Energy Zone Rework For Better Deckbuilding Experience
My friend had an idea for how to rework the Energy Zone that I wanted to share here. Right now, building a multi-type deck is painful because of the 50/50 chance of getting the energy you need during a game. Most multi-type decks I see the community building are really single-type decks where a Pokémon like Butterfree or Hypno sits on the bench and are never used to attack (a valid strategy, but shows the lack of incentive to actually use multiple types of energy).
This game currently has a 30-turn limit. My friend's idea is that the Energy Zone could be a Zone with a limited amount of energy, let's say 30 to match this turn limit. When building a deck, the player could choose the distribution between types of energy, say 10 Psychic and 20 Dark. The type of energy available each turn is selected from this diminishing pool. This would create a much more dynamic deckbuilding experience where players will try to tune their Energy Zones to match the makeup of their decks. Even in a deck where the type distribution is even, and a player has 15 of two energy types in their Zone, if the player gained a lot of one type of energy during the first half of a match, the odds of receiving the other type of energy would increase for the second half of the match.
The other part of my friend's idea is that, when a player can gain no more energy from the zone, that player loses the match. This would replace the current 30-turn limit, and make for interesting decision making for the player during a longer match. It would also make a Misty high-roll of 5 or more energy result in a player having less turns to win the game, which could lead to some interesting situations. Also it would make energy acceleration decks (Gardevoir, Moltress EX, Lilligant) would be incentivized to lean into the full aggro strategy to end the game before they run out of energy.
Finally, my friend's idea could introduce the possibility of some energy acting as 'color-fixing' energy, ala Magic: The Gathering multi-color lands. Multi-type decks could have a select number of energy in the Energy Zone that acted as any type of energy. A good number might be around 3 to 6.