Come on guys, this just screams of pre-emptive excuse making for not doing well next format. If you think Tropical Beach is the only way to gain an advantage relative to other decks on the first turn, then you're sadly mistaken.
Above that, if we end up with a Beach heavy meta game it's well balanced by the cards that will exist in the format as well as pre-existing strategies.
-If your opponent plays down Tropical Beach on turn 1, you can also use the Tropical Beach.
-If your opponent plays down Tropical Beach on turn 1, you can have an advantage by having the first attack in the game.
-If your opponent plays down Tropical Beach on turn 1, Beaches for 7, you can use Spiritomb to shuffle in your hand and draw 7, with the shuffle and draw potentially being more beneficial than just drawing cards until you have 7.
-If your opponent plays down Tropical Beach on turn 1, Beaches for 7, you can play Hooligans Jim & Cas, and if heads put their hand down to 4. From there you can Beach for 7 for a card advantage, or play down your own Stadium to mess up their draw.
-If your opponent plays down Tropical Beach on turn 1, Beaches for 7, you can play Hugh to cut their hand down to 5.
-If your opponent plays down Tropical Beach on turn 1, Beaches for 7, you can play Ghetsis to remove all of the Items from their hand, likely stunting whatever turn 2 combo they had in mind.
That's just some ways you can strategize around Tropical Beach. There are also strategies that can be described as ignoring their Tropical Beach play and just going about some other strategy to gain an advantage over your opponent.
Think is probably the best-written argument in favor of beach, so I figured I would reply to this one point by point. But I'd like to preface this with "I'd like to see how the format goes before doing anything" camp, though I do suspect that very few decks will not want to find room for a beach in the even that they go first. And for those wondering, I own zero Beaches.
- Sure you can, but you are giving up an opportunity to attack, they are not. They give up nothing to use it.
- This is true, assuming you attack on turn one, except that isn't necessarily an "advantage" as your opponent had an entire turn to set up. I don't view being able to attack first as an advantage so much as I view not being able to attack limiting the extreme advantage of going first.
- You'd have to run Spiritomb though (and have it out, potentially wasting many resources to do so). Its also a prize sitting on your bench.
- You'd have to play Hooligans Jim & Cas in your deck, use your supporter for the turn, AND hit heads. A better supporter counter to the beach strategy would be Ghetsis. And putting your own stadium into play may disrupt their draw, but potentially not. And they still got a turn to use it.
- Again, you can, but you'd have to run Hugh, but you potentially hurt yourself and you have to play your support for the turn.
- This is, I think, the best actual counter to Beach, with the largest downside I can see would be drawing a Ghetsis late game off an N that is small for both of you. In addition, it is much hard to search out and play a Ghetsis on the same turn than it is beach.
The post I'm replying to's point that there are many ways to counter a turn one Beach is definitely accurate, but the point I want to make is that all of those strategies (save attacking first) are almost always going to be worse than the turn one Beach was. The reason turn one Beach may be so powerful post rules change is that there is nearly no cost to using it, while there always has been before.
The biggest advantage to playing after your opponent goes first and Tropical Beaches in my opinion is that ability for you to counter their stadium first. Opponent Beaches on turn one, you Virbank City gym on turn two and one of their counter gyms is already gone. But this advantage can last past turn two as well. No Virbank city in had turn two? Not a big deal, you still get to counter the stadium first, on your time. And while we're at it, another cost to playing Beach turn one is you don't get to Virbank plus Hypnotoxic Laser turn one.
