Pokémon TCG: Sword and Shield—Brilliant Stars

Sabledonk - math and analyzation

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4 sableye in magnerock is a bad idea and it is not a good matchup for magnezone, but I will make a new deck. I often do and it should be fine. I agree on that this metagame makes i really hard for rogue deck but im positive they still exist.

@nopoke
I could win with it with but i wouldn´t stand a better chance than the other players.

The year I used cessoleon at nats I didn´t need much luck to win. The deck was fine with starting and also opponent stating and it was really effective against the metagame. That year i felt really confident on winning
 
With regards to the people posting in german which i believe is so you can have complete clarity between each other. If you could kindly post a translation alongside, so everyone can understand what you are saying, that would be great.
 
We're all doomed! Judgement Day is here!

...But seriously, I can't see much of a way out for the game either. If Sableye were banned the problem would go away - or even errata'd so Overconfident wasn;t on the card but rather some other attack, like maybe Jirachi RR's Detour attack (possibly combined with free resistance); that way it would be a great consistency booster but not a donker. Idk but it seems like a viable idea.

Sadly with it being so close to the last few tournaments of the season I don;t know if P!P would be able to errata it at such short notice...but then again, they did so with Onix UL and another card last year; so maybe...?
 
To me, the problem isn't "this deck is better than that deck", it's "the game is now unfair". Sableye + first turn Trainers makes it unfair.

Imagine this: a normal tournament, except P!P has dressed up someone as Sableye and he's going to run up and down the aisles. If he taps you on the shoulder, you immediately lose.

Does that sound like fun? Does it sound fair? Is that a tournament you'd want to spend time and travel money to play in, potentially risking the trip to Worlds you've been dreaming of all year?

Probably not. But maybe you need to play in it. You can try to counteract this Sableye character by changing 10% of your winning decklist (sacrificing consistency), but that doesn't even guarantee immunity....just a chance of not immediately losing. Still sound unfair, and even stupid? You bet.
 
losjackal said:

Imagine this: a normal tournament, except P!P has dressed up someone as Sableye and he's going to run up and down the aisles. If he taps you on the shoulder, you immediately lose.

Does that sound like fun?
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Yes, yes it does.

It sounds a lot more fun than losing to randoms on a coinflip anyway.
 
Flipping heck!

Pun intended. I agree with Jason's point eariler: if you don;t get the flips on multiple search cards (Dual Ball, etc.) and your hand's left high and dry you lose. People are goint to play the deck and when they realise how that can happen they will wish they'd played something with less coin flipping involved.
 
Blue Blur said:
People are goint to play the deck and when they realise how that can happen they will wish they'd played something with less coin flipping involved.
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Yes, so Sabledonk might not win the whole tournament, but look at it from the opponent's perspective: if the really good players run into a Sabledonk deck and it rolls an average number of heads, the good player loses and stands less of a chance of winning the tournament too. That's the unfair part.
 
Morten said:
...
@nopoke
I could win with it with but i wouldn´t stand a better chance than the other players. This is the point you have to consider. So what should the other players do?

The year I used cessoleon at nats I didn´t need much luck to win. The deck was fine with starting and also opponent stating and it was really effective against the metagame. That year i felt really confident on winning . We have had formats in the past where you did not need much luck to win. Where skill mattered much more than it seems to right now. It is still the nature of how our tournaments operate that there is luck in the environment. The advantage of being able to play your cards before your opponent was always worth having even if in the resulting game you could come back from the opponent starting better than you.
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responses in red.

I think that the year you ran cessation in Empoleon we were using Crystal Beach in GG. The local metagame did not know how to cope which gave the combination a very significant advantage: few decks were running windstorm locally. At worlds windstorm was everywhere and the deck failed horribly as would be expected :( what lesson does this offer: That the local environment matters and understanding what you will face matters. With B&W Sableye is an environment defining card and regardless of how it may affect you as an individual you need to understand its impact. Some of that means exploring how likely it is that you will encounter the card and what to do when you do. Assessing how dangerous particular decks are means assessing how likely you are to lose to them. Is it possible to play your way back into the game using cards like Twins for example. Well not if you don't get to draw a card.

The thread is about a deck where there is a good chance that you don't get to draw a card. A deck that can be altered to negate an obvious counter (spiritomb) and still have a good chance of denying you a turn. A deck which if you take the numbers at face value has a positive match up against the field of current decks and worse is not affected by the skill of the opponent seated opposite. It has all of this because a designed in disadvantage under the existing rules becomes an advantage under B&W rules.

A pure speed sabledonk will have to face counters. So Sabledonk will be modified to trade off some of the certainty against all other decks to improve its performance against the obvious counter. I have no doubt that there will be sabledonks that can respond to an opposing Spirtomb in a way that isn't just picking up the match slip and circling loss. This is the point that Shen makes. Right now I have to hope that the sabledonk players don't adapt and stick to playing bad lists. For the USA that seems unlikely.
 
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Dunno if I would call winning 60%+ of my games a "high" risk.

You can still win past the first turn, too, if they don't get like a full bench, albeit hard depending on the situation.
 
Shen said:
Thanks for the analysis. JWittz's video was very nice but I knew the math was a little off because the odds of starting with Sableye can't be exactly 40% (as you showed, and no offense to JWittz either!). And that throws the rest of his analysis off. I tried explaining this to my friends but got nowhere when I demonstrated my math because they were confused when I started talking about factorials... lol

Always glad to see a mathematical analysis on Pokemon :d
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Yeah, I even say in the video that 40% is a rough estimate. You also have to factor in things like how many basics you run in the specific lists, etc. I asked some of the stat nerds what the results for my deck in particular would be, and I got somewhere around 46%--about halfway between me and Yoshi. I even found the 40% start statistics to be a little disturbing, so anything higher just further proves the point.

Edit--just realizes this is seven pages long and I replied to something on page 2. Time to get caught up!
 
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Darkmot said:
Once again, MATHS WON'T HELP YOU!!!!
It is all about luck with that damn Sabledonk.


I could bet you're not going to win the DM with it.... Because you will not be that lucky.
Darkmot.
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Math shows the probability.

Your chance of pulling off the 60% win.

Chance = Luck.
 
NoPoke said:
Sabledonk is a simple to analyse deck that HIGHLIGHTS the problem with the early introduction of B&W rules.

The issue is not Sabledonk, but the family of Sableye decks that just had their donk capability taken to a whole new level . These are themselves a subset of decks that can pull off a T1 kill. A set that includes SP.

Shen is correct that the best outcome for skilled players could well be that the sabledonk players all go for the speed list. It is probably the version that is simplest to counter. But even then you are still going to lose sometimes because counters are not guaranteed themselves.

We face a format where many players wont even get to draw a card. Is this good? Is this in line with the declared goals of OP? Roll on September. I'm glad I'm not P!P as I can't honestly see how they can provide the fix that is demanded of them by players. Damned if they do and damned if they don't.
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I'm surprised this was passed over... this is exactly what is going to happen. Good players do not want to put all their eggs in one basket (winning t1), so I don't see a lot of quality players using the strict Sableye/Uxie donk premise. Regardless, 4 Sableye is a must in any deck just because going first is such an advantage now. And with 4 Sableye it's fairly simple to pull off a donk vs. any lone basic.

It's going to be ugly no matter which way you slice it. I see a lot of people who are fortunate enough (including myself) who have the rating invite wrapped up to sit out the biggest tournament of the year, which is not the way POP should want it. All this could've been prevented with a proper rotation to PL-on at the beginning of this season.
 
@ NoPoke and Mondak: Exactly. For example, all you have to do is tech in an unown dark and 1 or 2 sp darks into a gdos and it automatically gains insane donking ability. The same goes for sablelock and just about anything else, as I'm also guessing that sableye is going to be teched into everything.
 
Volt said:
I just played 10 games with SableDonk against LuxChomp and here are the results (I'll only share them since some people can't believe in math for whatever reason):

Game 1: Sableye vs. Luxray GL 1:0
Game 2: Sableye vs. Bronzong G 2:0
Game 3: Uxie vs. Crobat G (went second, he had Call and Collector) 2:1
Game 4: Unown Q vs. Garchomp C, Luxray GL, Uxie, Crobat G, Crobat G (went first, KO'ed Garchomp C, Crobat G and Seeker'd his Uxie) 2:2
Game 5: Sableye vs. Toxicroak G Promo, Garchomp C, Crobat G (Seeker and 10 Flash Bites) 3:2
Game 6: Uxie vs. Garchomp C, Ambipom G (went first) 4:2
Game 7: Unown R vs. Luxray GL, Toxicroak G Promo, Azelf, Uxie, Garchomp C (went second) 4:3
Game 8: Unown R vs. Dragonite, Drifloon (went first) 5:3
Game 9: Uxie vs. Toxicroak G Promo (went first) 6:3
Game 10: Sableye vs. Dragonite, Crobat (Seeker and 10 Flash Bites) 7:3

Figure out for yourself what that means. For the record, I played 4 Collector and Unown D.

That being said, shall we just wait and see what's going to happen in terms of mid season rotation, etc?
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I had just done a 10 game run vs the invisible 3 80 hp pokemon and finished 7-3 aswell. I used 1 collector and regice

EDIT:

Another 10 games this time against actual starts vs luxchomp which resulted in 8-2. 15-5 overall.
 
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XYZ_Sniper said:
Math shows the probability.

Your chance of pulling off the 60% win.

Chance = Luck.
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lol

60% = most of the time = it comes to you naturally. You don't actually have to get that lucky -- it's already in your favor.

EDIT: Let me elaborate:

A 60% win percentage means that your opponent has a 40% win percentage. Always. That's a disadvantage. There are not supposed to be any disadvantages. That's the only reason you need to conclude that this deck is just plain wrong.

50-50 means you have to get lucky. 60-40 means it's in your favor. You don't need luck when something's in your favor.
 
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toxictaipan said:
lol

60% = most of the time = it comes to you naturally. You don't actually have to get that lucky -- it's already in your favor.

EDIT: Let me elaborate:

A 60% win percentage means that your opponent has a 40% win percentage. Always. That's a disadvantage. There are not supposed to be any disadvantages. That's the only reason you need to conclude that this deck is just plain wrong.

50-50 means you have to get lucky. 60-40 means it's in your favor. You don't need luck when something's in your favor.
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but in order to win more than that 60% you will need luck
 
You guys are missing the most important point because you're stuck on the statistics. I'll say it again, this time without any distractions.

A 60% win percentage means that your opponent has a 40% win percentage. Always. That's a disadvantage. There are not supposed to be any disadvantages. That's the only reason you need to conclude that this deck is just plain wrong.
 
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