Editing Pokémon (section)

=== Trainer Cards ===
Trainer cards may be played any time before your attack. They don't have any additional costs to the ones written on the card itself, if any. Trainer cards can have an effect on anything. Examples are:

*Bring back a basic Pokémon from your discard pile and put in play on your bench with half its HP in damage counters on it (rounded up) (Reviver)
*Draw 2 cards (Bill)
*Discard your hand, draw 7 cards (Professor Oak)
*Choose a benched Pokémon of your opponent and switch it with his active Pokémon. (Gust of wind)
*Flip a coin. If it heads choose any basic Pokémon or evolution card from your deck, reveal it and put it into your hand. (Poké Ball)
*Discard an energy card attached to your active Pokémon. Then discard 2 energy cards attached to your opponents active Pokémon. (Super energy drain)

The early TCG had some stupidly overpowered draw engines: You could use Professor Oak, draw 4 Bills and use all of them to draw almost a third of the cards in your deck in one turn! In response to this a subcategory of Trainer card was introduced called Supporter. These are the same as normal, but can only use one per turn. Eventually most non-supporters were put into a subtype called Item cards, but this has no mechanical effect.