Restoring skill to the Pokemon TCG

[vaporeon]

I thought Scramble Energy was too powerful. To be honest, I don't like any card that rewards a player for having more prize cards left than his opponent. The weakest ones (such as Rocket's Admin./N) I can tolerate, but cards like Twins & Scramble Energy create a lot of stupid stalemates. Most players will disagree with me because they aren't good enough to recognize these stalemates and simply always take a prize card when the opportunity presents itself. However, pair two top level players and the fear of Twins can actually create either some boring stalemate-like situations... I suppose these situations might actually just be so intricate they really do add skill to the game, but I also just am annoyed at the concept of punishing a player for taking a lead in a game.

Again, just like last format, we're 1-2 cards (really only one, tbh) away from a great format. Remove some part of the Pachirisu/Shaymin/Zekrom combo and you have a great format. (The others I think the game would be better off without are Tyrogue and PlusPower.) My personal opinion would be to remove Pachirisu. Last format the solution would have been to remove Uxie. Of course, I'm just speaking hypothetically, I don't think we should waste time trying to ban Pachirisu because it's never going to happen. But geez, I don't get it - why do they keep printing cards to Turn 1 people? What doesn't Japan get? No one thinks losing on Turn 1 is cool or fun!

In my match at Battle Roads, I had 8 damage counters on my opponents Chansey. I did not knock it out because I did not want to give my opponent their Twins because I had nothing setup. The bad thing was I knew he had Twins and sure I could have taken the Prize Lead but I would not have drawn anything for the next 8 turns. That would have cost me the game. I do agree that cards like that are too powerful.

---------- Post added 09/23/2011 at 03:58 AM ----------

Yeah, that is the mind set. The problem is that we have cards from different blocks that "work" together sure, but are not suppose to "work" together if you know what I meant. Yes this is a problematic format right now, but once HGSS is rotated alot and I do mean ALOT of our problem cards will be rotated. Give it a year(hopefully). I do not know what they have planed for future sets, but I see where they are going. Hopefully.

This I also agree. Zekrom should not be in the same format as Pachi and Shaymin. The combo was there but it was not printed for that. Emboar and Reshi on the other hand were to be made together. Rotate to BW on, you have a good, donkless format.

 

[King Piplup]

---------- Post added 09/23/2011 at 03:58 AM ----------



This I also agree. Zekrom should not be in the same format as Pachi and Shaymin. The combo was there but it was not printed for that. Emboar and Reshi on the other hand were to be made together. Rotate to BW on, you have a good, donkless format.

Agree that ZPS should not exist, but in a BW format right now, you'd have Gothitelle and Reshiram being competitive. Nothing else. That would not be a good format at all.

 

[vaporeon]

Agree that ZPS should not exist, but in a BW format right now, you'd have Gothitelle and Reshiram being competitive. Nothing else. That would not be a good format at all.

This is true but Reshi, while its hard has counters. Goth has to be active at all times for it to work. If you can kill one of them and your opponent can't get another one going, the deck falls apart. Goth is your only attacker and you can't stray from that. Vileplume on the other hand can use may attackers and maintain trainer lock, Goth can not.

The problem with Zekrom is it's unpredictable. When your opponent wins the coin flip and flip over Zekrom, your heart sinks because you don't know if they will drop a Pachi or Shaymin. While Zekrom, Pachi and Shaymin are not unhealthy for the format, together they make competitive play unbalance. Zekrom has no counters once he gets going turn 1, then next turn if he needs to, he can Outrage for 60.

 

[uuuufff]

If only we had a special word in place of "donk" that represented a situation under which a normal, "skillful" game could not occur; I'm going to go ahead and invent one and say "game killer"...

Last format was full of game killers: Garchomp C/DCE/Energy Gain, T1 Gyarados, Mesprit chains, Spiritomb, Power SPray, Judge + Initiative with a Sableye, Sableye, my gosh I could go on and on and on. Game killers extend past the first turn, but the effect is still the same -- one person is at such a disadvantage that there's just no hope for them. Most Pokemon TCG players know exactly how this feels ("Well I faced the mirror match and he got Gyarados setup T1 with Mesprits, so I lost," or "My Gyarados list plays a bunch of Trainers and he started with Spiritomb or Gastly everytime, so I lost").

With the current format, there are some game killers floating around such as Donphan/Yanmega/Catcher and ZPST (plus Tyrogue every now and then). But outside of that, there are a multitude of decks that aren't exploding into crazy amounts of damage or disruption on the first or second turn. Tyram, Vileplume variants, Cawthon's Truth, Magneboar, Gothiclus... these are all decks that require setup time.

With the last format, every single deck had game killers built directly into the decklist. Vilegar had Spiritomb (or the odd T1 Gengar OHKO on an Unown Q or something) and Gengar's stupid Power, Luxchomp had multiple ways to land a OHKO on a Basic or Power Spray everything good away, Sablelock/donk had tricky disruptive combos (or T1 OHKO w/Sableye), Regigigas and Palkia lock had Mesprit chains. Even Steelix had Chansey's Pulled Punch attack with PlusPowers (and yes, I remember getting 2 donks on people during CC's because of that).

On the subject of Luxchomp, there was definitely a noticable amound of skill required to play the deck well at times. I couldn't be the runner up at Nationals in 2010 without saying that. However, it too had game killers present in its strategy. Get a couple of Power Spray in your hand early game and you could kill the setup power of almost every deck in the format, reducing your opponent to a single utterance: "PASS." Other games were much more challenging. I personally felt the mirror offered a lot in terms of skill if you could get past those donks and game killer situations. Even still, I faced many opponents who landed a T1 KO on something only for me to come back slowly and skillfully to a winning position. That is skill, I won't deny it at all. But a good Luxchomp player could easily go through an entire tournament and have that happen only once or twice. I know because it happened to me (Regionals last year had me donking twice, getting donked twice, and having 2 good games and one where I easily won). I also know because that's how these decks were designed -- everything had to take that game killer potential to the maximum.

So did Luxchomp take skill? At times, yes. But it too was another deck that suffered from the "game killer syndrome," having cards and combos in it that put opponents in an unrecoverable position at times. When all the decks were like this, variance went sky-high. That's not to say that players who won tournaments weren't good players, but it is to say that things such as matchups, first turns, and starters mattered more and more and more.

I think I get what you mean now. Luxchomp did have a lot more "one-sided" games (game-killers, whatever you want to call them) than any other deck. A lot of the games could be over pretty quickly. Still, I feel like whenever the game wasn't one-sided (like a good mirror match) their games were pretty legit and skillfull. But I agree with you.

 

[bullados]

I thought Scramble Energy was too powerful. To be honest, I don't like any card that rewards a player for having more prize cards left than his opponent. The weakest ones (such as Rocket's Admin./N) I can tolerate, but cards like Twins & Scramble Energy create a lot of stupid stalemates. Most players will disagree with me because they aren't good enough to recognize these stalemates and simply always take a prize card when the opportunity presents itself. However, pair two top level players and the fear of Twins can actually create either some boring stalemate-like situations... I suppose these situations might actually just be so intricate they really do add skill to the game, but I also just am annoyed at the concept of punishing a player for taking a lead in a game.

I like the concept of a comeback card. Or a comeback combo. Just because a player has an amazing first turn or first few turns doesn't mean that the game should be over. There should be ways to get out of a losing situation. The best games are the ones that come down to the last turn where coin flips are not a part of the game. And I'd like to see more games go that kind of distance, at least games between roughly-similarly-skilled (or experienced) players. N/Admin is a great card because of this. Scramble and Twins are overpowered. Black Belt is underutilized (and probably underpowered).

Just a couple of examples of things I would do to certain cards to make them at least reasonable...

Scramble Energy: make it 2 Rainbows instead of 3. This would allow for comebacks, but not game-changing comebacks. You'd still need to be able to play your way through the game rather than relying upon broken cards.

Twins: Make the search specific. Like, of those cards you grab, one has to be a TSS, and the other has to be a Pokemon/Energy. You then have to show the cards to your opponent. It makes it so that the Twins search almost has to be an immediate effect or your opponent will be able to plan for future turns. Changes how you play the card significantly.

Black Belt: 50 damage instead of 40. There's a lot of 60 and 80 damage attacks right now, but not a lot of 70 and 90 damage attacks. There's also a lot of 110HP Pokemon and 130HP Pokemon that are main attackers. Black Belt would be a counter-KO against most of those cards. Alternatively, you could make it a Tool with the same effect, or possibly reduced to 30 if 40 is considered "too much" of a bonus.

 

[NoPoke]

..... But geez, I don't get it - why do they keep printing cards to Turn 1 people? What doesn't Japan get? No one thinks losing on Turn 1 is cool or fun!

Is the Japanese tournament structure as many games as you can get in as possible in a limited time? Something like this:-

Join BIG queue to play at a small number of tables.
Win: stay on, Lose: go back to the end of the line to try again.
Accumulate a certain number of wins in a row to qualify for the next stage.

That kind of structure needs a high degree of churn with games taking as little time as possible. Not easy to keep the game skillful at the same time as getting the churn rate for players up enough that players don't spend all day in the queue without ever sitting down to play.

 

[Otaku]

Since we are on the subject, I must remind people to be cautious when trying to "fix" underpowered cards since a lot of them aren't underpowered but overshadowed.

Bullados: Wanna make Black Belt a once-per-deck staple? Bring back Scott and Vs Seeker. Might need a better Stadium or two as well, but the thing holding back Black Belt is there are no good tutors for Supporters (and the upcoming Item I championed had a "tails fails" coin toss clause I missed :nonono.

Glad Bullados and Ness agree with me on Scramble Energy being broken (at least as it was). I disagree slightly with Bullados nerfing: making it an altered Double Rainbow Energy certainly is better, but if a format lacks an actual Double Rainbow Energy I'd say the real problem is that Scramble Energy

1) Sticks around
2) Can re-trigger anytime conditions are met

Now the good news is we have Lost Remover to help combat this, but do you really want Lost Remover to become a staple? If we need a "come from behind" Energy, it should probably be the Energy equivalent of Black Belt. The problem is, as usual so many other cards would "break" it.

We should forget the brutal Stage 1 Pokemon in the format either: even with ZPS neutered, Donphan Prime is enough of a brute seems like a lot of people have to run counters for it, and Yanmega Prime isn't really any better balanced.

 

[Ness]

Again, we seem to have fallen into the trap at talking about banning cards. It's a waste of time. Instead, let's focus on the purpose of this post: our one and only option to add some skill back into the game: more games. I sure hope to see Best of 5 at Nationals & Worlds this year. I think 2 hours is just enough time to allow for a legit Best of 5 series. Compared to a 2/3 series, a 3/5 series also gives more opportunities for a game to end quickly (either by a donk or by a player conceding), which saves time to play additional full games.

 

[Otaku]

But Ness, I really miss using Scott!

Kidding aside, I think your initial discussion has pretty much leveled off, though I'll be happily proven wrong if others have questions. You've got me convinced it is worth a look, but all I can be is some random guy who agrees with you on this (or at least mostly on this - it has been a bit since I read your full write-up).

You know, I just had an idea I am going to toss out there. In some sporting events, like martial arts matches, you'll have a point system of scoring. Instead of using this to determine the winner of a single match, what if this was applied to overall tournament placing? Pretty radical departure so I wouldn't expect it to be instituted anytime soon even if there was unanimous agreement for it, but I just want to get the idea out there. I believe this is at least partially reflected in the current way things are done, but I'll be honest: I've never run an official tournament and all this stuff is Greek to me.

So to be clear, what I am saying is that scoring wins based upon quality would be great for the game. It would be quite difficult, though, because someone would always try to abuse the system and it would require some extra work. That being said, I think as something to eventually be implemented it would be well worth it. Imagine players avoiding donk decks because when it came down to tie breakers, it "just wasn't worth it". While there would be issues with some players milking the system, we already have that problem. If I go into anymore detail, I'll launch into a full on wall-o-text so I'll see if anyone cares about the basic idea before expanding upon it.

 

[cabd]

But Ness, I really miss using Scott!

Kidding aside, I think your initial discussion has pretty much leveled off, though I'll be happily proven wrong if others have questions. You've got me convinced it is worth a look, but all I can be is some random guy who agrees with you on this (or at least mostly on this - it has been a bit since I read your full write-up).

You know, I just had an idea I am going to toss out there. In some sporting events, like martial arts matches, you'll have a point system of scoring. Instead of using this to determine the winner of a single match, what if this was applied to overall tournament placing? Pretty radical departure so I wouldn't expect it to be instituted anytime soon even if there was unanimous agreement for it, but I just want to get the idea out there. I believe this is at least partially reflected in the current way things are done, but I'll be honest: I've never run an official tournament and all this stuff is Greek to me.

So to be clear, what I am saying is that scoring wins based upon quality would be great for the game. It would be quite difficult, though, because someone would always try to abuse the system and it would require some extra work. That being said, I think as something to eventually be implemented it would be well worth it. Imagine players avoiding donk decks because when it came down to tie breakers, it "just wasn't worth it". While there would be issues with some players milking the system, we already have that problem. If I go into anymore detail, I'll launch into a full on wall-o-text so I'll see if anyone cares about the basic idea before expanding upon it.

I'm curious enough. Go for it.

 

[Otaku]

Well cabd (and anyone else who cares) I am realizing my ignorance of the current system is poor and thus I am finding it hard to articulate. Likewise while I know of this scoring system, I was barely in any martial arts and never competed when I was, so I'll have to research to be certain. I mean I didn't even pay attention to High School wrestling enough to know from that. XD

The idea would be to make the system reward you for the more Prizes you took. This might open the door to some bizarre metagaming... but if that metagaming takes true skill that doesn't really contradict the point. I don't want to truly penalize the donk so much as "reward it less" since really, that fast a win is its own reward! Plus let us be honest... how much better is a psuedo-donk second or third turn, even if your opponent had to take two Prizes?

If that sounds bad, turn count might be a consideration as well. I mean, winning in under three turns tends to indicate extreme luck or an opponent that really blew it. I just think that, given the goal of a tournament is truly to find the most skilled player, this more complicated approach might be worth trying to... well create since obviously I don't even have an actual system for it, just the basic idea.

Skilled players who regularly defeat an opponent whose deck has had time to set-up really deserve those wins to count more than the person who "lucked" into a few donks (or even pursued them actively). Yet the bottom line is a win should always be a win: I am not trying to set-up a system where a "lucky" donk second round causes someone to miss topcut unless everyone they are being compared to had just as many wins and all of them were with fleshed out battles.

I realize the problems this could lead to, like teams having members intentionally set themselves up to be donked. Then again I recall at least at one time there was a problem with someone's tiebreakers being sabotaged because other player's would drop, lowering their resistance (and if that sounds like gibberish, these are terms I only vaguely understand >.>). This might require extra policing by judges, with a simple rule of "when the game is over, both players set their hands down face-up and don't clean up until both agree" so that if it looks like someone is trying to play the system for a friend (big difference: player collusion not a single player trying to work the points in his or her own favor) a judge can be called. Or perhaps it would just have to be a part of the game (since just like the real game, penalties to punish collusion can be exploited by dishonest players).

Lastly, I just want to emphasize that I think it might even be "good" that some players who know they need a quality win to topcut might be forced to give their opponent an "extra" turn. Again, we are trying to demonstrate who is the best so if you can show "mercy" and still win, you probably deserve those extra points. Since I can't emphasize it enough, donk decks, near donk decks, hyper aggressive decks, control decks, etc. that would find themselves less valuable are their own rewards. If a great control deck locks the opponent down to one or two Pokemon early game and then quickly win with a "near" donk (two OHKOs)... well it is still a win and puts you over all players who lost or tied. There is a silver-lining for fans of these decks as well... it might permit more potent versions of the strategies to be allowed since they would be worth less in the long run (pertaining to making top cut).

I ask that people who have questions ask them, and feel free to try and improve or clarify this idea: if it is a dead end I want to know now and if it has promise I don't want to abandon it because of my own limitations.

 

[espeon200]

Wall Of Text

To add to this thought, how would players feel if this idea was used, but instead of playing one game (or 2 out of 3) players would play as many games as they could in a round? Say a round is 30 minutes and a donk happens 3 minutes into the game. Instead of stopping there and waiting another 27 minutes for the next round, both players would have two minutes to reset (like Top Cut) and then they would start again. When time was called the game would end (with +3 turns of course) and the player who was ahead on prizes would be declared the winner unless he or she had not taken enough prizes to surpass his or her opponent. This means that the second game losing player is playing at a handicap. He or she can still win the match, but he or she needs to take enough prizes to be declared the winner. Of course if time was called and players were tied on prizes including the handicap the winner of the most games would be declared the winner.

Problems? Stopping scooping. If a ZPTS player is facing The Truth, they're probably going to scoop until they have a donk situation. There are a couple of ways to discourage this. First you can tell players that they no longer may scoop games but if they scoop they are forfeiting the match. Second you could make it so that each time a player scoops a match the opponent is credited with an extra prize. Third, you could require a player to take more than 50% of his or her prizes before scooping.

Any thoughts? Is this just too crazy to work?

 

[Otaku]

First, as a reminder I don't consider "donking" something that needs to be completely eliminated: a necessary evil, you might say (though I abhor the term).

Second, here is the big problem I see: what I proposed made an actual donk deck (not donking itself) something to avoid. Why? Ideally the system would be set-up so that someone with every win as a donk would struggle to make it to the top cut. Unless someone was the perfect player with the perfect donk deck, it would be unlikely (though I realize possible) to win a major event: the odds are just against it.

I will state that ignoring my suggestion I am intrigued by using espeon200s idea for a "third option". Imagine if winning a game was largely a reset button for circumstances, and it was number of Prizes taken that determined the winner of the round? You play as many matches as you can. Unless the donk player has a donk deck that uses just one or two Pokemon in play, there is quite a good chance that a single "real" game happening between said donk deck and a non-donk deck meant to go the distance would result in enough Prizes taken that the donk-focused deck wouldn't be a viable tournament winning strategy.

Something I left out: in both cases we might need the card designers to focus on reprinting (and making new cards) that allow you to force your opponent to get Pokemon into play, or at least make choosing to avoid it undesirable (like Challenge!) to prevent players from "taking a dive" for the sake of time (a nasty trick "teams" could use for my idea, and the main recourse of the 'donk' deck with espeon200's idea).

 

[vaporeon]

Could this work. If a player has no Pokemon after their opponent KO their last one, the game continues and that player has a chance to put down another Pokemon and continues from there. If that player does not have one at the end of their turn, their opponent takes one prize at the end of each turn until that player can get a basic Pokemon out.

 

[Otaku]

Vaporeon's idea does not seem without merit. The immediate downside is that there is no penalty for lacking a Pokemon in play for one turn. With decks that can take multiple Prizes in a single turn and Pokemon that are worth more than one Prize will be hurt by this and decks that use bounce combos (like ZPS) can exploit this. This model provides a "just under one turn" grace period of "I've got no Bench". If my deck is such I can get my main attacker in play and powered up fast enough (at least for a minimal attack), this is a big reward for them!

 

[Prime]

My only worry with Vaporeon's idea is the situation where the opponent's last Pokemon is knocked out by a Poke-Power or other effect that isn't an attack. That would leave the player's attack to be useless.

Perhaps if that attack automatically granted them a prize, then it'd be fair.

If you think about it like that, then really the opponent should have all the time in the world to find a new basic but each of the other player's attacks grants them a prize, the opponent would only have so much time to find a new basic.

And then there is the whole question of if the opponent can even come back in the game with a lone basic or will the basic just be one-shot as well, leading to the same empty field scenario?

 

[vaporeon]

Yeah, it can be a problem but at that point they would be trying to fix the issue. The whole KO with a power thing would be bad but its no different then Spray Splashing a poke with 10 health and then KOing the next Pokemon they send up. Ether way 2 prizes are taken. At least this way, players who get donked round 1 or 2 don't automatically lose their chance at a top cut.

How many times have players been donked, but had a Pokemon Collector in hand or other search cards. Even with this rule, someone would try to take advantage of it but if this were done, the game would be so much better. I would rather give up a Prize then take a game loss because of a donk.

 

[CMsvW]

Can't believe I'm saying this...but listen to Vaporeon and this format becomes freaken sexy

 

[chase4787]

Something would have to be done to prevent abuse of Twins/Black Belt. Perhaps you have to show your opponent your hand every turn to prove you have no basics.

 

[vaporeon]

Something would have to be done to prevent abuse of Twins/Black Belt. Perhaps you have to show your opponent your hand every turn to prove you have no basics.

That can work as well and try to find a way to prevent abuse of the rule by making attacks do 70or 80+ damage so people can't attack with a weak Pokemon to get prizes to prevent a needed attacker from getting KOed.