WotC Erratas, Complete List

JasonKlaczynski · March 28, 2020, 8:33pm

I have compiled a list of all known Wizards of the Coast printing errors and mistranslations. While most of these went uncorrected during their time, TCGOne has done a great job fixing these cards so that they can be played as the creators intended.

Dark Vileplume (Team Rocket)

Dark Vileplume’s Weakness should be Fire, not Fighting. Note that this error only exists on the non-holographic version of the card; the holographic version has the correct Weakness.

Grimer (Team Rocket)

Grimer’s Poison Gas should leave the Defending Pokémon Poisoned, not Asleep.

Blaine’s Charizard (Gym Challenge)

Blaine’s Charizard’s Roaring Flames should read as follows: Discard all Fire Energy cards not used to pay for this attack’s Energy cost. This attack does 20 more damage for each Energy card discarded this way. (This means a Blaine’s Charizard with 3 Fire Energy, for example, would discard two of these Energy cards and deal 60 damage.)

Rocket’s Minefield Gym (Gym Challenge)

Rocket’s Mineshould should place 2 damage counters on the Pokémon.

Metal Energy (Neo Genesis)

Metal Energy should only reduce damage received from attacks. This means Pokémon Powers like Dark Crobat’s Surprise Bite and Elekid’s Playful Punch should not have their damage reduced by a Pokémon with Metal Energy attached to them.

Slowking (Neo Genesis)

Slowking’s Mind Games should only work when Slowking is Active.

Unown D (Neo Discovery)

Unown D’s Darkness should only reduce damage done to your Pokémon with Unown in their name. Additionally, Dark should still work even if you have more than 1 Unown [D] in play. This disclaimer text was originally intended to simply specify that you can only use 1 Dark Pokémon Power at a time.

Unown M (Neo Discovery)

Unown M’s Metal should only reduce damage done to your Pokémon with Unown in their name. Additionally, Metal should still work even if you have more than 1 Unown [M] in play. This disclaimer text was originally intended to simply specify that you can only use 1 Metal Pokémon Power at a time.

Unown N (Neo Discovery)

Unown N’s Normal should only reduce damage done to your Pokémon with Unown in their name. Additionally, Normal should still work even if you have more than 1 Unown [N] in play. This disclaimer text was originally intended to simply specify that you can only use 1 Normal Pokémon Power at a time.

Feint Attack: Murkrow (Neo Genesis) & Umbreon (Neo Discovery)

Murkrow and Umbreon’s Feint Attack should not be affected by any affects on the Pokémon they are attacking, not just the Defending Pokémon, which, during the Wizards era, referred only to your opponent’s Active Pokémon.

Scizor (Neo Discovery)

Scizor’s Double Claw should read as follows: Flip 2 coins. This attack does 20 damage plus 20 more damage times the number of heads.

Dark Haunter (Neo Destiny)

Dark Haunter’s Call Back cannot be used if your opponent’s Bench is full. Your Bench size of course does not matter.

Mew (Wizards Promo #47)

Mew’s Psyshock should leave the Defending Pokémon Paralyzed, not Confused.

Feraligatr (Neo Genesis #5)

Riptide should deal 10 more damage for each Water Energy shuffled back into the deck. (This distinction is important because it causes Parasect’s Allergic Pollen to cap Feraligatr’s Riptide at 10 damage.)

JasonKlaczynski · March 29, 2020, 4:18pm

Is it possible to add some kind of small “Errata” emblem somewhere on these cards so players know why their cards are doing something different? Or even customize the scans to re-write the mistranslated attacks?

JasonKlaczynski · March 29, 2020, 4:36pm

Here’s two scans of the corrected version of Rocket’s Minefield Gym that was printed in later Gym Challenge packs. (The top one is brighter.) Can we use this image instead of the one with the error?

admin · March 29, 2020, 7:16pm

Done, I’ve replaced the images on the server. Thanks for providing the updated scan.

JasonKlaczynski · May 13, 2020, 4:27pm

Clefairy (Base Set) & Clefable (Jungle)

Metronome was mistranslated on both Clefairy and Clefable. While it does allow you to attack without the regular amount of Energy an attack requires, you must still do anything else required to use that attack, such as discarding Energy cards. The Japanese text emphasizes this, while in English, the translation was botched to clarify the exact opposite. 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. Future versions of Metronome-like attacks, like Togetic’s Super Metronome, included the proper translation.

Giovanni’s Pinsir

Snapping Pincers should do +20 on Heads.

Alazor · May 14, 2020, 12:01am

Also, was there something wrong with Magby (Neo Genesis)? I overheard something about a Magby ruling back in the day.

JasonKlaczynski · May 30, 2020, 1:18am

Magby was translated correctly, but was the subject of two botched rulings. The first was that its Sputter effect would end if Magby was knocked out or benched. The second was that Sputter would not stop come-into-play Pokémon Powers, such as Dark Crobat’s Surprise Bite or Entei’s Howl. (Muk’s Toxic Gas was also ruled this way.)

These terrible rulings (and many others) were the result of Wizards of the Coast not being in constant contact with Japan and also relying on employees who specialized in Magic: The Gathering to make rulings for Pokémon.

Today we of course know them to be wrong, but for a significant portion of time, these were official rulings used at tournaments. TCG ONE fortunately already has Magby and Muk programmed to work correctly; they will always stop all Pokémon Powers.

Edit: Wizards did actually have one part of Magby correct; it would not stop come-into-play powers because Sputter was intended to only affect Pokémon in play at the time of its use. Goop Gas Attack was the same way, while Muk, oddly, always stopped all Powers.

JasonKlaczynski · August 28, 2020, 8:26pm

Dark Golbat

Dark Golbat’s Sneak Attack Pokémon Power, like most others, should not apply Weakness and Resistance.

JasonKlaczynski · November 22, 2020, 7:44pm

Eevee’s Chain Reaction should only trigger when a Pokémon evolves during your turn.

JasonKlaczynski · November 23, 2020, 12:51am

PlusPower should increase any damage done to either Active Pokémon. This means self-damaging attacks, such as Electabuzz’s Thunderpunch, will receive an extra 10 damage when the attacking Pokémon has PlusPower attached.

JasonKlaczynski · December 7, 2020, 10:28pm

Pikachu’s Quick Attack should deal only +10 on Heads, not +20.

championoffun · January 1, 2021, 2:20am

Hello! I see that Jason is compiling a list of Base-Neo errata. On Watermelon’s (Japanese) blog, on their list of old back articles there are these two articles linked that cover dozens of Base-Neo differences between Japanese and English:

Jason has called out many of these errors, and some other English/JP differences don’t affect gameplay in this era, but there are quite a few more that are mentioned that would affect actual game mechanics, but haven’t been called out in this thread (nor are they mentioned in the Compendium). Sabrina’s Drowzee, Kabuto Neo Discovery, Politoed Neo Discovery and many more cards are affected. I will leave it to you folks if y’all actually want to implement any of these changes (perhaps even with the help of a native Japanese speaker or Japanese “old back” expert… I am neither!).

There is also another list of errata (has nothing to do with English translations, just Japanese errata); I am not sure how tcgone handles the cards listed here.

-JP

championoffun · January 1, 2021, 2:22am

The forum only lets me post two links at once since I’m new, hehe…

Here’s the top-level link to Watermelon’s old back articles: http://blog.livedoor.jp/aqwsderft/archives/34736691.html

And here is the list of (Japanese) errata: http://blog.livedoor.jp/aqwsderft/archives/50884280.html

JasonKlaczynski · January 1, 2021, 3:04am

I have been looking for an official resource like this for years! Thank you so much for sharing.

Super Potion, Potion, Pokédex, all these Trainers that say “up to” obviously just must do the max when possible, I assume? That makes TCG ONE implementation more easy and that’s how they are all programmed currently anyway.

But I’d love to know exactly how Brock’s Protection and these other Pokémon are different. Can anyone help translate these?

championoffun · January 1, 2021, 3:47am

From Google Translate, roughly it looks like:

Sabrina’s Drowzee - 1st attack should attach the [P] Energy to a Benched Pokemon
Kabuto - should count Aerodactyl to add damage for its attack
Politoed - 2 differences, JP lacks the “after Weakness and Resistance” clause for the additional 40 damage (actually making it unclear there whether the +40 should be before or after W/R)… and the Japanese looks like it says “3 or more” of the Poli-line, whereas English says “more than 3.”

Again going to repeat the disclaimer that I don’t actually know Japanese and high-quality translations would be needed before any corrections are done in code… but that’s the gist of it, for the folks who are curious.

As for the Brock’s Protection callout, seems like it’s a bit cheeky–the author points out that “Brock” appears in Gigalith’s German name of “Brockolith”, as opposed to the original “Takeshi” that’s one of the ones that wouldn’t actually affect gameplay in Base-Neo…

JasonKlaczynski · January 1, 2021, 3:57am

Sabrina’s Drowzee is funny because I remember reading the translated text for its attack in a magazine back in 2000 before the card was released. The magazine used what we now see is the correct text. I remember then being disappointed when the card was printed in English. I always assumed the magazine got it wrong, but in reality, Wizards did. (Either that or they deliberately changed it.)

championoffun · January 1, 2021, 4:06am

Ooof I confused Brock’s Training Method with Brock’s Protection.

For Brock’s Protection they call out that the Japanese prevents Energy from being “peeled off” but the English says “removed”, and the author seems to define “removed” as “discard”… given this interpretation the Japanese wording would protect from “return Energy to hand” effects like Thought Wave Machine, or “move Energy around” effects like Dark Magneton’s Magnetic Lines attack, whereas the English would not. However, I’m not sure I agree with the author’s assessment; I think I would interpret “removed” as protecting from those additional cases as well.

(The author then wonders if Brock’s Protection intentionally omits Pokemon Powers… seems like they are omitted in both languages.)

JasonKlaczynski · January 1, 2021, 4:53am

The most significant of these mistranslations is Pokémon Tower not affecting Energy cards. This makes Recycle Energy much stronger.

Sturzflugbombardieru · January 24, 2021, 10:28pm

Looking at the above-mentioned list of japanese errata (http://blog.livedoor.jp/aqwsderft/archives/50884280.html), by far the most significant one is Feraligatr. The version from Intro Pack Neo (released in Japan in April 2001, that is after Neo Genesis was released in english) clarifies that Riptide does no damage if the energy isn’t returned from the discard pile into the deck. That means Parasect (Neo Revelation), the card that became staple in Riptide decks when Trash Exchange/Misty’s Wrath were rotated out in America, was actually a COUNTER to Feraligatr in Japan. Talk about a misunderstanding!

JasonKlaczynski · February 20, 2021, 8:03pm

Just heard back from my friend in Japan. Two interesting errata confirmations:

Pokémon Tower does indeed affect Recycle Energy, even though the Japanese version does not reference Energy cards specifically in the text. This means the English version needs no errata. Official ruling: http://rainbowgym.blog.fc2.com/blog-entry-5.html
PlusPower does increase self-damage during the Base era, just as future it did in future print runs.