What counts as public knowledge that something will have no effect?
I saw that there was a new ish ruling that says that you couldn't use something like TM Evolution on Raichu in Standard, but you could in Expanded, due to the game knowing that Raichu BREAK isn't legal in Standard. This made me wonder what other situations prevent a card from being used just to fail the effect and shuffle the deck.
- If I have TM Evolution on my active Charmander for example, and 2 more Charmander on bench, am I allowed to fail Evolution if there are 4 Charmeleon in my discard, Lost Zone, or face up prize cards?
- I currently have no cards in my deck. I play Super Rod and shuffle 3 energy back in. Am I allowed to play and fail an Ultra Ball?
These are just examples that I gave to try to understand this rule better, rather then actually make these plays just so you guys know.
Comments
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Oh man that is a really good question. In my personal opinion, I think that you are allowed to do both of those scenarios. It seems to me that the interpretation of the rule hinges on the condition that the search card actually depends on.
For example, you can’t play and fail a Nest Ball if your bench is full because the condition of Nest Ball is having an empty slot on your bench.
But with TM Evo, the condition is just to have (up to) two Pokémon on your bench that can evolve into something. So because Charmander has an evolution, you can fail a search with it.
Ultra ball’s condition is that you can discard two cards from your hand.Now of course none of the aforementioned cards/effects can be played/used if your deck is EMPTY, but in my opinion the reason that you can’t search through your deck if it’s not there is not that the thing you’re searching for isn’t in your deck, it’s that there’s no deck to search through in the first place.
In both of your scenarios, even though we know that you won’t be able to find what you’re looking for in the deck, we still have a deck to look through, so from my perspective that’s what differs the ‘empty deck scenario’ from the ‘no valid results in deck’ scenario.
In addition to my attempt at a logical breakdown (😂), this should also be reviewed from the perspective of practicality. Especially in the Super Rod scenario: there’s actually no way to prove that we can know that there’s no Pokémon in-deck because people are allowed to rearrange their discard piles and so you can’t infer from a shuffled discard pile whether or not the energy went into the deck turns ago and other cards were drawn.
I really hope that this was even intelligible and that it helped! I’m definitely not rock solid on this but that’s what it seems like to me.
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@Octowen you're close but still off.
The Ultra Ball scenario is allowed. However, I believe that the TM Evo one isn't for the same reason it's against the rules to play Elsa's Sparkle if all 4 FSE are accounted for in play it in the discard. (Yes, I know it's allowed on Live. It's a bug.)
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Also to add to this, I'm assuming prize cards that have been flipped face up are public knowledge, bot not ones looked at with Hisuian Heavy Ball?
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That makes sense. I didn't know about the Elsa's Sparkle ruling, so that should clear it up. Just to make sure I'm understanding things correctly, if it's public knowledge (and not due an effect making cards in a private area known) that an effect will fail, then it can't be used?
Also, for anyone else who sees this, you can assume Expanded or Standard format for the Charmander ruling. I forgot Dark Charmeleon exists in Unlimited.
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Yes Hisuian Heavy Ball doesn’t make the prizes public knowledge 👍
“if it's public knowledge (and not due an effect making cards in a private area known) that an effect will fail, then it can't be used?”
That sounds right; you might want to double check with @TechHog.
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