Pokémon TCG: Sword and Shield—Brilliant Stars

Ban List - Which Cards?

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One thing I don't understand: why won't P!P makes its position on these issues apparent? Whenever a discussion like this shows up they refuse to post anything. Why do we have to be kept in the dark, especially when it could be affecting whether we book a flight or what decks we're testing?
 
Why do we even need to ban stuff? That just over complicates things. If anything, we should just not enforce the B/W rules. It's simple and effective.

Even if it weren't for donks, I don't like them anyways because it gives the player going first such an unfair advantage.
 
Porii Sames said:
^Well, you have a larger chance of opening with more basics (too lazy to do the exact calcs), but the idea is right.
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Okay Porii, let me lay this out for you.

With Sableye,

YOU CANNOT PLAY AROUND THE DONK.

You can only pray to whatever deity you worship that you start with enough basics to survive the onslaught. You can start with Garchomp C, Ambipom G, Luxray GL AND Uxie for all Sableye cares...THEY'LL STILL DONK YOU! That's FOUR basics.

Start Spiritomb + Something else? All Sableye requires is Crobat and Seeker. So no, you cannot play around it. You sit down, flip open your cards, watch your opponent draw his entire deck and then sign the match slip. That sound like a game of Pokemon to you?
 
I haven't read this whole thread, but...

Crobat is fine.
Sableye is fine.
Gain is fine.
BTS is fine.

The most degenerate card in the game, and the card that needs to be banned if anything is going to be banned, is Uxie. This would solve almost all of the donk problems and allow people to use Sableye and Crobat in non-degenerate ways.

Or we could just instate a rule that you can't swing on your first turn.
 
Realistically the cards I really want to ban are older versions of cards that make tournament play a mess sometimes. Like any "Supporter" like cards like Professor Oak or Professor Elm, Cards with huge errata like Great Ball, Potion, Rare Candy, Darkness Energy and Metal Energy.

Now in terms of gameplay strategy I could see Sableye banned, maybe Spiritomb and Uxie. If you look at Pokemon TCG history only three cards (not counting the 2004 Pokemon Contest Art cards which state on them "NOT TOURNAMENT LEGAL") ever had the enduring quality for being banned, and all were in Wizards of the Coast era. They were Sneasel (Neo Genesis), Slowking (Neo Genesis), and ______'s Pikachu (a.k.a. Birthday Pikachu/WotC Black Star Promo). Now Birthday Pikachu was only merely banned on technical terms (the attack effect required personal information from the player in turn that could be mis-interpreted). Slowking was only banned in the last remaining spat of WotC's era because EVERYONE at Worlds '02 seemed to be sporting it to lock down the opponent's trainers. Sneasel, at the time held a very devastating attack that with the right cards mustered a potential 160 damage. (At the time of the Team Rocket On Format only 2 Pokemon sported the maximum of 120 HP [prior to Expedition]), something unheard of in 2002.

However instinct is telling me not to hold my breath for any banned cards much less a mid-season rotation. What I would love to see however is what Worlds 02 did, Rotate before Worlds (which was from Rocket-on to Neo Genesis-on), that worked nicely in my opinion (even though everyone seem to ran Donphan/Slowking decks...). And the best part everyone who was to play in Worlds was running around like chicken's with their heads cut off.
 
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kwisdumb said:
I haven't read this whole thread, but...

Crobat is fine.
Sableye is fine.
Gain is fine.
BTS is fine.

The most degenerate card in the game, and the card that needs to be banned if anything is going to be banned, is Uxie. This would solve almost all of the donk problems and allow people to use Sableye and Crobat in non-degenerate ways.

Or we could just instate a rule that you can't swing on your first turn.
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You do raise a very good point; however, with Uxie out of the format I can see SP dominating (moreso than it is now). Mind you, I'd rather have SP out there than a bunch of donks, but I would rather see a variety of decks, and SP is getting stale.
 
IMO a ban is a bit extreme. Limiting the cards to 1 per deck seems like a good idea to me.
If only 1 Sabelye, 1 Uxie and 1 Crobat were allowed per deck, most of our problems would be solved.
Just my 2 cents :)
 
Scipio said:
Okay Porii, let me lay this out for you.

With Sableye,

YOU CANNOT PLAY AROUND THE DONK.

You can only pray to whatever deity you worship that you start with enough basics to survive the onslaught. You can start with Garchomp C, Ambipom G, Luxray GL AND Uxie for all Sableye cares...THEY'LL STILL DONK YOU! That's FOUR basics.

Start Spiritomb + Something else? All Sableye requires is Crobat and Seeker. So no, you cannot play around it. You sit down, flip open your cards, watch your opponent draw his entire deck and then sign the match slip. That sound like a game of Pokemon to you?
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YES you can.

Will you play around the Sabledonk every time? Of course not! However, the odds of you getting your Sableye or Tomb + Something else start can be pretty good. Then, you can sometimes start with 3 SPs + Spray and Spray the Uxie Set Up for 6/7.

Because Sabledonk will ALWAYS be STARTING WITH SABLEYE, getting a CROBAT, AND a SEEKER to donk a tomb. Lemme just say that Beedrill G deals just as much damage as Sableye (without Sp. Dark) and I've NEVER donked a Tomb start, going 1st, 2nd, anything.

Hey, I don't want to get donked. This is why I want to play Tombs in Dos; I'm expecting a lot of Sabledonk and want to have an advantage vs. it. 4 Tombs 4 Sableyes gives you more good starts than it gives them.
 
Let's see . . .

So far we have three top anti-Sabledonk strategies.

1. Praying that they have a bad opening hand (this is such a great strategic counter! Can't believe I never thought of it!)

2. Playing 4 Tomb, 4 Sableye, loads of high HP Basics

3. Choosing to remain ignorant about the ways Sabledonk can win even without an ideal opening hand and against Tomb starts

Obviously nothing wrong here. Looks like we have all been complaining for no good reason again :rolleyes:
 
Porii Sames said:
YES you can.

Will you play around the Sabledonk every time? Of course not! However, the odds of you getting your Sableye or Tomb + Something else start can be pretty good. Then, you can sometimes start with 3 SPs + Spray and Spray the Uxie Set Up for 6/7.

Because Sabledonk will ALWAYS be STARTING WITH SABLEYE, getting a CROBAT, AND a SEEKER to donk a tomb. Lemme just say that Beedrill G deals just as much damage as Sableye (without Sp. Dark) and I've NEVER donked a Tomb start, going 1st, 2nd, anything.

Hey, I don't want to get donked. This is why I want to play Tombs in Dos; I'm expecting a lot of Sabledonk and want to have an advantage vs. it. 4 Tombs 4 Sableyes gives you more good starts than it gives them.
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No, you can't. You have to HOPE on those first 7 cards, and you can't do ANYTHING if your opponent flips over Sableye.

Lets say you start with Spritomb. Yes, you're in good shape now. Sabledonk will have between 8 and 11 cards (Counting Unown R/Uxie possability) to pull off Special Dark, Crobat and optional Seeker (if you got something behind that Tomb). Without Tomb, only Special Dark and Crobat. I'd say Sabledonk has about 40% a chance of pulling that off. If you get Tomb and TWO basics, yeah, then you're good. But then the question is, just how often will you have 3 basics? Here's a hint - not often.

SP then. 3 SP + Powerspray? Thats assuming your opponent doesnt pull more then one Uxie out of nowhere (Hey, they play SSU/Seeker too) AND that you get 3 SP's to begin with. I very rarely see SP starting with 3 SPs, leave alone 3 and a spray.

Sableye ALWAYS plays SP Dark, no basic dark. Sableye's base damage of 50 > Beedrill's base 40.

Porii, try to counter this argument:

YOU CANNOT PLAY AROUND SABLEDONK, YOU CAN MERELY PRAY TO WHATEVER DEITY YOU WISH THAT THEIR FIRST 7 CARDS WONT DONK YOUR FIRST 7 CARDS.

And as put in another topic, Sabledonk goes first ~75% of the time. Spiritomb carrying decks will have a Tomb ~50% of the time. Spiritomb is a check, but not a counter.
 
Scipio said:
No, you can't. You have to HOPE on those first 7 cards, and you can't do ANYTHING if your opponent flips over Sableye.

Lets say you start with Spritomb. Yes, you're in good shape now. Sabledonk will have between 8 and 11 cards (Counting Unown R/Uxie possability) to pull off Special Dark, Crobat and optional Seeker (if you got something behind that Tomb). Without Tomb, only Special Dark and Crobat. I'd say Sabledonk has about 40% a chance of pulling that off. If you get Tomb and TWO basics, yeah, then you're good. But then the question is, just how often will you have 3 basics? Here's a hint - not often.

SP then. 3 SP + Powerspray? Thats assuming your opponent doesnt pull more then one Uxie out of nowhere (Hey, they play SSU/Seeker too) AND that you get 3 SP's to begin with. I very rarely see SP starting with 3 SPs, leave alone 3 and a spray.

Sableye ALWAYS plays SP Dark, no basic dark. Sableye's base damage of 50 > Beedrill's base 40.

Porii, try to counter this argument:

YOU CANNOT PLAY AROUND SABLEDONK, YOU CAN MERELY PRAY TO WHATEVER DEITY YOU WISH THAT THEIR FIRST 7 CARDS WONT DONK YOUR FIRST 7 CARDS.

And as put in another topic, Sabledonk goes first ~75% of the time. Spiritomb carrying decks will have a Tomb ~50% of the time. Spiritomb is a check, but not a counter.
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No guarantee. You HAVE to get lucky, or they have to get unlucky.

Please, the odds of Sabledonk getting out Sp. Dark + Bat when they run a Uxiedonk engine is crazy. I've got a lot of experience with donk decks, and you pulling one of your 3 energies + 1 of your 4 bats is MUCH lower than 40%, especially factoring in your chance of even starting with Sableye.

You can't play "around" it as you define, but you can play smart and go 4 tomb/4 Sableye/ high HP basics. I'm deperate enough to play Dos for Nats and play Tombs and Sableye.
 
Porii Sames, I heard the wild Beedrills have called your name.

And Spiritombs in Gdos? no thanks.
 
Guys, just ignore Porii. He's obviously biased towards a donk-infested format. Let's not play this same pattern out for the 10th or so time, haha.

On topic, Crobat G is a good start in banning cards. If you get into banning SP stuff though, you end up ignoring the deck that is basically Luxchomp in disguise: Gyarados. It can land a turn 1 donk, has power-locking capabilities, and can pull up stuff with Pokemon Reversal or PokeBlower+. If you get rid of BTS, it'll hurt Gyarados but evolution decks will take a hit. So... I don't know...
 
DON'T MIND THIS POST, I'LL JUST BE A MINUTE HERE EXPLOITING A HOLE IN PORRI SAMES'S LOGIC.

Porii Sames said:
No guarantee. You HAVE to get lucky, or they have to get unlucky.
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Okay, take this quote. Let's analyze it nice and slow.



"No guarantee."

You started out good, Porri. There are no guarantees. We're supposed to be on an even playing field. However, that's exactly what's wrong with your next sentence.


"You HAVE to get lucky, or they have to get unlucky."

Here's where things get messy. You want to know what the wonderful thing about this sentence is? It's just plain wrong. "You HAVE to get lucky . . ." I don't like that. Luck should play a minimal, MINIMAL part in the game. Yes, luck will be there in the opening draw, your topdecks throughout the game, etc. It's impossible to completely remove luck from the game, and probably not that great for the game in the first place. I can live with that. Heck, you even have some control over that. Just build your deck as consistently as possible (and just let me say, before you do, that loading your deck up with a ton of basic Pokemon in order to survive a donk is NOT consistent). But when I start having to get more lucky because of something that I have already given plenty of reasons why it SHOULD NOT exist in the first place.... that's where I draw the line, and I'm not even done yet!


". . . or they have to get unlucky."

That's a pretty mean thing to say, don't you think? They have to get unlucky.... But that's not my point. Neither of these sentence fragments are that bad on their own. But they aren't on their own, they're in the same sentence, which makes all the difference.


"You HAVE to get lucky, or they have to get unlucky." First off, let me point out that you emphasized the wrong word there. Let me fix that for you.

"YOU have to get lucky, or they have to get unlucky."

Ah, that's better. Okay, here's the ugly part. This implies that my opponent is ALWAYS at an advantage. Either I MUST get lucky, or I lose. If my opponent gets unlucky it is, for all intents and purposes, the same as me getting lucky and their luck not changing at all. If you don't like that explanation, then you could just say I got lucky and my luck blocked their luck. Doesn't really matter how you say it, it all comes down to the fact that I (as in, not my opponent, only me) MUST get lucky to win the match, or I WILL lose.

If my opponent is at an ADVANTAGE at the beginning of the game, and I have to rely on mystical, external forces in order to win the game, I can not call that "fair." Disadvantage =/= fair.

It looks nice an innocent when you don't really think about it...

"OH LOL JUST PLAY MORE BASICS THO! AND HOPE YOU GET A POWER SPRAY ROFL,"

...but when you break it down, when you really break it down, Porri Sames, it's just flat out unfair. You are always at a disadvantage against donk decks, and therefore donk decks are unfair. You said so yourself.




Thank you for being schooled at toxictaipan academy. Your test scores are included below.

If you were trolling: 2/10. Don't leave yourself so wide-open next time.
If you were serious: 0/10. You clearly have no understanding of what constitutes a fair game. You fail and will be required to take Fundamentals of Sportsmanship over again next year.

CLASS DISMISSED.
 
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Woah, you mad brah? Porri is right, you have to get lucky or they have to get unlucky -which is like drawing your hand at the beginning of every game just like it has been forever and ever. Who is going to play test these scenarios to see for themselves? I'll be doing it at my league and I suppose I'd better put up some results.
 
PokeMedic said:
Woah, you mad brah? Porri is right, you have to get lucky or they have to get unlucky
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Okay, let's talk about luck for a second.

Let's play a game! We'll each put a dollar on a table, and I'll flip a coin. If I flip heads, I get both dollars! If I flip tails, you get both dollars.

Are you going to play?

What? NO? why not?!

Because that game is stupid. It's no fun, and at the end of the day one of us has lost a couple bucks. Which one is it? We don't know, because it's all about luck. It's all about the coin flips. Oh wait! I'm the one flipping the coin? Did you know that I can flip heads 70-80% of the time with a heavy U.S. coin?

What's the big difference between this and Pokemon? Well, Pokemon we didn't put dollars on the table literally, but we both sure put a lot of money into getting to Nats and Worlds and Regionals. (It would have cost me about $200 at least to go to Regionals this year. I didn't go. It's not even that much.) If I'm going to pay and take a huge chunk out of my life, I better get something good out of it.

When it comes down to it, though, Sabledonk variants - as shown both through testing and mathematics - make this game into a coin flipping game, where every match they sit down and flip their coin and see if they get heads. Except a decent player can flip heads more than 50% of the time.

(getting lucky or unlucky) is like drawing your hand at the beginning of every game just like it has been forever and ever.
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No it hasn't because this isn't poker. When I sit down to a game of poker, I expect my entire game to be dictated by my starting hand, because nothing changes. Unless you're playing 5 card draw, which is for lame people.

But when I sit down to a game of Pokemon where I'm allowed access to my entire deck and to complex strategies, I expect to have a chance to use them. Not having that chance kind of defeats the purpose of playing Pokemon versus Poker.

But hey, poker's a great game too! So why is this so bad? Well, mostly because I'm not the one controlling the flips, my opponent is, and I'm at a disadvantage every game, as outlined repeatedly everywhere. That's not fair and it's just stupid to spend ANY time or money to play.

Who is going to play test these scenarios to see for themselves? I'll be doing it at my league and I suppose I'd better put up some results.
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There's no need for complex testing. Get Luxchomp.dec, Dialga.dec, etc and deal out hands. Ten for each deck or something. Tell me how many of them you started with more than 3 Basics. Those are the games where you MIGHT live against Sabledonk.

(Alternatively, Vileplume variants can start double tomb and a third Basic, but that's still pretty unlikely!)
 
Kayle said:
Words words words
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I'll try this again. Luck is part of the game, even when it comes to drawing your first 7cards at the beginning every of game of Pokemon. And testing doesn't need to be complex, it should just be a play through.
 
I'm lol'ing at the scrub mentality of the trolls in this thread. Stop "what-if'ing" and start testing your little soul out against the deck and show some solid results instead of trolling this thread with said "what-ifs." Sabledonk is going to be ridiculously hard to beat, unless you either figure out how to beat it (extremely unlikely), or join it in some way (make your own deck around it or a disruption engine)

I'm with Prime. Ban nothing and give us a special RR-on format for Nationals and Worlds. This will force the good players to work around the new meta and adjust, not to mention make most of us extremely happy that we no longer have to see SP dominate the format. Or do as Kenny said and ban Uxie.
 
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