I was always skeptical about Metal Energy working this way so I decided to finally confirm with official Japanese sources a few years ago. It turns out Metal Energy does indeed function this way where self-damage from non-Metal Pokémon is double reduced.
There are some minor erratas on Metal Energy (it doesn’t reduce damage from Pokémon Powers, just attacks), but the double reduction is legit.
Wait, but what’s the logic behind this? (if there’s any)
I mean, each Metal energy reads “reduce the damage done by 10” , so if I have 2 Metal energies attached and attack, I should deal Minus20 damage… why it only reduces damage done by 10, and self damage by 20? I don’t get it
We are discussing self-damage for Metal Energy. A Pokémon with two Metal Energy would of course have damage reduced by 20.
I’m in a community that plays webcam games of the WotC-era formats and the rules have been a hot topic recently. In the past we used the ruling compendium at WotC POKÉMON TRADING CARD GAME RULINGS COMPENDIUM however we know a lot of these rulings are wrong or based off mistranslations. We’ve also been using your blog Jason, so thank you for the great content and hard work.
I was wondering if anyone here has a list of rulings made from Japan or from the Japanese community. Or a list of ‘accepted’ rulings for these formats that their community has decided on. For example, if a player wanted to know if evolving a pokemon removes the effect of Smokescreen, is there already a place where we can look up the non-WotC rulings instead of asking this or other groups individually?
Thank you!
Glad you’ve found the blog useful! You are right that the Compendium has numerous rulings we know today to have been wrong. Simple rules, though, like evolving out of Smokescreen, Wizards got right. It’s some of the more complicated stuff, especially the erratas, that got tricky. I reach out to players from Japan for all rulings questions. Many times, we are able to verify rulings with official Pokémon Card magazines from Japan that cite the ruling.
However, I don’t believe Japan has an online equivalent of the Compendium for old rulings. You kind of just have to ask a knowledgeable player and look through the old magazines.
Sorry to be digging up old threads, but I too have a question regarding a card that I know Jason hates, Elekid. Elekid’s pokemon power states to apply weakness and resistance. From what I can see (google translate), Elekid’s power does not specify to use weakness and resistance or to not use weakness and resistance on the Japanese version. All other versions state to apply weakness and resistance. Thoughts?
This is an interesting find. I always thought it was weird that it did apply Weakness & Resistance. I’ll reach out to Japan.
Following up on this a few months later, wondering if this wasn’t their first attempt at an energyless attack, sort of like we saw on alolan pokemon in the SuMo sets.
I think this makes sense as follows:
Other Powers in Japanese around that time such as Machamp’s Strike Back and Dark Golbat’s Sneak Attack explicitly state not to apply Weak/Resist.
Dark Gyarado’s Final Beam and Elekid’s Playful Punch do not, and both of these Powers are known to be affected by Weakness and Resistance.
This implies that since the Power says to “do damage” you apply Weak/Resist unless otherwise stated in Japanese.
Sorry for the late reply. I was given the same explanation by Japan. Weakness and Resistance are always applied for damage (even Powers) unless attacking the bench or the card explicitly stating not to. This means a Power like Elekid’s Playful Punch does indeed apply Weakness & Resistance. Complicating things is the fact that Wizards botched some of these. For example, in Japanese, Dark Golbat’s Sneak Attack states not to apply Weakness and Resistance. However, when translated, it erroneously says to apply it.
Hi @JasonKlaczynski, could you update your post with Feraligatr vs Allergic Pollen interaction?
FYI, I’ve just implemented Allergic Pollen and also applied following errata to Riptide:
Feraligatr’s Riptide will only deal additional damage if the Water Energy cards are shuffled back into the owner’s deck
Since I had previously been adding new erratas as new posts, I’ll continue that trend and post here:
Feraligatr (Neo Genesis #5)
The Clefable has not been fixed on here…just had a Clefable do 120 to me (Firestorm) for 1 energy. I reported the bug. Hopefully they fix it, for some reason I thought everything in this article was fixed but I guess not.
There are a few more mistranslations I would like to report… Base Set Charizard, Golbat Neo Revelation, Dark Ampharos, Dark Houndoom, and basically the entire Baby mechanic (this person really did their research) (There is also a potential Stantler Neo Revelation error, but it may be next to impossible to verify).
Mew (WBSP 47) errata will be released in the next version.
In order to fix Clefairy/Clefable Metronome, I need some clarifications in Copy Attacks vs Discard Energy Interactions.
Edit: Metronome was fixed & released too.
Figured I’d point it out specifically since it doesn’t get mentioned that much, but Focus Band should take effect upon HP becoming 0, before the standard checking for Knock Outs. Pretty sure this fact really only matters for Giovanni’s Machamp (you have to do focus band first, since Giovanni’s Machamp’s Fortitude happens when checking for Knock Outs). On the same line, Celebi’s (N3 3) Time Travel should have the same errata. (the focus band issue is on aqwsderft’s page, Celebi notably also has a 0 in the text on its Japanese card, just like focus band).
Can you clarify this? Are you relying on a direct translation or a different source?
so focus band is listed at
You can also note that the letters “HP” occur twice on the Japanese version, where are only mentioned once in english. Google Translate, which I would not trust on its own, agrees. Celebi has very similar text in the Japanese version, and includes mention of “HP” when it wouldn’t if it occured upon Knock Out. Giovanni’s Machamp, on the other hand, looks like you would expect.
I am the author of that blog, which is now deleted. I felt I was spending too much time on it. The posts are backed up via archive.org but I figure I can give the relevant points for TCGOne players;
On later review, BS Charizard is not exactly mistranslated – if you had a chance to read another post I made on that blog, many Base–Rocket cards seem to have been ‘translated’ as if the cards had been written with Japan’s Gym-on language, which represented a major revision to how certain gameplay mechanics were articulated, so a lot of these translations have to be considered in a weirder context (though there are certainly still errors regardless, as many here well know). Charizard is a bit simpler of a case – rather than a direct translation of 1996 First Expansion Charizard, it’s a translation of the 1998 promotional print of the card, and is less egregiously wrong. There is still the technical quirk of how to consider the case of DCE that has been “Energy Burned” – e.g. does a DCE that has been “Burned” and subsequently moved to RO Charizard via its Gather Fire still count as Fire Energy? (For the TCG GB 2 video game, the answer is no. I have tested this myself.)
The neo mistranslations with gameplay implications are valid;
I was disappointed to see the blog disappear. I really appreciated your research and enthusiasm and enjoyed reading all of it. But I’m sure I speak for everyone here when I say I hope you’ll stick around a bit and help us figure out some of these trickier ones. Better yet, maybe you can even play with us, too! 
