Base Set: Pokémon Trading Card Game 

Lass used to be an important competitive card, simply because it was basically the only opponent hand disruption in the game. Impostor oak would usually help your opponent in most situations, so if you wanted to hurt your opponents hand, Lass was your only real option.

Chansey is actually one of, if not, the best stall card in the game (for the time anyways). 120 HP on a basic, and an attack that has a chance for the opponent to not do any damage. Not only that, but combining it with Alakazam's Damage Swap Pokemon Power can make Chansey last a crazy amount of time. It helps that with how lightning fast the game was at the time with how common draw power was, stalling until your opponent ran out of cards was actually a pretty viable strategy. Speaking of stall decks, there's a pretty goofy meme stall deck called "Mulligan Mewtwo" which just involves 2 Base set Mewtwos, and 58 Psychic energy cards...that's it. From there, just spam Barrier, and your opponent can't do much of anything, unless they knock out the Mewtwo before you're able to get 2 energies onto it. It wasn't a truly viable deck, since Energy Removal and Super Energy Removal are a thing, but it's just really funny, especially if you're able to somehow pull it off.

This gave me an idea for a GB TCG challenge - only use moves that deal 10 damage. The trick would be figuring out which secondary effects are the most useful!

Would love some videos on the E-Reader sets. Skyridge, Aquapolis and Expedition are amongst my favourite sets ever. Such beautiful cards from amazing Pokémon

Base Set Pokemon is so nostalgic for me. I'll never forget pulling Base Set Blastoise and hosing every1 with it thanks to Rain Dance

Man the Overgrow deck was it for me: the 100HP Base Set Gyarados, the 80HP Beedrill. What a time to be alive that was.

Oh boy. An hour long? you really spoiled us with this one, didn't ya'? thanks for your hard work - I enjoy your unique, long, and entertaining content. Don't stop the way you work. Have a great day/week!

Fun fact: Nidoran Male was even in some tournament decks. Many players took the coinflip for this fast brutal damage output.

Stumbled on your chanel a couple weeks ago and im hooked!

Although you said you dont plan on going past Skyridge, I'd love to see you delve into the further generations such as the "ex Era," the "Diamond & Pearl/Platinum Era,"and the "HeartGold SoulSilver Era." The artworks for these slightly later sets (such as HGSS with the stunning multi-card "Legend" cards) along with how much of a reputation some of these cards have held over the years (such as gold stars and such) make them a good topic to talk about and something that IMO should not go unnoticed by retrospective channels like yours. I'll say that this comes from a bit of a bias as I work at a card shop and pretty much the only things we ever buy from people (because it is the only thing people ever bring in to sell to us) are either cards from the Base set - Team Rocket era or modern cards from the past 5 or so most recent sets (These cards also being the main topic on the internet lately). So it'd be very nice and refreshing to hear someone's take on them who has a big bias for the WoTC era cards aswell as it would also be really cool to see you go over the evolution of the mechanics of the Pokemon TCG along with the design of the cards! Please take my suggestion into consideration and thank you for reading!

Dude, this was an absolute treat! I feel like the Base Set doesn't get a full look outside the context of being alongside Jungle and Fossil. As a side thing, I think Clefairy being a foil rare with no Clefable in sight is a leftover artifact of Clefairy potentially having the marketable mascot spot instead of Pikachu. If you think about it, it is a little weird that the series mascot is a pretty basic common card

I’m getting back into Pokémon cards after years of collecting but never playing them. I’m finally starting to play the actual card game instead of just collecting them to throw in a binder and look at them like I did when I was younger. So happy I found this channel.

I loved your Vending Series. You should do one on the early Japanese Unnumbered Promos from 1996-2001!

Best 2 pokemon cards from the base sets in my opinion were Dugtrio and Blastoise. Dugtrio was very easy to bring out and it did a good amount of damage very quickly along with its pre-evolution Diglett. Blastoise was essential in any water deck as its pokemon power rain dance made water decks an easy choice to use.

The reason Zapdos is the only legendary bird in the base set is because it was designed (mostly) around pokemon kids would would see the first half of red/blue. Zapdos was usually the first bird people would get because of the difficulty of the seafoam island articuno puzzle and moltres was endgame.

I wanted a video to put in the background while I clean and this pops up, noice

I can’t stress enough just how much this kind of content is my jam. Hope this remains an ongoing series for a while! I’ve really loved your shorter content so longer form videos like these are especially nice.

Wow, didn't expect to see such a long video ! Thank you so much !

I’m loving watching this with the Banjo Kazooie song in the background. Pokemon with that song really takess me back

retro pokemon for life!

Cannot overstate how perfect this video was. I would love to see set breakdowns of the early sets, it's really really interesting to see the balance breakdown and everything. Masterpiece. Keep it up!

To note: Devolution Spray's two main functions in competitive was to 1. Coming into play pokepower/bodies (if there were any at that time) and 2. to take off an evolution card so you can evolve to a fresh one, even if your pokemon is knocked out during the process. It's to save your 2nd stages ect, in case you couldn't search it out. It's not bad but it's very specific in it's use case.

Been looking for a video like this ty and please continue this as a series.

Thank you for covering this content! The original Base Set holds a very special place to so many out there. The 90's shounen aesthetic is just so different from the branding that Pokemon has nowadays... Look forward to you covering the other gen 1 expansions.

Please do as many of these as you can, for as many sets as you can. This was great to watch!

I'm so happy you're doing this series. Would love to see like 1 super-quick example of a Meta game at the time of the sets. But I love this either way

Great job! I enjoyed it as someone who has a long history with card games and is already knowledgeable on much about Base Set Pokemon.

Blastoise is literally one of the best cards ever, for its release time. So yeah…. It’s pretty clearly the best water type in base set.

This is such a wonderful channel, your passion shines through every video you make!

Thank you for this nice video! I enjoyed it a lot! I'm exited for the next videos about retro decks!

Childhood rocked with the Base Set and the state of the game seemed amazing when WOTC sets were out. Makes me wanna play the rom with PTCG. I started playing MTG after ending collecting Pokémon in EX Delta Species, few sets before the ugly powercreep.

I love watching these videos as I organize my collection

This sent me on a hunt to find my old cards. Great vid.

18:00 a little clarify, charizard needs to discard 2 energy cards instead of 2 energy which means if only 2 double colourless energy cards are attached to it when fire spin is used all 2 energy cards, i.e. 4 energy, have to be discarded

great video buddy. super energy removal is op af.

Mr Paraspectre here acting like it’s Christmas gifting us a whole hour of content!?!? Absolute bliss. Love these analyses, and will look forward to the future sets. I too have a stronger connection with the older cards, compared to the newer sets. Up to the gen2, and the e-reader ones, I was an avid collector. But then switched to other games as I grew older… My first pack had Venusaur, and I remember pulling the Pokémon Center trainer card and being absolutely impressed by the CGI art of Keiji Kinebuchi. Still my favorite illustrator.

Love that you included the theme decks, hope this trend continues in the series.

I've been recently getting back into the modern TCG online and I think Blastoise here is a great example of how wildly the power level has changed from back in the day to now. Back then, Blastoise would've been the centerpiece of a water deck, with high health, a powerful ability, and an attack that can deal up to 60 damage. But now? 100 health won't save you from most basic attacks from current centerpiece Pokemon, and the thought of needing 5 total energy to deal 20 extra damage is so laughably bad that you'd lose a match before you could even get Blastoise to attack. The current go-to water deck with Chien-Pao can deal 300 damage by discarding 5 water energy, and they don't even all need to be on Chien-Pao! I know card games can't just tread water forever and it's been over 20 years since Pokemon TCG started, but dang, it's just always wild to see how different things get lmao EDIT: also, always appreciate some of that good Banjo music

Man this is making wanna play the gbc tcg now aha. I only collected the cards and I'm a veteran in the main games, but I never actually played the tcg (or learned), but as you're going over these moves, I'm feeling nostalgia for these cards again and I wanna learn how to actually play with them. Great video!

Iirc, I think Chancy is actually part of the best deck in the original format, but you not knowing that is entirely reasonable because unlike the main games, the TCG came out with new sets fast enough that the Meta couldn't settle like it did in the games. I did wanna mention it, though, since Chancy is just in general one of the strongest gen 1 pokemon in every version of gen 1, entirely by accident, and I think that's funny.

Great video! Can't wait for Jungle and Fossil!

Great video! I'm currently trying to recollect the Base Set (and Jungle/Fossil) cards from my childhood and at the same time introducing my son to pokemon cards. This video was great at showing him what these cards were like back then vs. now. I hope you can get your Zard soon! I'm just missing the 3 starters and a few random non holos...

Ugh the Banjo Kazooie music is what sold me. Awesome video! Subbed fo sho~

When I was 8 before had a Gameboy Color and Pokemon Red, I had to go watch my sister play a game of tee ball. In order to placate me, my dad took me to a local baseball card store (D'Angelo Sports on Wantagh Avenue) and bought me two packs of Pokemon cards. In the second one was a holographic Charizard. That was the single greatest moment of my young life, and I'm pretty sure it's still up there in my top 5 almost 25 years later. I'm incredibly excited to get myself that Pokemon Legacy set or whatever they're calling it when they finally release it just for the pure and unadulterated nostalgia :D

This is the exact video I needed to get back into Pokémon! Thank you!

I don't even play Pokemon TCG, I only play Yugioh but I love your content. It is so easy to understand even for someone with no idea of what's good or not in this game. I also find it funny how you mention powercreep in Pokemon because I honestly had no idea the game suffered from that as well (I am very used to it due to how ridiculous ygo's powercreep is). It's an interesting way to look at how card games change so much through the years.

Man I loved this, and it brought back a lot of great memories. Please do a video like this on Jungle and Fossil!

Yas more TCG content!

48:34 fun fact: attach a defender on magnemite, use selfdestruct boom, it is still standing (or floating...?) on the stage

I've never played pokemon competitively but speaking from my experience playing mtg I'd say you undervalued pokedex and maintenance heavily. In my world, we would call pokedex scry 5 which would be insane. The closest I can think of is ponder which only does 3 cards and is still banned in almost every format for being too powerful. Maintenance is good because the ability to dump useless cards in your hand and replace them is powerful. It's similar to a card in mtg called faithless looting which just got banned in modern. Imo it's even better though because the cards go back in your deck.

Ohhh i love the banjo kazooie click clock wood summer version On the background! Actually i love all the banjo kazooie soundtrack😭💙

Nice. I liked hearing your options as someone that actually learned the game as a kid.

By the way if you're curious the reason the best of game promos reverse Holo Hitmonchan had 60hp Instead of 70 was That one of the guys that Wizards absolutely hated Haymaker decks. And then either losing the license so they figured for a little while anyway they can print it wrong and tell people to play it as written

I remember reading about a deck build that was purely a stall. No energy and all high hp Pokémon. Used the Pokémon center card to keep health and you used the imposter oak card when the opponent was low on cards in their hand to make them use more cards from their deck. It was weird but fun to use.

Your channel made me start using parasect in every pokemon games. Has access to spore and false swipe. Never bothered checking before! On another note, the japan exclusive 2nd pokemon TCG game is pretty good. Surprised to see there was a fan translation.

Set analysis is a great topic to go into! Your channel recently inspired me to upload some Pokémon TCG GB challenge runs of my own, and doing those have made me think about distribution. Is Machop balanced against Hitmonchan because it evolves? How about being Common vs Rare--should the rarity of the card reflect power or be reflective of the evolutionary stage? I'm still at the start of the video, but you mention the relative balance of types in this set. When you get to Fossil and Jungle, you may notice a deluge of Grass types and an imbalance towards attacks that Poison compared to other status conditions. You mention Water is a common Gen 1 type, but Poison is not far behind, and even some Tangela cards inflict poison.

Ah yes the amazing Dewgong holding on high above the rest of the water uncommons. What a sick evolutionary line in the base set, that 60 HP on Seel is no joke either. I remember getting the Overgrowth deck, my sister got Brushfire as I remember she always had that Ninetales kicking around in our battles. I remember being a big fan of Staryu and Starmie in that structure deck, solid stuff and I liked them from the Gameboy game too especially because of Starmie's Star Freeze sound effects.

Seeing this is fun! My parents and I used to go nuts with collecting the more classic WotC/2000s Nintendo cards, so it always makes me warm and fuzzy seeing coverage on the Base Set and past expansions. My white whale when it comes to the Pokémon TCG is, "What if all the types were supposed to stay like they are in the video games?" More complicated, yes. Janky sounding, very yes. But I think it would be a neat little alternate universe for the TCG!

This is a nostalgia trip down memory lane for me. When I turned 5 (in 2004) my half sister had a HUGE collection of these. To this day, I’m still trying to 1 up her childhood collection 😅

lass was a killer, maybe more so after jungle, but you play all your oaks, bills, energy removals, etc. then you lass and the opponent doesn't get to use any of theirs

That intro alone earned a like. If I was not already subscribed then I’d hit that bell

Ah, the nostalgia! While I was never able to build a full collection when the first sets came out. Mainly due to the whole Pokémon is Satan thing going on. I do remember the collection I did have, and they were awesome to play with, when my older sis had the time. Learning about this stuff now, is really cool to see. After you posted your first challenge vid, I got that craving to play the old game, and collected what cards I lacked. Been playing against my Brother-in Law and my niece and Nephews. It's been a real blast. Thanks for making these videos dude! :3

Im so Happy I was able to buy a conplete base set for my collection. Very lovely and nostalgic set, definitely worth the price!

The themed music for each type was a nicle little touch

That was a nice watch. I never got big into the physical TCG on account of it being rather expensive, but I did get hooked on the digital version with the GBC game releasing on 3DS. In the couse of this video, I fired it up again and built the Haymaker deck mentioned in this video. I didn't know that was a thing, but it really is incredibly effective.

Fantastic video!!

Yes please I love this format of going through all cards. The nostalgia and seeing what is iniside the set. And just fair i like this format

I had a couple of different nonstandard decks for tournaments back in the day but one of my favorite niche decks was always my fire/colorless deck build around Charizard. Everyone always slept on it's pokemon power and pokemon breeder so you could get an unsuspecting charmander on the field with 2 fire energy and then surprise the opponent by dropping a pokemon breeder and colorless energy on it in the same turn to go from some wimpy basic to the absolute buster that was fire spin Charizard and keep utilizing colorless energies to only discard a single card per fire spin allowing you to use it back to back with lucky enough draws. The advantage of the rest of the deck being colorless is you could always stall for time with something like Chancey or use one of the no retreat colorless to quickly swap into charmander once the setup was complete.

Loved this, do more please.

The Base Set, along with RBY and the anime, were the holy trinity of what got me into anime and video games. I can confidently say had I never got this set as a kid, I'd probably never have gotten into what I enjoy today.

Really fun video! When I play the GBC TCG, I enjoy using a variant of Haymaker called Flamemaker. Swaps out Hitmonchan for Fossil Magmar. Much more consistent since there's no Fire resists. Magmar plays the game a _little_ slower than Hitmonchan, but both of its moves have status effects which are nice early in a match to help you get benched Scyther and Electabuzz set up.

(This comment reflects modern opinions of recreations of the Base Set format, and may not reflect what was actually played at the time.) Doduo is actually the only common Pokemon to see play for any reason other than evolving into something stronger. That reason being that it has no retreat cost, so it's always safe to make it your active Pokemon and then swap to something else later in your turn. The fact that it has a Fighting resistance and 50 HP gave it an edge over other Pokemon with no retreat cost. Farfetch'd does see some play, again because of its resistance to Fighting. Raticate's resistance to Psychic is much less useful, and its weakness to Fighting made sure it never saw any play. Super Fang is pretty cool though, but I suspect it's usually not worth it. Chansey was one of the most played cards in this set, and I believe it continued to see constant play until it rotated out of the format. You'd never use Double-edge though. Instead, it just walked up with its massive HP and Scrunch, or you'd even leave it on your bench for Alakazam to swap damage onto. Dragonair is very cool, but I think that, ironically enough, energy removal was too common for it to be useful competitively. Zapdos probably deserves to be ranked over Magneton, since it sees competitive play in the Buzzapdos deck. As the name implies, it's built around using Zapdos with Electrode's Buzzap power. Alakazam definitely sees competitive play in this set, and I'm pretty sure it kept seeing play until it rotated out. It was never used for attacking, just for keeping your Pokemon alive by moving all of their damage onto high HP Pokemon like Chancey. You are absolutely right about why Blastoise is better than Venusaur, despite being similar. Which is why Blastoise has a deck built around it, but Venusaur didn't see any play. I agree that Water is the best type in this set, which is why Rain Dance is a competitive deck. I'd put Lightning second, since it has Buzzapdos and part of Haymaker. I'd also put fire and grass last, since none of their cards see any play. Psychic and Colorless at least have Alakazam, Chancey, and Doduo seeing some play, even though they were used for support and not for their typing. All of the common trainers are incredibly good and see competitive play, except for Potion, which is just outclassed by other options. I think the best proof of how strong these cards are is that later equivalents of Energy Removal required a coin toss, and the modern equivalent of Gust of Wind still sees play, but is a Supporter card now (and you can only play 1 Supporter each turn). I'd probably order them Energy Removal, then Gust of Wind, then Bill, then Switch, but I could be convinced to move them around a bit. Most of the uncommons see play too, but probably less than the commons, interestingly enough. I agree that Oak is the best, and the next two slots are a tossup between Pluspower and Pokemon Center. Pokemon Flute, Pokedex, and Revive are the only ones that don't see play. (You either misspoke or misread Revive. It can only bring back basic Pokemon, which makes it much worse than if it could bring any Pokemon back.) Once again, most of the rare trainers see plenty of play. Most notably, you are severely underestimating Lass, which I'd argue is one of the strongest cards in the entire set. Remember that the trainers in this set are incredibly powerful, so it wasn't unusual for half of your deck or more to be trainers. And with cards like Bill, Professor Oak, and Computer Search, it's not hard to cycle through large chunks of your deck on your first turn, making it easy to find a Lass. So you could go first, play all of the trainers you wanted to, and then end your turn by playing Lass and cutting your opponent off of all the trainer cards they wanted to use. I believe the only rare trainers that never saw serious play were Clefairy Doll and Devolution Spray. Imposter Professor Oak didn't see play in this set, but would eventually be playable in decks that aimed to stall and deck your opponent out, though I don't think those were super competitive. And finally, I do think it's a bit amusing that you mentioned how these cards are all useless thanks to powercreep. That's definitely true for the Pokemon, but like I mentioned earlier, some of these trainers would be playable, and possibly even broken, if they were printed today.

Chansey was a tank mon you'd play to stall your opponent while you setup bench mons and use trainers to fish for evolutions and energies. It was also the best anti-psychic wall in the game. You never attack with it because it helps the opponent more than hurts them, or at best you'd occasionally use Scrunch to guard against high damage attacks or fighter counterplay.

I didn't know how to play the card game when I was a kid. I recently started playing the Gameboy TCG games to learn. This video helped me put things into perspective (or should I say into paraspective). I've got some deck building to do in game now.

i can not wait to see the other sets.

love this video, thank you!🤯

Awesome video. Thanks! Keep it up. Please do the next one in the series!

I forgot the Electrode at 26:33 even existed because it's not included in the GBC game! Maybe the rainbow artwork was too hard to reduce to a palette of four colors for the GBC, but I'm guessing Buzzap was simply too much work for the programmers to want to bother coding in. 🤔

I like the expanded, deeper delve into odd facts and stats

An hour long Paraspectre video... we have been blessed ♡

just wanted to say that this video made me go look at other stuff you did :D

btw one strategy that i invented is to use alakazam alongside dodrio and mr mime in the same deck, with alakazams poke power you can intentionally swap all your damage counters onto dodrio to get a huge rage off, also its poke power works really well with mr mime which lets you retreat it for free if the matchup is bad/the enemy pokemon resists psychic (thats basically the only time the matchup will be bad) and either way as long as you have alakazam plus mr mime you will only take 20 damage at best each turn and it will survive for a very long time since you can just swap the damage counters arround to your dodrios in the back to power up rage and saving mr mime at the same time. these 3 have amazing synergy.

52:30 Never understimate the power of a Turn 1 Lass. Did a retro match a couple of weeks back and getting Lass'd Turn 1 cost me the game since I had to shuffle back Trader and Computer Search hahaha.

Squirtle will always have a place in my heart for somehow paralyzing the opposing Pokemon like 11 times in a row and shutting down their deck that otherwise hardcountered mine. I really did figure out how to perfectly roll a die for just that one battle

God I wonder if I can find it still. There's a very funny story about the shadowless cards. Apparently shortly before they were slated to release someone lost the files for the templates they were using and they only had a little bit to go off of because apparently Japan just wasn't getting back with them. So so they took what they had which were cropped versions of the cards which lacked text and they flipped him and rotated them and forgot to add the drop shadow. You look really closely on shadowless card you can tell that the background is repeating from the top. Worth noting that if a card is first edition it will also be shadowless aside from Machamp which I'm sure you'll touch on by the time you get to it. Effectively this makes the shadowless cards 2nd edition

In the game boy version, I built a strangler deck around Poliwrath, Golduck, and Dragonair that could routinely remove energy faster than it could be played. Very fun build around if you aren't playing humans. Blastoise ended up utility as I rarely attacked with it

Certainly a beloved blast from the past.

The Banjo-Kazooie music is perfect. 😁

Loving your content man! Thanks for this and all your hard work. Will you be reviewing Fire Red & Leaf Green at some point? Would love to hear your thoughts.

Huh, I never noticed Gyradose was weak to grass in the TCG. That.... irks me so much. Why isn't it lightning?

Did you pick the music from levels to match the types? Neat.

18:54 strategy, use poisonpowder then spam bind, with good look you will win easily

I simply must ask you to talk about the delta series. It was probablt tye first set i got that wasnt a hand me down, though those cards were still greatly appreciated.

Devolution spray is a better full heal for basic or stage 1 pokemon, since you can choose stage 2 and discard no cards in order to heal it of major status effects and minor status effects like poliwhirl's amnesia.

You under value lass a lot. The early meta had people running lots of draw snd energy removal. Lass was considered strong because you could simply activate as many trainer cards as you desired, getting as much benefit as possible and then use lass, cutting your opponent off from any of their powerful trainer cards

holy cow the nostalgia is real.

43:25 I've done some research like this, played the GBC TCG game, found old decklists and remixed my own, it would be neat to battle. I printed out all the original cards up through Gym Challenge, got some real energy cards to use as support and then sleeved them all, you can't tell they are proxys really. Do you have a link cable long enough to reach Missouri? haha

Scoop Up is the one card I think you were off base with. The fact that you can just play the basic 'mon that you just scooped up again basically means it's a free heal.

Really fun trip down memory lane. If we are counting trainers I'd say the best card is Bill. Really no reason to ever run less than 4 copies. I'm curious why you'd say each deck should run at least 2 copies and not four?

You cannot convince me that bill should not be a 4 of in every single deck. It’s just too good for consistency boosting