Pokémon TCG: Sword and Shield—Brilliant Stars

How to Playtest?

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prodigal_fanboy

New Member
Hey. I have a deck I've been working on (find it here: http://pokegym.net/forums/showthread.php?p=1269226#post1269226), and as I'm confident that it's reached the point where small tweaks and techs are All That Remains to be made of the list, I'd like to start getting experience testing it against dominant archetypes for cities/regionals.

How do you playtest? What deck gauntlet should I playtest against? What do you do when testing a deck?
 
You could just do what I do and make the deck the morning of the tournament and do your playtesting in the tournament, just know what the strategy is and it's easy. :redface:
^[thats seriously what I do]


I would look at what has won the most (right now) CC's or look at what a lot of people are talking about and test against those(like gigas, or kingdra, or AMU for example).
 
I did that with mine and learned a lot, and plan on going to more City's. It's just that by the time Provinces/States roll around I'd like to have a strong enough feel for the meta to where I don't make egregious misplays that cost me my Nats bid.

And as for the actual methodology, is it feasible to proxy an entire deck to test against, and how would I go about doing this?
 
to answer your question you could just print out a whole deck of proxie cards and put them in sleeves, play against your self with it, you should probably make it Duskgar or kingdra. and as for me, i make my deck the night b4 the tournament, worry about not knowing what the strategy is, not knowing what the strategy is until i start playing the first round, then do OK.
 
Eh... I'm sorry, but building a deck out of nowhere the night before or the day of a tournament and expecting to do well is kind of silly. Other players have been extensively testing and tweaking their deck for weeks or even months in some cases (this goes out to all the folks who proxy up and test with an unreleased set a month before it drops in America) before they show up to play against you, and you're going to be at a big disadvantage. It's like expecting to beat some great football team that practices extensively and watches videos of their opponents and has a great coach etc. with a team that just shows up on the day of the game with no prior preparation to fall back on.

(I'm aware that it is very possible to still do well, and even win, with a thrown-together deck, or with a deck foreign to the player. It happened at Nationals '06, famously, and I know there are others who can testify with their own success. However, these instances are anomalies and generally speaking you're going to be at a distinct disadvantage if you go this route.)

As far as testing goes, if you don't want to go to the trouble of depleting your printer of ink by mass producing proxies, get Redshark and just use it in solitaire mode to practice against as many decks as you want. Make sure all of the lists you test against are actually good beforehand though. Testing against bad lists is a waste of time, especially if you are just playing solo because then not only are you using a bad list but you also may be simply playing the deck wrong, or making critical misplays that you will simply never catch because... it's you versus you. This may sound obvious, but it is very easy to simply construct a subpar list around a card/combo that really does work and not even know that your list is subpar until someone else shows you what you've been doing wrong.

To better prepare for your next Cities (and beyond), I would focus my testing on these decks:

- Machamp
- Gengar
- Dusknoir
- Torterra
- AMU
- Magnezone
- Scizor/Cherrim
- Heatran lv. X variants (with Magmortar lv. X or Infernape MD)
- Kingdra
- Regigigas
- Tyranitar

This is probably what you will see the most. You might also want to test against underplayed stuff like Tangrowth, Empoleon, Luxray, Gliscor, Blissey, Gardevoir/Gallade, and so forth just so you aren't caught completely off guard when/if you run into them.

EDIT: Of course if you have friends with Redshark you can go beyond solitaire and actually playtest against live opponents, which is almost always better than playing against yourself. The solitaire option is always there though and therefore it is the most convenient.
 
Good news is I've got a third of those built/underway.

I think I'll just go to the card store more often than I already have been, and make it to as many cities as possible, to be prepared.

Side note, what's with the explosion of Regigigas? It looks incredibly janky.

And is Redshark like Magic Workstation (MSW) for Pokemon?
 
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I'm not familiar with MSW. Basically Redshark is a free, downloadable progam available exclusively at Pokebeach.com (no this is not a plug for the site; I'm simply stating facts) designed specifically for the Pokemon TCG. Every card ever made is included in the database, and the program's layout is set up like a game play mat, complete with prizes (which are automatically doled out every time you start a new game), bench slots, a stadium slot, a supporter slot, etc.. There are also a ton of game functions that Redshark will emulate, including Rock Paper Scissors, coin flipping, etc..

Regigigas is good because of its level X, although I'm sure you knew that much. The idea is to get it out turn 2, or as soon as possible after that, and power it up with Sacrifice plus something that discards cards like Felicity's Drawing and/or Lunatone. Then you just hit consistently for either 100 via Giga Blaster or 60/80 + 20 to bench with Gigaton Punch (because you should be using that as the normal Regigigas). Palkia lv. X or Pokeblower is also usually included along with a lot of Switch cards to simultaneously allow for repeated Giga Blasters as well as take out the opponent's key Pokemon before they are powered up, or get rid of Claydol so that the discard part of Giga Blaster is more damaging. What really makes the deck powerful, however, is the ability for Regigigas to heal itself with Sacrifice. While you do give up a prize each time you use it, this does not usually matter as long as your opponent is unable to OHKO Regigigas or get more prizes off your bench, which you can prevent by keeping it low to begin with, when you use Sacrifice, or good Unown G replacements (since so much of the bench damage in this format is suddenly in the form of damage placement). The fact that Regigigas is a Basic that requires no stage 1 or 2 support except perhaps Claydol is also nice, and it means you have more room for tech cards/disruption stuff like Mesprit LA, the aforementioned Palkia lv. X, etc..
 
Ha, and to think people found this card risible two weeks ago. I myself was guilty of that.

Well, seeing as minus the Felicity's and Palkia Lv X's I have the cards for a mock-up of that, I shall test that as well.

I thought it was some fluke fad deck *not finding good analogy in Magic*. And Redshark is just like MWS from your description. Thanks for all your help!
 
You just need to build more then one deck and play them Solitaire style against each other. If you don't have enough cards buy the World Champion decks to give you good cards to use as proxies. The Gardivior deck has 2 Claydol/Baltoys along with 4 Roseanne's and 3 Bebe's Search. That is enough to re-create deck lists you see posted here on the gym.

I always build decks and play them before I post build help or opinions. It is not a perfect system but you do get to see how a deck preforms as far as consistency and mechanics.
 
What can/do I do when I get the following message from Hamachi: "The network appears to be full." Are there alternate networks for me to join?
 
This is how Ness and I used to playtest back in the day, and I think its what made us two of the best in the world:

We would determine what the top 10 decks were, and we'd make all 10. Then we'd take turns picking decks till we each had 5. Afterwards we would each pick a deck and play that matchup best of 3. When a deck lost, it was "eliminated", and then you pick your 2nd deck to face their winning deck. The first person to run out of decks loses.
 
^Yea we have done that to. Didn't do the best out of three though and than eliminate one. We just saw who won the most out of the 5 games. Might have to give that a try.
 
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