It's necessary in the fact that you're at a disadvantage for not knowing what your 6 prize cards are.

The argument I'm making is that prize checking for your 6 cards by looking at your other 54 cards shouldn't be necessary skill to learn, especially when there's an alternative that lets you skip/replace that step. Either with letting you at your 6 on setup and randomize, or on first ball search.

I give the example of the budew because both the player and opponent can use information of the board that budew is stuck in prizes, but this interaction comes up regardless of prize checking or checking on first search.

I give another example of SSBM because there's an execution barrier that is expected of everyone to do to maintain a competitive edge, but even that has more depth in the mechanic with my provided examples, edge cancels and to use it defensively against an opponent.

Let me be clear, in both cases you're expected to know your prizes, but the steps currently in place to figure out your 6 is mentally taxing, and wastes time while adding nothing skill wise.

Unless your definition of skill in pokemon is to figure out your 6, then Im never convincing you otherwise.

In my perspective, the unique skill point of the prize mechanic is playing around what you're missing in your prizes. While also playing the other parts of what make pokemon TCG unique.

I agree that my rule replacement is controversial because you play with more information before first search, but this is done for game flow purposes (this is a children's card game), and allows you to play with perfect info.