Pokémon TCG: Sword and Shield—Brilliant Stars

Durant and the Spirit of the Game

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hakemo

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As a player of Durant, it has come to my attention that many who play against Durant believe that using Durant does not adhere to the "Spirit of the Game"- that is, it is "cheap", "stupid", "BS", etc. As a result, not just me, but many people who play Durant decks are met with nothing but hatred as they exit a match, occasionally being told some rather foul things, including that we are breaking the "Spirit of the Game" or something of the like.

As a Durant player, and one who has met with some rather rude and sore losers, I suppose I am biased, so I would like to pose the following questions to the PokeGym:

1.) Is playing Durant a move that breaks the "Spirit of the Game"?

2.) What about saying that Durant breaks the "Spirit of the Game"? Is that not a greater offender?

Please discuss. And remember to avoid posting any form of blatant hatred one way or the other.
 
1 - I don't think so... it gives you a way to win the game that isn't often used. It's a neat way to win, and just as how your opponent plays preparing to not lose by benching out/losing all prizes, they need to make sure not to deck out too.

2 - I think that's someone being a sore loser because they lost in a way they didn't predict.
 
Gallade, that link'll totally get removed. But I agree with every word of it.

The official rule book lists it as a win condition, even.
 
When I lose to Durant, it's usually just through my own misplays or just plain old unluckiness (The same can happen against any other deck too). It's not that hard to beat durant. It takes a lot of thinking on your feet and lots of thinking ahead. Durant decks aren't easy to build and are not autopilot either. There are countless techs you can play and it's tempting to fit them all in, but it can come at the cost of consistency. Durant players are constantly scurrying around to revive Durants too. I see Durant decks like rogue decks, every list is different and you don't know what's going to hit the field. Games are fun because they force me to think outside the box, even when it ends in me losing.

Plus, there always a chance of donking a durant because the deck runs so little basics. ;)
 
Playing Durant does not go against spirit of the game, people are just being whiny. It's no different than playing ambipom weavile. My guess is the majority of people complaining are scrubs who can't figure out how to beat it, which is actually really really simple.
 
Lost world from my understand was never considered being against the SOTG. They were probably just upset if you beat them.
 
I said this one time before about Durant decks, I think its a type of deck better left in a game like yugioh where a win condition like that happens 95% of the time. Its just really no skill involved.

Pokemon has been here for over 10 years, the TCG has, and in that 10+ years I dont ever recall anyone or a deck that is able to win without having to knock pokemon out to draw prizes.

Durant, you dont knock pokemon our and you dont draw prizes.

The other side of this coin is this:

Durant decks aint winning anyway, at least not in major tournaments.

So they are easy to beat.
 
^ It's a valid win condition, worth just as much as knocking out all of your opponent's pokemon. In fact, I would LOVE to build a Durant deck, it seems like it would be a lot of fun to play

I've seen some surprisingly good versions of them
 
Crinus said:
I said this one time before about Durant decks, I think its a type of deck better left in a game like yugioh where a win condition like that happens 95% of the time. Its just really no skill involved.

Pokemon has been here for over 10 years, the TCG has, and in that 10+ years I dont ever recall anyone or a deck that is able to win without having to knock pokemon out to draw prizes.

Durant, you dont knock pokemon our and you dont draw prizes.

The other side of this coin is this:

Durant decks aint winning anyway, at least not in major tournaments.

So they are easy to beat.
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I seem to recall calling for a lack of blatant hate. That being said:

How can you say that there is no skill involved in Durant? Is there no skill in deckbuilding? In deciding on which techs are necessary based on the current metagame? More than that, decided on which cards to get with Twins, whether to play Energy Denial, Catcher Lock...there's more skill than most people give it credit for. More options, at least, and you need a good mind (or at least experience) in order to apply the options in the correct situation.

LostGar didn't take prizes. More than that, I heard something about Wildfire or something? Some deck some years ago that won by milling.

Losing the cards in your deck is one of the three (four, counting Lost World) victory conditions granted upon our game by the "all-knowing game developers".

Also, it has won some Cities, hasn't it? And if you don't consider that a major tournament...well, consider this: it came out barely a month ago. It has only been around for ONE tournament. ;3
 
hakemo said:
I seem to recall calling for a lack of blatant hate. That being said:

How can you say that there is no skill involved in Durant? Is there no skill in deckbuilding? In deciding on which techs are necessary based on the current metagame? More than that, decided on which cards to get with Twins, whether to play Energy Denial, Catcher Lock...there's more skill than most people give it credit for. More options, at least, and you need a good mind (or at least experience) in order to apply the options in the correct situation.

LostGar didn't take prizes. More than that, I heard something about Wildfire or something? Some deck some years ago that won by milling.

Losing the cards in your deck is one of the three (four, counting Lost World) victory conditions granted upon our game by the "all-knowing game developers".

Also, it has won some Cities, hasn't it? And if you don't consider that a major tournament...well, consider this: it came out barely a month ago. It has only been around for ONE tournament. ;3
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Well I dont know what happened in the TCG between much of 2006-2010 and part of this year.

Who won cities with Durant decks anyway?

is there skill in deck building?

Yes their is.

But I find a durant deck to be one of the easiest decks to build to if someone wanted to go that direction. I think its one of those deck types when you build it, its like NO DUH Dick Tracy on what you going to put in it.

Which is not true for most other decks one may build.
 
Crinus said:
Pokemon has been here for over 10 years, the TCG has, and in that 10+ years I dont ever recall anyone or a deck that is able to win without having to knock pokemon out to draw prizes.
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Seems like you already forgot about the Lostgar hype. While you COULD knockout for prizes if needed that's not how it was supposed to work in the end. It reminds me of durant. Few times it gets into the top cut and then just fizzles out.
 
Crinus said:
Well I dont know what happened in the TCG between much of 2006-2010 and part of this year.

Who won cities with Durant decks anyway?

is there skill in deck building?

Yes their is.

But I find a durant deck to be one of the easiest decks to build to if someone wanted to go that direction. I think its one of those deck types when you build it, its like NO DUH Dick Tracy on what you going to put in it.

Which is not true for most other decks one may build.
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Then, uh, with all due respect, shouldn't you research a little bit before you claim that "no deck has done this"? It only seems polite. ;3

At least two people did. Check out the "what won cities" report somewhere around.

You "think"? In the future, please try to avoid an entire argument build out of assumptions. No, EVERY main deck has a skeleton (Durant has the four durants, the pokemon collectors, the dual balls, etc.) that can be built around.
 
I agree.. and the more your deck is unlike the meta, the harder your skeleton is going to be to come up with. If you have your standard TyRam or MegaZone, you know you're going to have those lines along with collectors, communications, energies, rare candies, catchers, junk arms, etc. That's more than half the deck, the rest is just techs or different lines.

Before I had even read about Durant I was wondering what else would go in the deck.. then I started reading some articles and saw the energy disruption, or catcher disruption and that's pretty brilliant considering it's using cards that were never used before and others that may not have been used with that purpose.

It's always easy to look at a decklist and say "oh yeah, that was easy to build - I would've thought of that". After playing SP most of last season I came to think of the TSS and Pokemon line as pretty obvious, when in reality, it didn't come to the original creators of LuxChomp right away and took testing to get to. Hindsight is 20/20.
 
Crinus said:
. Its just really no skill involved.

Pokemon has been here for over 10 years, the TCG has, and in that 10+ years I dont ever recall anyone or a deck that is able to win without having to knock pokemon out to draw prizes.
Click to expand...

NO DECK takes skill to run, but they do take skill to run successfully. Durant arguably takes more skill than most. One mis-play, or even mis-step (the skill of accurate timing and knowing your opponent's hand), and you lose. To win out or even top in a tournament with Durant takes mad skill.

Ladder in Base-Gym took no prizes and was a top tier deck. It milled just like Durant.
 
Thats sad but i've heard the same thing. Durant may not be a deck that requires heavy thinking as where to attack but it is very list-based. One part of the "skill" in this game is making a good list.
 
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