Fair Warning: this post is about 4.5 years old, so some of the information might be a bit dated. On the other hand, this post was last modified about 4.4 years ago, so maybe it's up-to-date after all. In any case, please keep all this in mind while reading. Thanks for understanding!
A Quick Diversion:  


The Actual News:

I started playing both the Pokémon TCG and its big brother card game, Magic the Gathering, back in high school… in fact, Magic is what got me into Pokémon, period. And ever since I played the two games, I’ve become fascinated with the ways the two games cross over with one another. I mean, aside from the fact that Wizards of the Coast, makers of Magic, used to run the Pokémon TCG from 1999 to 2003… which meant that there were definitely plenty of opportunities for cross-pollination between the two.

Now earlier today I bought a pack of Ikoria: Lair of Behemoths, the latest Magic set, and in the pack I saw a card called “Gust of Wind”. Obviously it doesn’t switch any of your opponent’s attacking creatures anything… but it got me thinking about all the different ways these two games cross over like this. I’ll start with these four, but maybe later I’ll find s’more.

So yeah, Gust of Wind.

The two cards aren’t all that similar, but what’s interesting is that both cards gives the player control over their opponent and where their Pokémon/permanents are… namely somewhere where they can’t do any damage to you.

 

Meanwhile, although there are no Magic cards named “Bill”…. yet… there are plenty of cards which do the same thing. Bill’s EXACT analogue would be something like Divination (middle), but perhaps the card which shared Bill’s level of disruption to the game would be Ancestral Recall. Incidentally, both cards appeared in their respective game’s very first set: Base Set for Bill, Alpha for Recall. …OH ok, well, both end with “LL”, so there’s that.

Now I was most amused by this card, and incidentally it was the first time I really thought about the ways the two games crossed over. It also came out back when Wizards ran the Pokémon TCG, and when Haymaker decks (of which Scyther was a part of) was a big deal in the TCG… so unless there is some concept of a “swords dancer” that the two games independently pulled from, I have little reason to doubt that the Magic card was named after Scyther’s attack.

And finally, another card which has serious game disruption in both games. Since the Pokémon TCG is largely two-player game, Professor Oak was a more practical translation of Magic’s Wheel of Fortune… but, not surprisingly, both had some serious power in both games that they haven’t been reprinted since their early days.

Anyways, that’s just a quick overview of a few crossovers between the two games. There are plenty more I could dig up… maybe I will. But not now.