Town Volunteer

The EX format is some of the most fun Pokémon I’ve ever played. The sheer number of viable decks can be overwhelming at first, but you learn very quickly the ins and outs of the format. And as with any format, there are always a crop of decks that rise to the top. In a format where decks can break the game wide open by harnessing the abilities of different Poke-Powers to attach additional energy cards and search for individual cards in the deck, the variety of boardstates is astounding. But with powerful cards comes ways to keep them in check. Commonly dubbed "hate cards", there are a multitude of cards in the EX format that restrict the abilities of others, like Battle Frontier, Cursed Stone, Desert Ruins, Crystal Beach, and Cessation Crystal, among others. But there is a dichotomy of how these hate cards restrict the traits of others: this is through prohibition, or cost. Cessation Crystal completely shuts down entire decks just by being attached to a Pokémon. Hate cards th