It has been announced that the Pokémon TCG will delay its regular rotation of the standard format until “early 2023”.
Standard is one of the two main formats for the Pokémon TCG, and is the most widely played. In Standard, only cards from recent years are legal to ensure the long-term balance of the game. Unlike Magic: The Gathering, which uses the release of its fall set as a cutoff point for ‘rotation’, Pokemon has a much more flexible time frame and uses “Regulation Marks” to decide what is and isn’t. legal.
Traditionally, the Standard rotation occurs at the start of a new Championship Series season, right after the end of that year’s World Championship. However, the Covid pandemic has caused the World Championships to be canceled in recent years, resulting in The Pokémon Company having to release more direct statements about the rotation. The last rotation was on September 10, 2021, at the start of the 2022 season.
This year, we will have a World Championship, which will take place in London in August. While this hopefully means the rotation will arrive in August or September, it was announced via the official site that we’ll be getting it “early 2023” instead. At the 2022 World Championships, all but a handful of promo cards will be playable, including the Pokémon Go TCG expansion.
Currently, any card with regulation markings D, E, F is legal in Standard, meaning everything from the basic Sword & Shield setup to the more recently released Astral Radiance can be played in organized events and tournaments. . With the next rotation, all D cards will become non-standard and no longer legal, removing everything from the basic Sword & Shield build to most cards in Shining Fates.
Although no reason was given for this delay, it is likely related to the incoming 9th generation with the release of Pokémon Scarlet and Violet in November. It doesn’t make much sense to rotate Standard to remove half of the Sword and Shield era without having the basic scarlet and purple set to replace them. Keeping Sword & Shield Base Set and the first half of the legal standard era until Scarlet & Violet has been released avoids the turmoil of removing Regulation D cards and leaving a void in the metagame.
