As someone who started playing as a kid a month before fossil came out, your retro videos fill me with a ton of nostalgic joy. I loved the tone and vibe of the vid, reminded me a lot of The Gaming Historian. Thanks for the great content!
The intro was absolutely phenomenal and extremely well done. Amazing video and I’m glad I got to watch it the second it dropped This set was the last set I was really trying to make a name for myself by playing all around Texas and Louisiana before moving on to the competitive game side of GSC. What Pokémon cards did I pilot? None other than dark Weezing and dark Muk! Makes my heart overflow with joy to see them mentioned and covered
This series is a time machine, i remember vaguely reading about these powerful strategies on magazines and trying to do a "budget" version, since kids only wanted to buy boosters. Team Rocket most intriguing mechanic to me is subtle but the antithesis of modern Pokémon tcg design: All dark pokemon, even stage 2 ones, were pretty low on HP to balance their disruptive power. I miss these old times with 80HP Dark Charizard or a Dark Jolteon with mere 50HP.
Great video👍, this is my favorite set too, I remember buying the 1st edition packs at some liquor store, Asian couple ran it, every time a anew set of Pokémon came out they had it !
Team Rocket is my favorite set, too. It's also the last set I experienced before I stopped playing during the OG era - I didn't come back until XY Flashfire!! I still remember pulling a Dark Raichu and being amazed, but also confused.
Many years ago, when I was a child, I used to play a deck based on the sinergy between Dark Muk, Dark Golbat and an other Dark Pokémon you don't mentioned, Dark Arbok. It was a very tough deck, even against those made of psychic Pokémon: fast, hard-hitting, bench-destroyer and very very poisonous
Just started playing Pokemon TCG nearly 20 years after getting my first cards. I was one of those kids you described that never had enough cards or friends to play the full game as a kid, so we just sat around talking about the cards and trading them. I was getting nostalgic thinking about what fun it would have been to play competitively back in these first few years of the game. These videos did just that and completely filled that need. Short of an actual time machine this was an amazing trip to the past.
This is definitely an awesome video and you have re ignited my passion of playing the game so thanks so much! Now do I play the online game myself or watch one of your videos again?
I think you missed out on discussing how good Dark Dragonair was in this video. Everything else was spot on. I hope to see a video for the Neo sets! I want to be reminded how toxic Beat Up Sneasel, Mind Games Slowking and Steel Chansey were to the meta
See I was a child back in the day and I don’t even remember what my deck was when I used to go to my Local card shop to play in tournaments and win gym badges but I always just liked the artwork on the cards so seeing competitive gameplay from the early years makes me wish I had been more mature at the time
I collect Team Rocket in all forms, not just this expansion. Any Trainers, Pokemon named "Rocket's [pokemon]", Pokemon owned by Jessie and James in the anime, and cards that feature Team Rocket in the art. It's pretty fun to collect.
I just find out about this channel, Great series !!! have a big collection and also like 6 decks of old school tcg, i love it. I hope you talk about gym heroes/challenge next. that’s my favorite set.
I'm currently experiencing a lot of these cards for the first time in the second Pokemon TCG gameboy game. I've been on the receiving end of Dark Vileplume a couple times. Still learning the game, it's fascinating to realize just how reliant on trainers you are when suddenly you can't use them. It's wild this card was printed so early on. In general, I really like this expansion though. Dark Pokemon are really cool - they are an active downgrade numerically (with some not even getting an HP increase in evolution) which is quite rare in new expansions to my knowledge, but their effects are varied and unique. My first full deck was actually a version of a gimmicky Whirlwind deck from the first Gameboy game (spam Pidgeotto's Whirlwind, then move damage around with Gengar) where I learned to really love Dark Golbat since its attack and pokepower played into the strat 100%. Also, the lighting on Dark Vaporean makes it look like its eventual shiny form, which is a neat touch.
I remember getting some Rocket boosters way back in the day. I even remember seeing some of the Japanese ones before the English ones released! It was the last time I really played the Pokémon TCG, though; after that, the craze at school moved on to MtG.
everybody loves base set, but for me it always was Team Rocket the best cards ever imo i just love this dark sinister vibe the cards have just the best TCG Set imo
Until recently I was under the impression that dark Raichu was the first secret rare but have now learned that in the jungle first edition set they had inserted a secret rare pikachu card.
Awesome video - very nostalgic! I loved the Team Rocket set as well (mostly for the artwork), so it was interesting to hear about how these cards fared in the competitive scene.
I always loved the Rocket Set as a kid and still do to this day! A new Rocket themed Set would be amazing and might motivate me to buy some Boosters again. Until then I just love the nostalgia.
Honestly I think gym challenge was a much more disruptive set with stuff like chaos gym and mainly the rockets trap you could clean your opponents hand before they even got to play and take huge oh kos with Erikas jigglypuff
From Pokegyms Compendium: The misprints that DO affect game play (The non-foil Dark Vileplume having Fighting as its Weakness and Grimer having a Poison Gas attack that puts the other Pokémon Asleep) will NOT be corrected. The game play effect misprints will be played as is, on the cards. When playing in an English League or Tournament, you will play these cards as is. If playing in an International event, then the cards will be played, as they originally should have been. This will be announced at those events beforehand. (April 27, 2000 WotC Chat Announcement)
3 cards were in almost every competitve deck(Nightly garbage run, Imposter prof Oaks Revenge, Rockets sneak attack) and all top players Ran Nightly Garbage Run and a copy of Imposter prof Oaks revenge when the set came out, honestly i would love a format of Base-Rocket to be a format, game opened up so much, but the Dark pokemon sucked only few hits and were fringe at best.
"Probably the most recognizable special energy in the Pokemon TCG..." Me: Has to pause the video to read what it does because I've never seen or heard of this card.
Thanks for the Shoutout to dark Weezing! Theres a video on RU-vid of me being an opponent using the Dark Weezing deck in rocket-on, against the owner of the video called Semeai, who is the person trying to showcase a Giovanni's Machamp deck in the video. Just a heads up though. My version of Dark Weezing that I played in the video, didn't run Brocks Ninetales, and instead relied on darkness energy to boost attack. But Semeai does have his own Brock's ninetales/ Dark Weezing deck showcase. If you want to see some of the old base set and rocket on format games online, you should check out Semeai's youtube channel. even though its been inactive for well over 2 years now. ru-vid.com/show-UCLiQHZfAuDed5MxVW5MwFWA
This set made the format no longer fun to play. Blastoise was pretty much unplayable, and Haymaker decks were forced to run Muk as a counter to Dark Vileplume. Not to mention going first meant you could disrupt your opponents setup and get a donk.
I quit when this set came out. I absolutely could not bring myself to play with evil Pokemon. I could not fathom a reason why Pokemon would release a set like this and force everyone to become 'evil.'
