prodigal_fanboy
New Member
^Barring Palkia Lock IMO.
Are you daft, boy?
We're talking Tomb Lock. Show me one Palk-lock that runs 3-4 'tomb.
Consistency, and why it should matter more to you
- Thread starter ryanvergel
- Start date
Are you daft, boy?
We're talking Tomb Lock. Show me one Palk-lock that runs 3-4 'tomb.
Box of Fail
New Member
@Lawman: With all due respect to Silvestro, and in no way doubting he is a very good player, he won hs T8 match due to 4 tails on SSU (iirc). Winning on luck is still a possibility no matter the ages involved.
@p_f: I mean Palkia should run Lux Ball, even though it is an SP deck with no Claydol and likely no counter.
@p_f: I mean Palkia should run Lux Ball, even though it is an SP deck with no Claydol and likely no counter.
ryanvergel
New Member
This is absolutely absurd. If you are using a proper shuffling technique, the probability of the specific occurences should begin to make themselves known.
Starting with an energy 8/10 times? No. WAY. If you run 6 energy in Jumpluff, which many people do, then your odds of opening with one of those energy is 55%.
8/10 is impossible to get consistently. Either you are stacking your deck- cheating, or you are absurdly lucky.
As far as drawing the energy 9/10 off of the 8th card when you don't open with one... I call BS on that too. It's a marginal increase in odds of starting with it.
Basically, this is exactly the kind of flawed reasoning I am trying to convince people to overcome.
Learning to shuffle should show you just how poor the odds of that great set up actually are. Opening with an energy 8/10 times means you are running 11-12 energy, about double what you are probably running in Jumpluff. I don't buy it.
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Winning usually requires luck, but to rely on it is irrational.
I don't and won't drive 6 hours to attend a tournament and rely on luck, rather than my own skill in deckbuilding, to guide myself to my goals.
As they say, and I agree with:
aka MBN, but I can't do it
If you're not devoting adequate consistency cards to a deck, you will be doing precisely that- relying on luck which can't be controlled over skill which can be.
Darth: Stupid luck happens all the time, regardless of how well we can build a deck. At my first states, I only started with a supporter 3 times in 5 games of top cut, and only started with a supporter 3 times in swiss of 7 rounds. I started with a Cyrus once all day- even though the odds of opening with one is about 40%. I ran 4 Cyrus, 4 Rose/Collector, 2 Bebe-10 desirable opening supporters, and with those odds I should open with one 75% of the time, but did so only 50% of the time.
Luckily, though, SP has other non-supporters to rely on. With luxury ball (for my M2X counter [sorry, but again, I refuse to drive X hours, or go to a huge tournament and risk, every round, a possibility of an outright loss to a popular card]), pokemon communication, SP Radar, etc. I was able to usually get set up well enough to get to t8- where I got no supporter starts for 2 of the 3 games I had, and lost those same 2 games.
Luck of the draw can be influenced, but only so far.
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It does! Proper guesswork, analysis, and deck tweaking only works until you sit down and shuffle up.
However, given the sheer amount of consistency and options we have available to us, I don't see why people allow luck to have such an impact on their competitive play.
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A problem you might have is deck consistency!
I have only LIGHTLY touched upon some basic concepts here. I would love to go into further analysis, especially beyond the swiss rounds.
When we consider best of three, how well can your deck set up in sudden death? How likely is it to achieve a very hard to beat combo? Will it achieve it less than 2 out of 3 times? More?
If a deck like Gardevoir has a T2 Gardevoir with DCE/Psychic ~66% of the time, you can expect to roughly win a lot of best of three matches. Getting the deck to meet that threshold is therefore important, and using the right combination of Moonlight Stadium, Warp Point, Switch, or Unown Q is important- as well as the right number of psychic energy and DCE, as well as the right number of pokemon search (both supporter and non supporter).
Testing usually seeks to confirm or deny the math that we can't really perform. It is really challenging to consider all the factors that go into a deck's set up, but if you can spend an hour doing combinations and probabilities, it might actually be as worthwhile as a hundred hours of playtesting. After all, playtesting is just giving oneself the tangible experience of the deck's expected performances (aside from allowing the player using the deck to improve his ability with said deck).
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Steve is an excellant player, but anyone who wins US Nats or Worlds had to have some luck along the way. Whether it is avoiding the "bad" match up all day or top decking at the right time. What Ryan is saying is relying on this type of "good luck" will kill you at a tourney at some point. Better to play the odds than to play a risky move/tech that clunks up the deck.
Keith
Lets get the facts straight he won is top 8 match on 3 Tails on Super Scoop Up. (A flip base card, one that Fabian played becuase of its greater utiltiy, had he ran PP he would have won, once again this come to deck building Fabian new the risks made the choice to run SSU anyways and I just got burned by it in the end) Silvestro did not win the match he won one game, he was already up game 1.
toxictaipan
New Member
ryanvergel: Excellent post, sir.
Mods: Front Page. Now.
Mods: Front Page. Now.
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dave321
<a href="http://pokegym.net/forums/showpost.php?p=
I agree with almost everything... only thing I disagree with is that you should max out EVERY card of some use. I like bebe's, but most decks dont have room for 4. I run 3, and I find that works great. Same goes for cards like roseanne's and etc. Also I can see 3 rare candes making sense in decks with only 1 stage 2 attacker/supporter and a bunch of other basics or something... like gengar or something. Granted I wouldn't say this is ALWAYS the best idea but depending on how packed for space you are i could see it being the least crippling card to drop from the deck.
Naki Feralkin
New Member
Seriously front page this. This is a fantastic read.
However, I do have one question for you, and this is regarding your comment towards Rare Candy. Is it acceptable (in your opinion) to run 3 Rare Candies when the deck runs a reliable amount of Broken Time Space? I personally still like maxing out Rare Candy anyways, but I've seen lists that do run 3 BTS/3 RC and they still run quite well.
@ Dave, I don't see a reason you shouldn't max Bebe's Search in decks that require it. I mean no offense when I say this, but I make it a habit in almost every deck I play (Unless its SP) to run 4 Bebe's Search, and 1 Luxury Ball. I only really say this as before I played Pokemon, I played M:TG, and most of the heavy decks required the maximum amount of cards (4) to make it work at its fullest potential. I see no difference in Pokemon and max out Rosies, Bebe's, and Luxury Ball, as well as maximize any cards that may require maximization. Lately I've seen SP decks that do not run 4 Cyrus and this makes me cringe a little inside.
However, I do have one question for you, and this is regarding your comment towards Rare Candy. Is it acceptable (in your opinion) to run 3 Rare Candies when the deck runs a reliable amount of Broken Time Space? I personally still like maxing out Rare Candy anyways, but I've seen lists that do run 3 BTS/3 RC and they still run quite well.
@ Dave, I don't see a reason you shouldn't max Bebe's Search in decks that require it. I mean no offense when I say this, but I make it a habit in almost every deck I play (Unless its SP) to run 4 Bebe's Search, and 1 Luxury Ball. I only really say this as before I played Pokemon, I played M:TG, and most of the heavy decks required the maximum amount of cards (4) to make it work at its fullest potential. I see no difference in Pokemon and max out Rosies, Bebe's, and Luxury Ball, as well as maximize any cards that may require maximization. Lately I've seen SP decks that do not run 4 Cyrus and this makes me cringe a little inside.
ShadowGuard
<a href="http://pokegym.net/forums/showpost.php?p=
Great article, really should be front page. ^^
But there's one thing to add about the top cut thing. There are many tournaments where you can't effort even one single loss (if there are 15 or 31 players in your age group). At a State Championship in Belgium, I started 4-0, only lost the very last round and didn't make the top cut. That makes consistancy even more important.
Ironically, the opponents who don't run Call Energy and 3 or less Bebes topdeck everything or open with 2 Poké Drawers in their starting hand. =(
But there's one thing to add about the top cut thing. There are many tournaments where you can't effort even one single loss (if there are 15 or 31 players in your age group). At a State Championship in Belgium, I started 4-0, only lost the very last round and didn't make the top cut. That makes consistancy even more important.
Same here.
Ironically, the opponents who don't run Call Energy and 3 or less Bebes topdeck everything or open with 2 Poké Drawers in their starting hand. =(
vegitalian
New Member
I agree 100% with this. You need to consider if you were allowed unlimited amounts of each card, how many would you play? If Bebe's is important enough for the deck that you would play 4+, you should definitely run 4, but if you have alternate means of searching (Communication, Tomb, Beedrill RR, etc.), you may be taking away from consistency by playing 4 (e.g. taking out Energy spots, counters, weakening Pokemon lines, no Azelf, etc.).
Nice article and lol @ the 2-3 Claydol.
vanderbilt_grad
New Member
Ryan gave a good reply but I want to add that high risk / reward cards are still high risk / reward even in a consistent deck. Great example for me was Unown Q in Palkia Lock last year. I had 16 or 17 basics in that deck. Game 5 or so that day I mulligan TWICE and then on the thrid try start with a lone Unown Q going 2nd. My opponent started Uxie. My 2nd Mulligan gave him the energy he needed, without that he wouldn't have had a donk. The odds of that happening are very low indeed, but Unown Q is a high risk / high reward card & it burned me that time.
The thing is that bad luck happens. If your build includes risky cards like Q odds are that it WILL burn you at some point. I say thins because your builds are generally consistent in that they have maxed out Roseanne's, plenty of basics, & whatnot ... but you do still like those high risk cards too.
ryanvergel
New Member
Yes, this is pretty much my response.
Almost always, if your deck relies on a stage 2 attacker, you want to run 4 rare candy. But if you have a few stage 1s, some non-supporter search, and a few BTS, dropping to 3 candy is potentially more than fine.
Typically we are seeing less and less maxing out of good supporters, but that is because we have some diversification. People are using less Rare Candy and using more BTS. Less Bebe and more communication.
But some people are still using neither, or not taking full advantage of the consistency available.
If your deck is "consistent enough" (something that is arbitrary and self-measured), then so be it- but I think a lot of people don't use as much consistency as they could or should use in this tournament environment.
I'll quote my roommate on this:
Bianchi said:
It's as simple as that, yet so many people don't run enough cards to allow that often enough for them to do well in a tournament.
---
Now that I've mostly laid out how I feel, how do you all feel about this?
I ran Jumpluff at regionals, went 5-2 and whiffed the cut (lost to a t1 kingdra/belt, and to a cursegar where i couldn't draw a rare candy or poketurn until all 7 of those cards were in the last 14 cards of my deck). 3 roseanne, 2 collector, 3 bebe, 4 communication, 4 bts, 3 candy, 1 luxury ball-
i still felt like it was lacking =(
I miss call energy, but I like the combination of all of those pokemon search cards. I definitely want to run another deck with a LOT of outs like this. SP still seems decent, but sometimes it is too reliant on STARTING with Cyrus it seems.
Stage 2s used to be really reliant on rare candy and the pokemon search out there. Nowadays, with BTS/candy, and with comm/collector/rose/bebe, there is hardly a problem to set them up. With SP, you often rely on getting that early Cyrus or you will just fail . I wonder how consistent SP is nowadays when I think of its reliance on a particular card, especially in mirror.
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I have 6 energies in my pluff.
Well, stacking- how do you define that? After the shuffle I have no idea of how the cards individually is placed in the deck, but I lay them out so more often that not, it will be - trainer - pokemon - trainer - pokemon - trainer - energy - trainer - pokemon - trainer - pokemon. but more than that I wouldn't stand a chance to know. All I'm saying is, shuffling your deck the proper way, will help your consistency.
+ it can never be called cheating after my opponent have had the chance to top drop/ shuffle my deck.
Well, stacking- how do you define that? After the shuffle I have no idea of how the cards individually is placed in the deck, but I lay them out so more often that not, it will be - trainer - pokemon - trainer - pokemon - trainer - energy - trainer - pokemon - trainer - pokemon. but more than that I wouldn't stand a chance to know. All I'm saying is, shuffling your deck the proper way, will help your consistency.
+ it can never be called cheating after my opponent have had the chance to top drop/ shuffle my deck.
sar86
New Member
If you know at the start of your game (whether your opponent cuts or not) the order of the cards in your deck, that is cheating (knowing your deck goes trainer - pokemon - trainer - pokemon - trainer - energy counts as the same and is still cheating). If you're properly shuffling, your deck should be completely random. If its not random, it's cheating.
baby mario
Front Page Article Editor<br><a href="http://pokeg
That sounds like stacking to me. You are fixing your deck so the cards tend to be in a certain order when your deck is supposed to be completely random.
It's probably a grey area, but I wouldn't do it and I would not be very happy if an opponent tried it with me.
On topic: great article. Consistency is going to be even more important if Claydol and Uxie get rotated. Those cards let you get away with including more tech at the expense of maxing out on staples because you always have that constant draw to fall back on.
This really is a gray area, I would call it stacking. I wouldn't get caught by a judge if I were you, lets put it like that.