to agree on the interpretation and stick to it, which they did.
Well google chrome doesn't think I will. 😢 it crashed.
any updates on the Yugioh channel?
@acesw6124 our new showhost is moving to Germany this month and will start the channel up shortly :)
As someone relearning Pokemon for fun, I've learned that you can only play 1 Supporter card per turn, and Bill has been errataed to be a Supporter.
He had R&D's secret lair on board
I specifically got myself some early copies where they don't have the limitations written on them - and figured that's good enough for a silly MTG-vs-Pokémon game to showcase how broken they were at first
@@jaminkauf6242 you did play two professor oaks in one turn though and that one did have the limitation written on it? or am I missing something
oh, seems like the infographic has a newer version of the card with the supporter ruling but the actual card you played didn't
As long as Jamin is cheating on purpose, it's fine. :P
"of course, I need a new active Pokémon, Carl! Don't you know the basic rules of Magic?" 🤣
Peak german 😂
Fun Fact:
In the lore of MTG, whenever a game of Magic is played, it's actually two Planeswalkers battling with summoned creatures and spells. All of which is represented by the cards.
Planeswalkers are powerful spellcasters that can jump between worlds, many of which can be WILDLY different. And yet, despite these differences, these worlds all use the same rules and magic.
Seeing this video's kind of cross-game play, with completely different game systems & rules, ACTUALLY feels like a Planeswalker battle.
Picture this:
You've gone to another world. The magic feels weird and different, or may not even be there at all. But your own spellcasting mechanics still work, so it's no big deal.
Then you get into a fight with some random guy on the street, and he starts busting out creatures & abilities you've NEVER seen before. Worse, NONE of the rules you know seem to apply to him or his creatures.
Literally a case of "HOW DID YOU DO THAT?! YOU CAN'T DO THAT!!"
Now you're scrambling to figure out the new rules before he gets you. The best you can manage is to hold him off, one spell at a time, as you wrack your brain for an answer. Then, opportunity strikes. You figure out a limitation in how he's approached you, and you exploit that to get a victory.
You adapt your known strategies to make use of this new exploit, and continue on your way exploring this strange new world.
A REAL Planeswalker Moment.
dude this comment is full of cool ideas
itd be cool if there was a cardgame like this, where both players played by different rules and it still somehow worked
I'd watch this anime
Well said mate
@@shieldgenerator7Netrunner comes to mind. Fantasy Flight updated it and released it as a non-collectable card game.
It's not quite as disparate as OP's example, but the two players have dramatically different objectives and methods of achieving them
Also, consider for a moment that Pokemon typically fight (in trainer battles), not to the death, but to unconsciousness, and the Planeswalker turns around and casts Abrupt Decay.
I want to see art for fatal push where a Merfolk is pushing a fish out of water onto the shore.
I want to make art for this now...
@@GeekandGlory Let me know if you do!
Same but it's actually card art for "Forced Adaptation"
@@uristmccheeselove1019fatal pushes from the merfolks perspective, forced adaptation is the reverse shot of the fish coming out of the water
"Flip a coin. If heads, you win. If tails, just try playing another copy of this card."
Yay!
Who will win?
Ancient dragons, planeswalkers, Phyrexian horrors
vs.
A handful of fish and a dude named Bill
Actually its the battle Maniac Nemona who wins
Bill almost clutched
I'm convinced that every one of these videos is just another excuse for Carl to shoehorn Turbo Fog into a game... AND I AM HERE FOR IT!
It's pretty solid for any situation where you can't get hit at all.
Also, unlike the MtG vs Yugioh matchup, I don't think you can as easily massage the rules to make it a not touch of death situation for the Magic player.
Incredible how magic is so versatile theres always some obscure way to ruin a different tcg's day
Dear mtg, please tell me you were created by a PhD in mathematics without telling me you were created by a PhD in mathematics
I like these videos but they're very disingenuous; you could easily play these games from your card game of choice's point of you and abuse rules that don't properly interact
I think a lot of that is based on how the mechanics are translated.
Calling all cards from other TCGs 'spells with a manacost of 0' means you just need to find the counter to spells with no cost. If you did the reverse, like call all MTG cards 'items', then a VIleplume could lock out the MTG player in one turn.
We're just more likely to try and fit other games into MTG rather than the opposite because its easier than trying to translate MTGs depth of mechanics into another system.
Not saying this video isn't good. I think it really shows how wildly different the games are, and the rulings are reasonable enough assumptions. But from a game design perspective, a real challenge would be to try and make rules that are fair for both sides. Even if you limited the cardpools to each games standard rotation, you'd be hard pressed.
@@moloy559Especially with yugioh, having so many spell/generic negates, one turn wins, and the ability to play through multiple negates. Ocg/tcg yugioh would almost always win, yet their video showcased a weak normal monster beat down deck against mtg.
@@Pembolog It's not really disingenuous, they've just gotta keep things kinda close so the content isn't boring. If the goal is to make a super cutthroat deck for each TCG, then probably one will just win 100% of the time and that's not super fun to watch. It's a fun thought experiment, and fun to talk about, but not the best for video content.
8:50
You can only play one Supporter card during your turn. This is Jamin's second Supporter card. (If you don't count Bill, if you count Bill, it's like, the 5th.)
Plus right at the beginning of the video, could have chump blocked the luvdisc
Jamin got screwed. Either the Pokémon deal combat damage or they deal noncombat damage through an activated ability, in which case either the fog plan or the cursed totem plan should have not worked. Fun game though!
Obviously putting two different games with two different rulesets together doesn't actually work and needs some loose interpretation. But you could make Pokemon work in mtg as played here by saying the attacks are activated abilities which set the creature's base power until the end of turn and skip your next main phase this turn.
@@cad97nah, many pokemon have actual abilities and the definition for pokemon abilities is "An Ability is an effect on a Pokémon that is not an attack." which means cursed totem is a very good card but doesn't do what Carl wanted it to do.
Fog does work but you can't just ignore ragavan and hit face, pokemons should attack opposing creatures or at least Carl should be able to block thus the monkey dies not the Carl.
And of course oak and Bill are supporters and only one can be played per turn so all in all... This needs to be redone
@blueplayer6197 The combat sequence bit I think is where I'd have ruled this differently too.
There is no concept in Pokemon of attacking the opponent directly, nor in Magic (you declare attacks and the defender blocks or allows damage through).
So the Pokemon should attack and the Magic deck responds normally. Meaning any deck with a way of generating tokens each turn should be pretty safe, since no Pokemon have trample, just chump block all day long.
In the token swarm example, the Pokémon player wouldn’t be able to attack through to make the magic player lose by life loss, but they should still be able to win by earning their own prize cards.
@@beefpelican I absolutely agree the prize cards are pokemon wincons not losecons.
The mtg player should not get prize cards they need to aim to a mtg wincon or a pokemon loss con.
So 20 damage to player or alt win cons to mtg, then having no more mons benched for pokemon as a loss con as well as drawing from empty deck.
Then pokemon can't attack life points directly and must grab prize cards, if no creature is present on attack pokemon gets a prize card anyway.
Then win if mtg player trigger a loss for himself such as paying life to 0, self mill etc
Bill - draw 2 cards, very cheap
Pot of Greed - draw 2 cards, banned
Magic - Draw 3, pay U ... ONE OF THE MOST POWERFUL CARDS OF ALL TIME!!!
To be fair, Bill is a supporter card and supporter cards are once per turn. Same with Professor Oak
@@jaythepizza7600 bill wasn't a supporter back in the day, neither was prof. oak. They got turned into supporters later on when the pkmn company realized that it might be a bit broken without limitations ^^
@@Matti_Mattsen
Pokemon - free draw 3, sees play in only fringe decks
@@jakehr3 supporter restriction is painful when theres so many good supporters.
So the thing with Pokemon, is you can draw like 20 cards a turn, and both of you churn through cards really quickly, but at the same time you're bottlenecked by only being able to do 1 attack a turn no matter what, and your turn ends on the spot after you attack, no exceptions. There's also nothing you can do during your opponent's turn. This means that it still takes like 3-4 turns to win unless your opponent gets unlucky and only has 1 basic on the field and you kill it quickly enough.
Actually, your turn doesn't end after you attack. After you attack, all you can do is either end your turn, or activate Radiant Venusaur's ability to draw until you have 4 cards in hand
@@jaythepizza7600 Okay, one exception. Didn’t know of that one.
Surprisingly it makes the gane very skill based despite the notoriety of coin flipping, both players basically get to play with there entire decks and as a result the way tou set up your board and the plays you make are extermely important
@@johnsmith5215 tbh in competitive decks you rarely see ANY coin flip cards / effects
there are exceptions, though they're most likely usually not good enough to really need to consider in general.
That was a lot of fun.
One thing though, can't have woodland cemetery etb untapped if your only land is orchard.
Jamin also played two Oaks in a single turn (can only play one Supporter per turn) and had Carl discard three cards to Rocket's Trap instead of shuffling them into the deck.
Eh, it's all for fun, just say it was a proxy Bayou.
The idea that a Pokemon is allowed to just attack your face is wild.
The fog meta is real
8:48 you can only use one supporter card per turn
OG bill, Prof oak aren't supporters - supporters were added to the game in gen 3 iirc. I think they just used the wrong version of the card on the overlay
The cards in question were only made supporters later on - I got myself some base set copies where they don't have the limitations written on them - and figured that's good enough for a silly MTG-vs-Pokémon game
Weren't they erratad into supporters. Or does Pokémon always play as if there was an R&D's Secret Lair in play?
@@Tharkon professor oak is a supporter tho
@@Tharkon Pokemon counts errata too, so they count as supporter cards
6:35 Objection! Bill is a supporter. You may play only 1 Supporter card during your turn.
Carl doing the Bill math versus Ancestral Recall had me crumpled 😄
Do this with flesh and blood! I dont know how it would work or if it would be even possible without some combos from the magic side
Woodland Cemetery, with only Forbidden Orchard in play, should have come into play tapped though.
Yeah we both missed it 😅 I only caught it in editing but then it was too late
I accept it because of the 8 supporters in one turn.
Lol I love these videos every time, the creativity coming out of cardmarket is unrivaled. And editing ridiculously on point to the point where it's easy to follow along, even with a game you've never played
Jamin just *straight-up* cheated, Bill was errata'd to be a Supporter, which means you only get to play one each turn. This is a retroactive change that applies to older versions of the card.
Also, wouldn't retreating be an activated ability?
Now imagine we're playing a unlimited Pokémon control deck. Oranguru would resource manage that deck to oblivion.
It's not legible because it's in neither English nor German, but the land Carl drew off the top on the turn he played the Cursed Totem is a Woodland Cemetery, which would have entered tapped since he controlled neither a Forest nor a Swamp. Meaning he would actually have been off by one turn and lost.
But that does not detract anything from the fun of this video! Nice! I loved it hehe
Especially since it's so obviously meant to be fun, I just think of it as a proxy Bayou!
8:57 althought most of the cards hes played so far arent supporters, professor oak is indeed a supporter, meaning he wasnt allowed to cast it for the second time
Part of me is saying "just cast Wrath of God, under Pokémon rules they lose"
thats so broken in the format lol
All hail the chaotic inconsistency of TCG crossovers😂
Fog prevents combat damage from a Pokemon's now activated ability...?
Combat damage can be a result of an activated ability, for example hexgold wallbreaker creating an additional combat phase, or any fight effect.
Damage via fight effect isn't combat damage. Combat damage from additional combat step.. comes from actual combat damage step and not from ability itself
@@madgenius9720 SO fight effects dont trigger deathtouch for example?
@@egoalter1276 deathtouch isn't a trigger, it's a static ability that causes any damage from a source to be lethal (works with both fight and bite effects... And with Lightning bolt too! If given somehow, like by Judith from MKM). Check the card to see the source of damage
@@madgenius9720 Okay. SO Lifelinj would also work, but Flanking or Trample wouldnt?
I feel that Jamin should have won. Abilities in Pokemon are a specific thing separate to attacks. There are cards in Pokemon (eg. Garbodor with the Garbotoxin ability) that say "All Pokemon except this have no abilities" and that doesnt stop other Pokemon from attacking.
Of course if we’re strictly templating the attacks, then the Pokémon should have an inherent rule they can only attack other creatures. That would have been even more problematic for Jamin
@@tk421eatmyshorts do the Pokemon attack other Pokemon though? It's not like hearthstone where you click one of your guys and then click their guy. In Pokemon you just attack the same way you do in Magic and then the game rules take over.
In Pokemon their active Pokemon takes the damage listed by the attack, and any other effects are written out. In magic your opponent gets to block and if they don't they take the damage. So I think the way they did attacking still makes sense
@@FineOtter I would say yes, they do attack other Pokemon, which is the reason the rule where you lose if you have no active Mons exists. If Pokemon just attacked and it was game rules after that, I think it would be similar to Yu-Gi-Oh where you attack a life total after that. I know there are also attacks that do damage to your opponent's benched Mons, so there's examples of it not just being "Hit in front of me" but also "Hit bench" but nothing of "Hit trainer"
@@tk421eatmyshorts the reason for the no Pokemon you lose rule is because they were trying to be analogous to the video game, where if you run out of Pokemon you lose. That's also why you can have max 6 Pokemon out at a time (1 active, 5 bench). As for the attacks to bench Pokemon, those are specifically formatted differently. If there is a damage number to the right of the attack that damage is always dealt to the active Pokemon as per the game rules, you don't get to choose. After that, an attack with an effect that deals damage to benched Pokemon lets you choose where that damage goes, but that effect is spelled out on the card not in the main rules of the game.
@@FineOtter I get that, which is why Pokemon don't attack the player, only other Pokemon (or creatures for MtG). The attacks hitting benched Pokemon being formatted differently doesn't change the fact that the bench is still "in play" and thus a wrath is going to hit all creatures in play, regardless of whether they're active or not. Further, the attacks being formatted differently reinforces the idea that a Pokemon would need a specific attack that says it deals damage to the player to actually hit the player.
As both a Blue Black Magic player and a Water Dark Pokemon Player let me tell you some rules you missed. Pokemon has a ruling where you are only allowed 1 Supporter card per turn....Unless it says otherwise. Furthermore, Bill has been errata'd to be a Supporter. In pokemon there are 4 types of trainer cards; Supporter, Item, Stadium, and Tool. Supporters are like Sorceries that do very strong stuff hence the once per turn. Items are weaker versions of Supporters that do things though Red Carding a Magic player is still very strong. Stadiums are like World Enchantments that affect both players. Only 1 stadium card allowed on the field at once so playing another discards the current one. Some have passive abilities while others have an activated ability. Tools are the pokemon equivalent to Equipment without the equip cost. Only 1 tool per pokemon.....Unless it says otherwise. However technically if you have a card that says destroy target equipment you can target a tool but if its destroy target artifact that wont work. One last thing I want to mention with Mill in pokemon is you only lose to self deck at the begining of your turn. If you are forced to draw from an empty deck nothing happens unless that draw is because its the start of your turn. Happy gaming to all the Planeswalkers and Trainers out there.
This series has to continue so we can eventually see magic vs competitive Yugioh and Pokémon decks, or atleast decks that do more then vorse raider pass
The issue is that, if a magic deck tries hard, they can just win before the other deck gets to play. YGO can do the same. So we have to dumb down both decks or there would be no video
@CardmarketMagic fair point, I don't mean pulling up with a fully optimised yugioh deck such as fire king snake eye, I more meant a deck that summons more than once a turn, as old and new yugioh are practically different games. Also if you don't think 1 magic deck could win, you could do a competitive deck vs 3 magic decks at once ie 1v3 Commander.
Should have written Ultra at the top of the Beast token... Lol
12:00 - not so fast! If attacking is an activated ability, then retreat is DEFINITELY an activated ability.
Yeah definitely
Didnt know Woodland Cemetary was a Bayou ... or is that also an old printing like Bill? 10:08
It comes in untapped if you have a swamp or forest
@@hahayes1072 which he had neither ...
Eh, it's just a for funsies video, call it a proxy Bayou.
Haven’t watched the video yet, but I’ve been enjoying the little cartoon happening as the thumbnail changes.
*Jamin:* On turn 1, I will spend 5 minutes playing 4 Pokemon, 10 spells, draw 22 cards and force you to to discard 6 cards
*Carl:* * surprised Pikachu face *
(and yes, I counted these. I am like that)
Technically discard 10, with 4 replacements.
Actually Carl shuffled the cards into the deck, but yes
Fair enough!
These videos are amazing, whenever you guys get creative like this it just makes me love this channel more and more. Gotta respect the craft! ❤
11:08 the woodland cemetery should enters tap, isn't it?
Yeah, Carl shouldn't have been able to play the Cursed Totem when he did (which would've lost him the game).
11:20 "If I don't play Pokemon, I'm dead."
Yup, a single board wipe would be an instant win for MTG.
This was amazing! Thank you for making this and sharing!
I really love this format and would hope so much to see more of it. Especially I'd like to see a magic deck facing off against a Vampire: the Eternal Struggle or a Netrunner deck, as those were also invented by Richard Garfield.
Not sure about the ruling of hitting directly, ragavan should have been able to block if you ask me
Kinda sad that pokemon is more of a collectible and people don't really play it that much. Its a solid game and decks are really affordable
I mean some pokemon events are pretty huge.
Yeah there’s actually a pretty big Pokémon community, at least around where I live.
tons play it… regionals are bigger than ever
Orlando regionals was a couple weeks ago and had 824 entrants. My LGS has ~25
players that show up to play weekly. It's very popular in the DMV area
It's not as big as magic obviously, at least in the west, but it's decently big for playing still. I don't find it as interesting for similar reasons to why I don't like yugioh, but its certainly a card game a good number enjoy
Counter for the Cursed Totem:
Stealthy Hood (Unbroken Bonds) - Prevent all effects of your opponent's abilities done to the Pokémon this card is attached to. Remove any such existing effects.
Why would you look at that, whatever this gets attached to now CAN attack. And I don't know MTG well enough, but I believe this also means it also gets around the destruction and fog effects because those are spell abilities.
Hang on, would the damage from the pokemon go to Carl's creatures not his face?
Y’all should this series against Shadowverse evolve. It’s similar enough to magic to not make the rules a nightmare and has some powerful cards and interactions
Really? One of the cards even has "You may only play one trainer card during your turn". I really like the idea of this series but i also hate some of the choices. Like in the yugioh video i think it would make sense to count stars a or at least tributes needed as converted mana cost. That video would really have benefited if you did a meta deck for the second round or something like that. I just cannot stand these little things when they act like they are unstoppable for the other game to prevent with their deck but there are either obvious parallels or they just forget a core part of the game.
this is the video in this little crossover series that I’ve been waiting for
7:22 is my favorite timestamp in this video.
I don't understand why did Carl instantly lost game one? Pokemons don't attack the trainer directly he is supposed to attack ragavan and presumably get a prize card for his troubles or because of magic rules if there are no creatures for Carl then he can also lose by taking 20.
Carl's win con would be Pokemon's loss conditions of losing 6 mons or having no Pokemon active or banched or magic alternative wincons like taking 10 poison counters
You gotta make sense with your decisions.. You can't just "I ignore ragavan I win"
Also both Bill and Oak are supporters and only one can be played each turn, not one each, not 5 each, one.
Absolutely absurd that rocket trap isn't a supporter and can be used multiple times but that whole turn was just cheating over and over again
Retreating is an activated ability in a sense too.
But I am not sure I'd rule cursed totem does that as pokemon do have abilities and the literal definition is "An Ability is an effect on a Pokémon that is not an attack." so... The attacks are not activated abilities but activated attacks so cursed totem doesn't work.
Yeah well.. I think you guys can do better with a rematch.
didn't expect anything but this... oh boy, that's entertaining!
11:45 only one problem: the totem only works if they’re abilities have an activation cost.
Most Pokémon don’t have costs to activate their abilities. They’re just activated.
I'm always amazed by the quality of the content, ideas and everything else. Yall are on another level!
Would like to see Magic v Lorcana someday soon. Would like to see more Lorcana content in general, lol. Two sets have released since your inaugural video with a third on the way!
That was hilarious, loved this video idea. Jamin popping off was super fun to watch
I love how a pokemon deck just immediately loses to a single copy of cursed totem or Tasha’s hideous laughter
If the Pokémon deck is allowed to point its damage face instead of at the creatures in play, it feels like a way to easily win would be to just add two Galarian Zigzagoon to the deck. "I play this Zigzagoon to put a damage counter on you - that's 10 damage - and another Zigzagoon, for the full 20. Good game?"
I love seeing all these old Pokemon cards I used to play way back when.
I wonder how the first match would have turned out, if the pokemon damage was divided by 10.
Luvdisk dealing 2 instead of 20 sound reasonable.
Or other way around and multiply magic life by 10.
"I used this because maybe I thought if you don't play any pokemon I could give you monsters to destroy"
"Oh if I don't play pokemon I'm dead. I literally just lose"
"It would've been way more convenient if I knew that"
Love that. Great vid!
1. You cannot play a trainer supporter card on your first turn if you go first
2. You can only play 1 trainer supporter card per turn
3. Bill was errata'd to be a supporter
I would love to see a competitive pokemon deck face off that turbo fog/insta kill deck.
I presume you'd have to rule wraths as not hitting the bench
10:53 Carl probably shouldn't have been able to respond to the end of the turn: if this were MTG and Jamin activated a Sundial of the Infinite, Carl could respond to the activation but couldn't do anything after the ability resolves (unless something causes a trigger to happen in the cleanup step, but that's not happening here).
Abilities and attacks are different things in Pokemon. The cursed totem wouldn't have shut anything down.
8:50 So, it says right on the card you can only play 1 supporter card per turn, which Professor Oak is, since they realized the many cards that did things like that were a bit OP without restrictions.
Maybe there's some exception about it being the same card, but that would seem odd to me.
"I active bill of greed! With this card I can take the top two cards of my deck and put them directly into my hand!"
I would like to see a video for this series with digimon. Also an idea I think would be fun for a diffrent series of videos is conversion rules, trying to make different card games play nicely with each other without just having high base damage equal murder.
11:41
T1 Pokemon Judge here, there are actual Abilities in Pokemon that can be activated once per turn! (though some abilities differ). Attacks and abilities operate separately, so would this play technically work, or are they counting attacks as "abilities"? 🤔
Fantastic video nonetheless! Keep it up!
In MTG, activated abilities are "effects that can be manually activated by paying a cost". Energy counters would function as that cost in Pokemon.
Ultimately, it'd depend on rulings. If we consider attacking as NOT using an ability, there are other cards in MTG that just say "X thing can't attack or block", or even "Nothing can attack you" that would shut the attacks down instead.
But if we're operating under MTG's combat rules, Pokemon wouldn't be able to attack until a full turn rotation after a player gains control of them. So you can't play a card and instantly attack with it (unless it has Haste, which negates this rule). Effects that gain control of creatures are ALSO affected by that rule, so I can't steal your things and then instantly attack you with them. Again unless the thing I take has Haste or gains it from something.
Ultimately, I think their take is the better one, because otherwise, the Pokemon player would have to sit there waiting to attack whenever they switch a pokemon in, and the MTG deck would be full of Pacifism style effects that prevent the pokemon from attacking or blocking. There are LOTS of ways to keep things from attacking you in MTG. Cursed Totem's effect is incredibly rare.
@@terratrox7180 If you go by MTG rules pokemons abilities would be activated abilities, so their ability to deal damage would not count as combat damage and would not be affected by summoning sickness. Not to mention the act of putting them in your "bench"/battlefield at the beginning of the game would be a pre-game action, like chancellor of the annex, leylines and gemstone cavern type of effects.
Seriously nobody noticed that the woodland cemetery that Karl drew to play the cursed totem should enter tapped? Je has no swamps or forests in play
Jamin stormed out but he forgot to add any storm cards let alone mana producers. And here I was thinking they knew how to build decks.
attacks arent abilities technically, and you cannot deck yourself. if a card says draw 7 and you have 6 left un deck you would draw 6. on your next turn if you draw for turn with no cards in deck you would lose
The return of Carl's turbofog...
Which to be clear is amazing to watch keep it up
I was just saying you should do this video yesterday. Crazy how this came now
we need a sequel of this!
Wow that was close! Actually clutch come back there.
That artifact did Jamin dirty, man 😂
11:10 the Woodland Cemetery should have come into the field tapped....right? So Pokémon should have won?
that woodland cemetery entered the battlefield untapped somehow :)
Pokémon damage should be divided by 10
The Cursed Totem got me laughing so hard lol
3:53 I love how if this were Yu-Gi-Oh! The YGO player would defend to death on "if it doesn't have X, doesn't mean they have 0 X" 😂
The rules simply dont work? Carl is allowed no active mons (Magic), but also draws a prizecard and Carl wins by attacking directly (Magic) but doesnt take an prize when the frog dies? Isnt Bill a supporter card and thus one a turn?
Just do what you did against the Yu-Gi-Oh deck... Pokemon doesn't use mana, after all!
You will run into a billion rulings conflict with Chalice, it's funny once, doing it again will not be a good idea
Not to say that deck will need to have a lot of other things to stop the Basic pokemons that comes down turn 0, and you'd get clowned for trying to rule that attaching energy to a pokemon gets countered by chalice, then due to how the attacks literally cost energy to use, Chalice under no sensible ruling can counter that, so you'd just get destroyed by a fish spitting at you.
@@adamxue6096 At least it's not Dan-Dan!
@@adamxue6096 also even if chalice could counte pokemon cards, the pokemon themselves a "put onto the bench" so it wont counter them and trainers are "played" chalice only works on cast cards
@@hellwombatwould stop all the trainer card spam 😅
@@hellwombat Unfortunately there are no satisfying way to rule counter spell type effects between games, it's honestly for the better to drop the obviously more controversial ruling shenanigans
See the issue comes from how you word these things and what counts for what, because it runs into the "should we equate it as if it's summoning a creature in mtg?"
Even extra fun is try to figure out whether a Wrath should hit every pokemon including ones on the bench, which are in another zone in comparison to the active pokemon zone. Meaning an instant game over.
I am glad they kept it somewhat more simple
I have seen so many errors in gameplay on the Pokémon side, and in deck building, but I’m curious to try a polished version of this one day
The Phyrexian War could've easily been won had the Gatewatch sent cartoon fauna instead.
I like how Jamin's prize counter (on top right) remain constant all throughout the game.
That last hand was sheer luck finding the totem
Carl gets to play fog, and be overpowered? I bet he was waiting to record this video all day
"every time I defeat a pokemon I get a prize card?"
Me, as someone that has played against blue control and black discard/kill decks:
"oh that poor Pokemon player."
A surprisingly entertaining video! What a silly and fun idea!
This was more interesting that I expected. And I already expected it to be interesting.
shouldn't he have attacked the ragavan instead of the player per pokemon rules?
11:48 idk if i agree with this ruling. good for the storytelling of the episode, but since there ARE activated abilities in the pokemon TCG (which are labeled) and anything with an energy cost is Explicitly called an attack, i wouldnt have handled it that way. but it does make a really funny end to the game.
I saw this video yesterday on my timeline and didn't watch it. I couldn't ignore it now that I see the thumbnail had been overtaken by a ditto!
as a magic player who learned pokemon recently, him being so amazed at the amount of card draw in pokemon is exactly what happent to me, pokemon decks are SO crazy xD
Fun video. I'll say this, for anybody wondering about playing Pokémon, decks really can be that fast and at the competitive level people often have to purposefully slow themselves down if a game goes long to keep from decking out.
Also, a competitive Standard deck in Pokémon at its cheapest is usually around 100 USD (or about 93.63 Euro) with the possibility of building out fancy pants holo decks for around 250 USD (or about 234 Euro) at the most.
Pauper is really the only format with a comparable price point, everything else is just insanely expensive by comparison, so Pokémon might be fun if you're wanting something quick and fairly easy to learn while on a budget.
Next up :
I said I could beat a Magic player with a Vampire, The Eternal Struggle deck, and they asked me wtf was that, but now im not so sure anymore
or,
I said I could beat a Magic player with a Netrunner deck, and they asked me wtf was that, but now im not so sure anymore
btw if you want to make a deck, consider Amaranth V:TES , you probably wont find any online :( (for V:TES)
Deckbuilder.Netrunner for well... netrunner
I hope these obscure TCG will be back to life thanks to a video from this channel.
I just don't understand the rules of Pokemon. It seems easy, but on the other hand I can't come behind the rules. I stick with MtG
If Cursed Totem works, that means that Pokemons deal damage through an activated ability, but then it wouldn't be combat damage so fog wouldn't work no?
Unless it's an activated ability that does combat damage. Which obviously would be a rules nightmare in Magic, but it's a pretty good approximation of what is happening in Pokemon.
Does the text on Professor Oak that says "you may only play one Supporter card per turn" not apply somehow? 8:50