I want to like Trainers’ Pokemon but I can’t

In March 2025, with the newest Pokemon TCG set Journey Together, Pokemon brought back Trainers’ Pokemon. It’s been roughly 25 years since we last saw them and people have been hyped about them. I want to be too.

And the cards are good! At least many of them are. I’ve been playtesting a lot of N’s Zoroark deck and Raging Bolt with Iono’s Bellibolt ex and Kilowattrel and I enjoy playing with them. N’s Zoroark is such a powerful card that I expect it to be a card in top deck(s) for as long as it is the format.

But once you dig a little deeper, you’ll start to see a problem.

In one of the future sets we’ll get Team Rocket's Ampharos and as a big Ampharos fan, I was initially super excited. Until I realised that it won’t be playable with the non-Team Rocket’s Flaaffy and the Team Rocket’s Mareep and Flaaffy are disappointing at best.

This wouldn’t normally be a big issue as new cards come out and can make old cards better retroactively.

With Trainers’ Pokemon it is problematic though because it’s almost certain that there won’t be another Team Rocket’s Flaaffy ever again. Which means we are stuck with these evolution lines that are published in these sets and if they are not great, the cards can’t gain a new life later on like other cards do (for example in Gym Leader Challenge).

And that’s why I don’t like these Trainers’ Pokemon as a design or mechanic. They don’t interact with the evolution (no pun intended) of the cards like normal cards do. In various non-Standard formats (like GLC, Expanded, U150 and many more), you can always get pleasantly surprised by new combinations. These cards will never see that life.

The only place where I’ll see them get their spotlight is in cube drafts with mutant evolution rules. In one of those, Team Rocket’s Ampharos can team up with energy acceleration Flaaffy and make waves like it is supposed to be doing.

I wish the mechanic would have been similar to Rapid/Single Strike or Future/Ancient where they provide synergies but could still work with the regular prints of the same cards.