How to Play Old School Pokémon (Advanced Rules and Restricted List)

Rules Unique to Old School Pokémon

In Old School Pokémon, it is important to note that the first player to take a turn in a game may not make an attack, this is different from the original rules of the game, and is more in alignment with later rule sets. Please ensure you are following this step correctly.

Mulligans

In the 1.0 rulebook, when a player has no Basic Pokémon to set as their Active Pokémon, they reveal their hand to the opponent, shuffle, and draw a new hand of 7 cards to try again; this would allow the opponent to draw up to 2 extra cards per mulligan. In alignment with more current rules, and to lower the power gap between a player forced to mulligan and their opponent, the rule has been errata'd to only draw up to 1 extra card per mulligan.

Restricted Cards

Due to their power level, some cards in Old School Pokémon are restricted. This means only one copy of the card is allowed to be played in a deck constructed for Old School Pokémon play. Those cards are:

- Computer Search

- Energy Removal

- Gust of Wind

- Imposter Oak's Revenge

- Item Finder

- Super Energy Removal

- The Rocket's Trap

Other Advanced Rules

Some cards were mass produced with printing errors. Cards are to be played as Wizards of the Coast intended, which occasionally supersedes the printed text on the card. Here are the known errors and their intended rulings:

Blaine’s Charizard’s Roaring Flames attack

- Discard all Fire Energy cards not used to pay for this attack’s Energy cost. This attack does 20 damage plus 20 more damage for each Fire Energy card discarded this way.

Clefairy and Clefable's Metronome

- Metronome was mistranslated on both Clefairy and Clefable. While it does allow you to copy an attack without needing the usual Energy required, you must still do anything else required to use that attack, such as discarding Energy cards. This means that if Clefable used Metronome to copy an attack like Charizard’s Fire Spin, Clefable would still have to discard two Energy cards. If Clefable did not have two Energy cards attached to it to discard, the attack would have no effect.

Dark Vileplume

- Dark Vileplume should be weak to Fire, not Fighting. (The holo version has the correct weakness.)

Giovanni's Pinsir's Snapping Pincers (Gym Challenge)

- Flip a coin. If heads this attack does 10 damage plus 20 more damage; if tails, this attack does 10 damage.

Grimer's Poison Gas (Team Rocket)

- Poison Gas should poison the Defending Pokémon, not leave it Asleep.

Rocket's Minefield Gym (Gym Challenge)

- The amount of damage counters was omitted on the English version. It should read “…put 2 damage counters on that Pokémon.” A small percentage of these cards from a later print run do actually have the correct text.

Special Conditions

- Poison is not considered a Special Condition that will disable Pokémon Powers. Legendary Collection cards state their powers are disabled by a special condition, as an alignment in future printings, this is not considered in Old School Pokémon.

- Players may retreat as many times per turn as they like.

- Confused Pokémon that fail to attack do 20 damage to themselves (instead of placing 3 damage counters). This damage applies Weakness and Resistance.

- Confused Pokémon must attempt to retreat, first by paying the retreat cost, and then flipping a coin. Heads permits that Pokémon to retreat, but tails leaves the confused Pokémon active, and it may not try to retreat again until next turn.

- PlusPower adds 10 extra damage after applying Weakness and Resistance, not before. (It also must be attached to your Active Pokémon.)

- There is no limit to how many Stadium cards may be played in one turn.

Stadium cards with the same name may be played to replace another.