Pokémon Partner Battles Rules version 3.00 brings a major change to the way we play the game (and a few minor ones too)! Pull up a chair, and I’ll tell you all about what was changed, and why.

The first, and biggest, change I want to tell you about is that Partners are now played directly to the bench from the Partner Zone; No evolution required (or allowed)!

We have been looking for a way to make Stage 2 Pokémon more viable as Partners since very early on in the format’s development, as it became obvious that Stage 2 Partners were drastically outpaced by Stage 1 and Basic Partners.

Later, as the format evolved, it became apparent that Stage 1 Partners tended to outpace even Basic Partners because Stage 1 Partners could be played directly to the active spot, whereas Basic Partners went to the bench and had to find a way to switch into the active spot. This revelation helped lead us to the change in how Partners are played in this new iteration of the rules, which we feel levels the field a bit.

With this change, Stage 2 Partners no longer have to wait an additional turn or dig for all of the pieces to make the evolution possible but Stage 1 Partners can now get stuck on the bench just like Basic Partners. Two birds; One stone.

Of course, this has also made it easier to get oppressive evolution Pokémon like Vileplume (UD 24) and Aerodactyl (FO 1) into play reliably in the early game, which was a problem we needed to address.

We did a lot of testing against Vileplume, and have found that, while it shuts down combo-heavy decks, straightforward aggressive decks could handle it fairly easily but would sometimes fail to get even a minimal stable setup if Vileplume came down on the first turn of the game. With that in mind, we made the decision that a Partner cannot be put into play on either player’s first turn. With this change, we found that aggressive decks had much better chances against Vileplume, but that Combo decks weren’t typically able to get all of the pieces in the right places with just 1 turn in which they were able to play Trainer cards.

As for Aerodactyl, the rules regarding putting your Partner into play are worded such that Aerodactyl can’t stop you from playing your Partner, although it can still stop you from playing an evolution Pokémon from your hand.

Since this change to how your Partner is put into play fixed the problem we were trying to fix with the “Solgaleo Rule”, we got rid of that rule. That is to say: You can no longer play previous evolution stages of your Partner that don’t fit within your Partner’s type identity.

Another minor change we made to the rules is a suggested change that has been in the pipeline for years but we wanted to take the time to make sure it didn’t create any possibilities for overly oppressive play. In fact, we now feel that the previous rule was maybe overly restrictive with no good reason. That change is that the “uniqueness rule” has now been opened up quite a bit.

In the past, we only looked at a few traits on a Pokémon card and if those few traits were all the same, they were considered the same card, and couldn’t be played in the same deck. Now, we have nearly tripled the traits we check, and if there is any difference in even 1 of those traits, the cards are considered unique and can be played together in the same deck. Rather than go through the whole list here, I’ll just link you to rule 1.3.3 and you can read it for yourself.

Other than that, there were some grammar and formatting changes, but nothing that changes the way the game is played. We have numbered this version of the rules as a significant milestone because it significantly changes the way the game is played, and how you’ll build your decks in the future. Also, it would make some decks that were previously legal illegal because of the removal of the “Solgaleo Rule”.

Thanks for taking the time to read this entire blog post and not just skimming through and reading the bolded bits. We hope you will continue to enjoy the format as much as we do.

– The Pokemon Partner Battles Rules Team