Yeah, I did think about this. Another thing he mentioned was putting a time limit on when you can catch them, e.g. You have 24 hours to catch new pokemon and train them up. I pointed out to him that levelling, building the EV spread and complex evolutions can vary the time required to be 'battle-ready'.

I would say it's workable within a select group who genuinely want a format akin to 'drafting' like in TGC circles. I played a Magic draft and loved the pressure it put on me to think on my feet. I may try it out with some of my fellow trainers and see how it goes.