r/OutOfTheLoop • u/hookerok • Jan 17 '25

Unanswered What is going on with people fighting over Pokemon cards at Costco?

I’ve seen several videos of people rushing into costcos, fighting at Costco, grabbing large amount of Pokemon boxes, etc. I haven’t been into Pokemon cards for a while and I don’t understand what is driving this.

Example video linked below.

https://x.com/disguisedtoast/status/1879976082600046909?s=46

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u/-Raskyl Jan 18 '25

Its not cheating if it's the rules....

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u/CdRReddit Jan 18 '25

this is true, but it's also not really mtg at that point, is it?

if cards like evolve do nothing and ancestral recall is effectively worth the same value as a time walk, the game is entirely different

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u/-Raskyl Jan 20 '25

Yes, and when people showed up with clearly bought decks containing all the best meta strats and cards. The game is also entirely different. The internet storefronts changed the game, we simply adapted.

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u/inedibletrout Jan 18 '25

True, but when you make drastic changes to the rules, you aren't really playing the same game.

If I said "this is baseball. It's fun with no strikeouts and each home run counts for 9 points." You'd say "that's not baseball"

You played with the same cards, but not the same game.

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u/-Raskyl Jan 20 '25

Lol, so no one actually plays monopoly then?

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u/htmlcoderexe wow such flair Jan 21 '25

Most people don't play it as intended lmao

Like yes you could make an argument that people don't play monopoly the game as created by the guy wanting to make an intentionally unfun board game to make a point. But at this point people just say "monopoly" and mean "monopoly but with some houserules to make it not suck".

I am not sure what any of those things are called, but what I mean is that somehow "monopoly (game)" came to mean a modified version of what originally came out if it makes any sense, like the language and culture took that over, it is generally understood that you don't just take the game out of the box and follow the written instructions only.

Reminds me of some games that got ruined by an update and then the dev abandoned them after the backlash so the most played version ends up being the pre-upate one.

I think the difference between that and, say, baseball, is that baseball didn't get modified? I do wonder if anything changed. Soccer and football like games have variants with different names. Chess is a modified version of another game, and did get modified a few times after getting called "chess" (en passant rule, for example) but probably stays solid now. There are chess variants these days, like the one with random starting layouts, but they usually specify this and aren't considered "regular chess".

MTG has formats though, doesn't it? Also, the thing with proxies. Same for Pokémon (I think) and definitely for the video game version tournaments.

I don't think I am actually arguing for or against anyone here, just thinking out loud...

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u/-Raskyl Jan 22 '25

That's my point. If everyone has agreed upon the rule changes. That doesn't make it cheating or a different game. It makes it that game, with different rules.

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u/htmlcoderexe wow such flair Jan 22 '25

Yeah that makes the most sense