Besides being a former United States National Champion, Worlds Finalist, and an overall Charming and Handsome guy, one of the things I have been known for in my time playing this game has been my tendancy to tech, or even ‘overtech’ my decklists. Some people have agreed with my methods and theories over the years, and others have taken issue with it for various reasons.
I figure that I’ll take a break from reviewing a new deck or archetype from the format and take some time to share with people the thoughts that go into my deck building processes, and try to point out some of the pros and cons behind it. I’ll start with a story, dating back to the 2006 format, where, from States onward, I used the LBS deck (Lugia ex, Blastoise ex, Steelix ex).
LBS versus the Rest of the Format
The deck was, by far, the most “powerful” deck in the format. Once it was set up and rolling, no other deck in the format could even come close to mimicking the things it could do. It had access to 200 damage attacks and the ability to hit anything on an opponent’s bench for 100 damage. It had near-limitless energy acceleration, and could explode out of anywhere. Pidgeot, from FireRed & LeafGreen, with its “Quick Search” Poké-Power allowed the deck to have access to a ton of versitility and still reliably get the right cards at the right time.
The deck came to fall into place with the release of Delta Species when Holon’s Electrode and Holon’s Magneton gave Blastoise ex the ability to effectively “Rain Dance” non-Water energy onto Pokémon. This allowed Lugia ex and Steelix ex to join it and really put a near-stranglehold on the 2005-2006 season.
pokemon-paradijs.comEventually, decks such as Mewtric, the Delta deck, featuring Raichu and Exeggutor, and the Mynx lock deck, would be introduced in the format, all featuring high degrees of disruption in order to try and fight the power level offered by LBS by trying to prevent it from doing its ideal game plan. To a degree, this worked, and those decks all performed very well at Regionals and Nationals. The average LBS list began to underperform, and, while it was still the most popular deck in the format, many players abandoned it.
This brings me to my first major point that I want to address. I often hear people complain about players who “net-deck” or merely copy lists from previous tournaments or players. They argue that it is unfairly gaining an advantage without having to do any work to get there. While this is to a degree true, it isn’t necessarily the best idea. I would never go into a tournament with a net-list. Not because the deck was bad and certainly not because I am morally against it, rather I would not want to use it because it is “outdated” the moment it gets posted.
They used to hold Regionals across multiple weekends. In 2005, I was able to hit 3 different Regionals (Great Lakes, Mississippi Valley, and whatever they called the one held in Philly). They were each a week apart. Despite the “format” not changing between these events, I would never use the same deck as I did the prior week. When I say “deck”, it doesn’t mean I’d have switched from Rock Lock, to Ludicolo, then Dragtrode; it just meant that, unless I had a very good reason to, I had no inclination to use the exact same 60 cards from week to week.
The main point here being that players will choose deck choices based on the most recent information available. What was a good metagame call for week one of Regionals (or Cities now!) might not be nearly as strong of choice for week two, as the field of decks changes according to what was played the prior week. Every tournament will impact how players think about the format. I’ll use a more concrete example.
The Metagame Evolves
Let’s look at this year’s format. Let’s say we went to the very first Battle Road, and 80% of the field was an SP deck. You show up with a Gengar/Vileplume deck. You end up going 3-3, beating some random deck, 2 LuxChomp, and losing to 2 DialgaChomp, and a LuxChomp. Disgruntled, you decide to switch decks for the next week, not wanting to deal with those matchups. You switch over to LuxChomp because it gives you a good matchup against the DialgaChomp builds, and a 50-50 shot versus “mirror” as well.
Unfortunately, due to the fact that SP dominated the first week, a significant number of players decided to run Machamp! You proceed to go 3-3 again, losing to two Machamp, and one bad start versus another LuxChomp deck. Very few DialgaChomp lists showed up or did well at the second week, meaning your Gengar/Vileplume deck, which was a subpar choice for the first week, would have been a fantastic choice the second week! The success of LuxChomp going into week two meant that players would want to run decks that beat the deck.
While Dialga showed up in the first week because it was a great deck versus an unknown field, players would have likely shied away from it because it is a slight underdog versus the other SP decks. They also would switch to decks like Machamp, which beat the successful decks of the prior week. No new cards were introduced to the format, but the metagame shifted drastically between weeks.
The metagame is always evolving, and constantly shifting. Usually, there are good signs that can be followed as to how the metagame will shift. Basing it on what decks won previously and what decks didn’t show up at all, you can try to get a good read for what the best deck to “capitalize” on that field would be. After you do that, you need to try and speculate as to how other players would end up reacting to the results of the previous event. Trying to, and being able to, second-guess the metagame for an upcoming event is a huge skill that is useful toward taking your game to the next level.
This needs to be done within context as well. As you get later into the season and the events become larger, the number of players who pay attention to the outcome expands. For Battle Roads and City Championships, the metagame doesn’t evolve as quickly. The overlap of players that attend all of the events is smaller. From City A and City B, you may see about 20% of the same players. Yet the number of players who show up at States and then Regionals is much higher. Nationals coverage is huge, and will very heavily impact the metagame going into Worlds.
pokemon-paradijs.comLast year I used Dialga/Garchomp for my first 4 or 5 City Championships. I started my first two events at 14-0, taking first at both. The next week, I went 6-1, losing a close game in top 4. For the first 4 events, despite my success, I was able to find favorable fields for DialgaChomp to win in. Unfortunately, people began to either play DialgaChomp or play decks that were intended to beat it. I was able to survive past that change for awhile, but eventually wound up switching over to Cursegar for the last few weeks of the Cities season.
Now, at States, I used Jumpluff. I wound up taking 2nd at Indiana States, losing in mirror match to Dustin Zimmerman’s Jumpluff. The next week, decks were prepared for Jumpluff, but a number of players used Jumpluff themselves. The metagame evolved very quickly. Going into Regionals, the effect was also equally apparent. I wound up 5-0 dropping my 2nd States in an attempt to get my rating invite. I ended up 2-0 dropping Regionals, which I wound up opting to play at the last moment due to the deck testing so well.
There were too many decks that were built to try and beat Jumpluff, and an unbelievable number of other Jumpluff decks being played. In retrospect, I look at my choice to use Jumpluff for that event as a “failure” in metagame foresight despite the fact that I was in a favorable position and could drop with a positive impact. Without intending to play in the event, I had simply continued to play the same deck from before, and didn’t try and “stay ahead of the metagame”. If I was in a position where I needed to go deep into Regionals to secure my Worlds invite, I would have been very upset at myself.
Not only are net-decks outdated, they are also used as “stock lists”. Most testing teams are not able to personally test every single deck in the format. A team of 4 to 5 players will not have every single deck worked out inside and out. Heading into events, it is common practice to build a “gauntlet”. In other words, the team maps out every deck they expect to be popular or played, and builds a list for it. They then will test the deck(s) they expect to play for that event against those decks. The common trend is to use lists that won previous events as the lists to test against.
So, if you are using a net-list from a prior event, odds are players have playtested against that exact list. And, odds are, if you are using the deck they are, they like their odds against it. It has been addressed in previous articles: the importance of trying to know what is in your opponent’s deck, and how that impacts your plays.
The Rogue
I’ll use the same example I have been using for a while now of when I played my SP build versus a Machamp at my first Battle Roads this year. I was getting slaughtered and made a gambling play of trying to “Tail Code” all of his Machamp’s F Energy away, due to the fact he was running so many types. My speculation paid off and I managed to steal the game. The next round, he gets paired against a second DialgaChomp deck, and that player had seen what I did in the previous round. He simply abused Tail Code again and won the same way.
I had to guess that he ran only 2 F Energy. If that deck had won a previous event, and people knew the list, there would be no guessing. I’d have known right off the bat to just take that approach and would have comfortably won that game instead of switching tactics at the very last minute.
This is one of the reasons why rogue decks are so successful: Most players are bad. Argue this all you want, it is true. Players wind up playing above their ability because of repetition. They are able to take their deck, and test it against the other decks enough times that they are able to learn matchups against their deck and be able to succeed. The second you add variables they are not used to being exposed to, they play far worse.
The Delta deck that won 2006 Nationals went 14-0 and swept the event. Most players simply did not know how to approach it, and, as a result, they lost. Even good players, such as Tom Dolezal, who lost to the deck in top 4, were unaware of the exact contents of the list, and, as a result, were unsure of how to approach the matchup. Tom, using Rock Lock, had assumed the deck had to run ATM Rock, due to the incredible synergy it would have with the decks game plan, and played around it both games. The deck did not run any. Had Tom known it did not run the card, he would have comfortably won that match. The less information players have about your deck, the more likely it is that they will not play optimally.
Delta, after being tested heavily after Nationals, wound up to not be nearly as good as it performed at Nationals once players became familiar with it, or tweaked their lists slightly against it. The difference in it being an “unknown” and being exposed was huge! While this effect isn’t as profound on all net-lists, it does hurt them. I never want my opponents to know all of the tricks I have up my sleeve. Keeping them guessing is such a huge edge. The unknowns are a majority of the outlets a strong player has in being able to outplay an opponent.
That brings me to my next major point: You want to have as many options as possible. This makes it harder for your opponent to be able to “know” what you are able to do the next turn. Very linear decks are very easy to predict, and thus play around. A deck such as Banette ex from years ago was very fast, but very straight-forward. It didn’t have a great number of tricks, and was very hard to pilot around opponents. Either it was fast enough to win or it fell short. A deck such as LBS, or the new SP decks, is far more more equipped at having a varied game plan. This is something I want access to in my decks.
If you look throughout the years at the decks I’d used for the majority of each season, you’ll notice a major trend.
2004: Blaziken
2005: Rock Lock
2006: LBS
2007: Metanite
2008: Gallade/Gardevoir
All of these decks were the more reactive decks in the format with the most amount of power. Since they were less focused on speed (because they could afford to fall back on being able to overpower an opponent), they were able to fit more “tech” options because they did not need to overload on extra consistency to make sure they came out of the gates as fast as possible. The way the decks played allowed you to fit in “answers” to decks that were strong against you.
A deck like Medicham ex or Muk ex, while fast and disruptive and clearly fantastic, could not really do to much to “answer” problems because of how lateral the decks game plan was. While those decks were clearly tier 1, I felt the way they played offered an initial handicap in that the decklists really couldn’t evolve all that much with the format. For example, Medicham really did not have much it could do to answer Scizor ex. It had little it could do to answer Nidoqueen or Dark Steelix either. Other decks would be able to tech solutions to them, or at least add cards which improve those matchups.
My “crowning achievement” of this “teching” would be my LBS list that I used headed into Worlds 2006. I ran 24 single copies, and absolutely no “four ofs”.
Here is the list I used:
|
Pokémon – 24 2 Jirachi HL |
Trainers – 29 3 Holon Transceiver
2 Professor Elm’s Training Method 2 Rocket’s Admin.
3 Rare Candy
|
Energy – 7 7 W |
Now, you could make the argument that the list, with all of those singles, would have to be unfocused and inconsistent. That wasn’t close to the case. The deck simply had access to more diverse solutions to different problems. It made the deck very hard to reliably play around.
The Toolbox
The key to this approach in building stems from the flexibility of the draw power in the Pokémon TCG. That isn’t to say that you don’t want your deck to be consistent. You clearly need your deck to be able to perform its primary function reliably and in a timely fashion. What I am more trying to stress is that within your engine, whose primary purpose is to get your deck running smoothly and set up, it also inherently gives you access to a “toolbox”.
pokemon-paradijs.comI’m sure most of you have heard the term toolbox thrown around. A “toolbox” was a term first introduced in Magic the Gathering slang, but readily applies to Pokémon and most other Trading Card Games. A deck’s “Toolbox” consists of cards that are run for very specific instances or matchups. They are almost always going to be singular copies, and often are not that strong in most scenarios, but gain impressive amounts of strength at key moments, which is why they make decklists.
A good example of a card like this, from formats ago, would be Crystal Shard. It would be run to help deal with Colorless-weak Pokémon, such as Rayquaza ex. In a majority of games, it would wind up being nearly worthless, but, in key matchups such as Blaziken mirror matches back in 2004, the use of the card would end up almost always winning you the game.
I’ll use another example of an innovation I made in my LBS deck in 2006 after my first week of Regionals:
Now, to embarass myself slightly, I had gone to Great Lakes Regionals in Indiana and went 6-2 in Swiss to make top 16. Of course, I had registered a 58 card decklist, forgetting to list the 1-1 Steelix ex line that I was running. As a result, I went into my top 16 game with 2 extra W Energy, no Steelix, and a game loss for my first match.
I get paired against Dark Slowking, which was a fast, aggressive deck aimed to take quick prizes before I could get set up entirely. Steelix was a key weapon in the matchup, and, without it, I was a notable underdog. I end up losing my “second game” after managing to keep it a bit closer than I probably should have. Headed into Mississippi Valley Regionals in St. Louis, I had made some changes and, most notably, a very unusual addition.
I added a Misdreavus from Legend Maker. It had 50 Hit Points and an attack that, for a C energy, would put the defending Pokémon to sleep. It returned an energy attached to itself to my hand and also required the defending Pokémon to make two flips in order to wake up.
The biggest “threat” to LBS at that point in time was the Mewtric deck, which had taken the format by storm. Jason Klaczinski would later go on to win Worlds with that very deck. The idea behind the deck was that it would use “Disconnect” to prevent the other player from playing Trainers while locking key Stadiums into play. The deck was extremely disruptive, and had a good game against LBS. The problem? The deck, at that point, ran no ways of removing status conditions. It also had no way of increasing Disconnect’s damage output beyond 40.
It would end up using Disconnect for a vast majority of the game, hindering LBS’s set up drastically while also harassing it with Rocket’s Admin., POW! Hand Extensions, and Energy Removal 2. If the LBS player was able to reliably break the Disconnect Lock, even for a turn, and gain access to Trainer cards, it would set up and be able to overwhelm the Mewtric player.
So, I included a single Misdreavus into my list. They would Disconnect and I would simply put it to sleep, requiring them to make their 25% chance of waking up in order to keep me locked out of Trainers. The best part was, if they wanted to maintain the Disconnect Lock, they would also have to do it twice, as Misdreavus’s 50 Hit Points kept it narrowly out of range for being KO’d. So Misdreavus gave them an effective 12.5% chance of being able to maintain their crucial Disconnect. (By Nationals, Mewtric lists had proceeded to add switching cards to their lists.)
I wound up paired against a Mewtric list in top 8-of that Regionals, which I beat as a result of Misdreavus, and I played against Jason Klaczinski’s Mewtric deck in the finals, which I also beat as a result of the Misdreavus. The card was also useful against other “problem decks” such as the Slowking deck, which relied on applying early pressure, by slowing them down with the status condition to allow me time to set up my field. It was all right against decks such as Lunatone/Solrock as well. The card itself isn’t actually very good. It did, on the other hand, have a very specific purpose that helped to overcome my deck’s weaknesses against its few “tougher matchups”.
Tools of the Toolbox
Misdreavus would be considered a “tool” in the “toolbox”. In my LBS list I put in this article previously, the other “toolbox” cards would be the Latias and Latios δ and the two Space Center. The Latias and Latios were used to turn off troublesome Poké-Bodies, such as that of the “Lonesome” Houndoom and Wobbuffet. Houndoom was being played in a deck that spiked in popularity in the Grinder before Worlds (Banette/Medicham/Houndoom) and Wobbuffet was a huge threat in the Mewlock deck that placed at least one player into the top 32 that year. Space Center was used to turn off the Bodies of Lunatone and Solrock, while also providing a counter-Stadium for the deck.
pokemon-paradijs.comNow, a “Toolbox” requires two things to work. One is the obvious tools. The other is the means of reliably getting to them. Decks have almost always had a means of searching out specific cards. In Base Set, we had Computer Search and Pokémon Trader. We eventually got cards such as Pokémon Fan Club, Oracle, Lanette’s Net Search, Holon Mentor, Professor Elm’s Training Method, Celio’s Network, Roseanne’s Research, Bebe’s Search, Pokémon Collector, Pokémon Communication, etc. In the above deck, we had access to the entire Holon engine plus Pidgeot, which enabled you to search out any card of your choice each turn with Quick Search.
Pokémon decks have always had the ability to almost redundantly manipulate themselves. A “Toolbox” simply means that you run a couple of cards that you can reliably search up at specific instances. A great example of this, and a more current one (as I fear my example from 2006 may have lost some players who did not play during that time), would be the SP decks we currently have.
Decks run 1 Crobat G, 1 Ambipom G, 1 Bronzong G, 1 Azelf, 1 Dragonite FB (sometimes), 1 Lucario GL (sometimes), etc. They run a ridiculously spread out list, because the Trainers exist to allow them to grab crucial Pokémon whenever they want to. With the inclusion of Azelf from Legends Awakened, the issue of cards being prized is negated too. Alright, not negated, but it certainly makes the threat reduced.
As a result, you can run less copies of cards and more different cards that serve specific purposes. As I addressed earlier, more options is better as it gives you more angles to approach a game from. Plus, players have to play around all of your potential plays, which you have more of. It puts more pressure on your opponent’s skill and knowledge of your deck because they have to incorporate more card choices into their equations when looking for the correct play. A lot of times it forces them to make decisions based on speculation of what you may or may not have.
These are the types of things that cause players to lose games they should have otherwise won. The more straight forward and traditional a game is, the more able a player is to simply rely on past experience to play, and that allows them to make less mistakes. The key is to take your opponent out of their comfort zone.
Now, there are downsides to running “tools” in a deck. These cards take up one of your 60 card slots, and they are drawn in scenarios when they are generally less useful. To deny that they can make a deck slower or clunkier would be naive. They generally are less useful in decks that rely on having an extremely fast set up. Decks such as Medicham ex, Muk ex, Banette ex, and, more recently, Kingdra, Jumpluff, and Machamp decks are less able to run “clunkier” cards because they really need to make sure they come online as quickly as possible.
If your deck’s main game plan is to be extremely aggressive or extremely disruptive, those game plans take precidence to options a majority of the time. The engines used in those decks are less receptive to toolboxes. They are less forgiving to a slower start. Decks that really pick up steam and gain strength in the mid and late games are better equiped to wield such options.
The Inevitability
This brings me to another term that is thrown around regarding deck matchups. “Inevitability”. This deals somewhat with what I was touching on directly above, but will also help to improve your game if you take it into account more. When playing a matchup, the deck that is more likely to win the longer the game goes on is considered to have “inevitability”. A simple way to look at this would be to acknowledge that Charizard/Typhlosion has “inevitability” on LuxChomp. If Charizard gets to the late-game where it is fully set up, it has a much stronger game.
This is offset by the fact that LuxChomp is both faster and more disruptive. The LuxChomp player’s role is to win the game, or gain as much of an advantage as possible early before the Charizard deck sets up. The Charizard deck’s role is to stem the bleeding until it does get set up. It is fairly obvious that LuxChomp is the aggressor in that matchup. The less prizes the Charizard deck gives up while developing, the better position it is in. It pays to know where your deck’s strength lies in any given matchup. While such extreme examples such as the one above are obvious, it becomes a bit more blurry when you look at two generally fast and aggressive decks.
In most matchups last season, both Kingdra and Jumpluff were the faster decks, staring down their opposing decks’ “inevitability” and trying to outrace that. Yet, when they were paired against each other, they had to reevaluate which role they each played. The same would hold true with two slower, stronger decks. Knowing where your deck stands in matchups is important when evaluating decisions in-game.
This is also true when deciding on when you need to take risks. If I am playing Kingdra and playing against a bad matchup, and I have a potentially slower hand, I am more willing to try to overextend to get that aggressive start. If I’m in a matchup where I am favored the longer the game goes, I’m not going to potentially overcommit and lose a game if I can take it slower. This is even more relevant now with the existance of Uxie and “Set Up” where it is possible to “waste” an Uxie for 3 to 4 extra cards fishing for cards such as a Rare Candy or a Double Colorless Energy early. If you have to be the aggressive deck, the odds that that play is correct are much higher.
Anyway, decks that offer inevitability the longer the game goes are the decks that best benefit from running toolboxes. They can afford to set up a little bit slower, and make up the difference with its superior late game. Decks like Blaziken, LBS, Metanite, and the like were all very capable of running toolboxes effectively.
The Balance
The hardest part when adding tech cards like this falls on knowing when to maintain a solid balance. There will always be a point where you dilute a deck too much and it starts to fall apart. You need to make sure that, despite the options you add, the core of your deck is still sound. This means it needs to still reliably abuse its core focus, and also be consistent. There is a very big difference between a deck being “fast” and a deck being “consistent”.
Over the years, the biggest complaint people have thrown toward my decklists have been that they are “inconsistent”. That isn’t usually true. (Hey! Everyone is allowed to overtech a little now and then!) My lists would often forfeit their speed for their versatility and overall strength. Decks can afford to give on speed; they cannot give on consistency,
pokemon-paradijs.comNow, on the opposite end of the spectrum, it is also possible to run too many consistency cards and speed cards. These types of cards are nearly inverse. You really want as many cards that help you set up quickly in the early-game as you can get, but, in the late-game, the cards drop off in value drastically and often wind up as dead cards. Tech cards, on the other hand, clutter the hand early, but can single-handedly win games later on. You need to acknowledge how your deck flows.
If your deck is very complex and requires a lot of cards to really accomplish your game plan, you need to make sure that you run your deck’s “engine” accordingly. If your deck needs to set up on the first few turns to apply pressure to really maximize the value out of the deck, you also need to make sure to construct your engine around that. The problem with that is the cards you have to allocate toward accomplishing such goals wind up much weaker throughout the game.
A deck like Turbo Machamp will run cards such as Pokédex, Poké Drawer +, Unown R, and other cards that help it find its crucial four card combo (Machop, Rare Candy, Machamp, F Energy) on the first turn of the game as reliably as possible. Unfortunately, once you have a few Machamp in play, you have a hand full of draw Trainers, and very few options to get with them. Every slot in a deck is crucial. You can’t have too many options without any consistency or you lose games before you can stabilize and abuse your options. It doesn’t matter how fast your deck sets up if what your deck does once set up doesn’t have enough power and options.
Both approaches have their merits. One of the problems I feel that is inherent with decks that are forced into allocating more slots toward speedy starts is that they are not very adaptable. They cannot really tweak their game plan to adapt to decks that are trying to beat them. I’ll return to my LBS versus Mewtric example. As the more reactive deck, whose end game plan has far more raw power to it, I was able to run 1 card that single-handedly swayed a very bad matchup into my favor. All I had to do was use it to disrupt their game plan. It is far more difficult for a deck like Mewtric to add cards to retaliate to such “hate” because the deck requires itself to perform such a linear game plan.
Decks, such as Medicham ex and Muk ex, required their selective ex to stay active in order to lock down opposing Poké-Powers, so they really couldn’t rely on other Pokémon to attack without breaking their lock, which is their primary strength. The slower decks are often the ones which are best suited to add cards to react to how the metagame evolves throughout the year. You can do more with these types of decks to stay a step ahead than you can with decks which are unfortunately pigeon-holed into a rigid game plan and engine. I really feel that the stronger you are as a player, the more mileage you can get out of this.
This isn’t to say that the other approach is necessarily bad. It generally ends up giving you very consistent starts, so you lose less “illegitimate” games. It also allows you to “steal games” by being too aggressive versus slower starts. It doesn’t offer as much time for a weaker hand to try and get back into the game. At the same time, the slower starts of decks like that are almost guaranteed losses because a large portion of their strength stems from their intended early-game lead.
The Purposes
I’ve always preferred to be armed with the decks that give me the most number of options, and, in turn, the most ability to outplay my opponents. Now, I want to go and address the idea of having more “options” in a slightly more abstract manner. It is easy to see that application in cards that serve “silver bullet” functions. A Silver Bullet is a term applied to a card that is pretty much used to beat another specific card, or a deck. Misdreavus would fall under that category. The ability to diversify is not close to limited to running a pile of “Silver Bullets” in your holster, so to speak, though.
When building a deck, I go out of my way not to necessarily look at cards entirely as being an individual card. I prefer to categorize them into “purpose”. When I build a deck, I try to break down how many of each type of effect I want to have. For example, lets say I know I want to run 13 energy. I know I want to run 6 cards that allow me to get early Basic Pokémon, and 8 cards that let me get any Pokémon. So, I’ll run 3 Bebe’s Search, 1 Luxury Ball, and 4 Pokémon Communication to make up those 8. I could always cut a Pokémon Communication for a Bebe’s Search without drastically impacting the consistency of the deck. For example, if Gengar/Vileplume is a huge deck, and I feel that my matchup needs a little bit of help there, I make that chance in order to give me less unusable trainers, while still staying relatively the same in most other matchups.
pokemon-paradijs.comThat is what I wound up doing with my LBS list at Worlds. Due to the amount of Mewtric and Houndoom I was concerned about, I did something unorthodox: I cut the 4th Holon Transceiver for a 3rd Holon Mentor. A vast majority of times a player used a Transceiver, it was to get a Mentor. So I kept myself at 6 “Mentors” while increasing the number of Mentor I could play past trainer lock. I also cut the 2nd Pokémon Retriever for a Holon Farmer (also a Supporter for the same reason).
It allowed me to run less copies of Holon’s Castform/Holon’s Electrode and W Energy, since, over the course of a very long game, it would allow me to get more of them back, even if they had to go into the deck. In general, all of these cards serve the same purpose, just in slightly different ways. Because I could Quick Search for them, I wanted access to those slight variations in order to take full advantage of those differences.
Referencing the list again, I went with a Celio’s Network and 2 Professor Elm’s Training Method. I also went with 2 Holon’s Castform, and a Holon’s Electrode. Both of the Supporters would primarily be used to get Pidgeot, but beyond that, they served slightly different purposes. Celio’s Network could get a Castform, or a Jirachi, or any of the Basics I needed. Professor Elm’s Training Method could get an ex, such as Blastoise, or Steelix, which was important since I often didn’t have access to Quick Search due to Battle Frontier, or Lunatone/Solrock. Holon’s Castform was generally superior to Electrode or Magneton, but because of the two Training Method, I included one of them because it was an evolution that I could use to grab.
So, while both Celio’s Network and Professor Elm’s Training Method were interchangable toward their primary purpose of getting a Pidgeot (the Basics would usually be handled by a Mentor), they varied in their secondary uses, and I tweaked the two Holon Pokémon counts accordingly. Both served the same primary purpose of providing two colored energy for attacks, but beyond that they interacted slightly differently with the other cards in my deck. Slight alterations to card counts like that can really increase your decks versitility.
The other “split” I made in the deck was with my Jirachi. I went with 2 of the HL Jirachi and one of the DX Jirachi. Both were fantastic cards to open with, and I generally would go out of my way to make sure one of them became my active on the first turn unless my start was that strong. While I wanted to open with one at the start of the game, the format was slower than it is now, so my main goal was to make sure I had a Jirachi active on my first turn, even if I had to get it. Again, it is a deck that, once set up, had the most power of any deck in the format.
Therefore, I looked at my math this way. I had 2 HL Jirachi, 1 Celio’s Network, 3 Holon Mentor, and 3 Holon Transceiver, plus a Swoop Teleporter. That meant I had 10 “copies” of HL Jirachi I could have on the first turn. (Getting first turn killed is not the same issue it is now.) That means I have 9 options for a DX Jirachi, and 11 total cards that could be an “ideal opener”.
The Review
When looking at a Pokémon decklist, you can’t look at card counts purely in a vacuum. You have to look at the total number of cards you have that can get you access to the card in a timely manner. In the list provided, I run a variety of Supporters. I have 2 Rocket’s Admin., 1 Steven’s Advice, a Holon Scientist, and a Holon Adventurer, besides the traditional “search” Supporters I addressed previously. All of them give me cards, and all of them do it differently. Therefore, if my hand is really bad, I have 5 draw cards that should help me get something.
When I have Pidgeot up and Quick Searching, on the other hand, I have 4 different types of Supporters I can turn to based on the situation. The Holon Adventurer, and Holon Scientist are both weaker cards than either Rocket’s Admin. or Steven’s Advice by a decent margin, but that was negated by the fact that each of them effectively “cheated” in that they got to piggyback off of Holon Transceiver, which I was already running. So I effectively ran 3 extra draw cards in the form of my Holon Transceivers. It is important to try and milk every single deck slot for as much as you can.
A great example of this can be found in the current format. Lets say that a deck wants to make sure it has 3 copies of cards that switch their Pokémon, due to high Retreat Costs or some more specific reason like wanting to abuse Seeker. If you know that you want a certain number of energy cards in your deck, such as 13, and the deck isn’t that energy intensive, you can get two “uses” out of that slot. You can cover your energy count, and also get a switching effect by using a Warp Energy.
It may not be as ideal as a Switch or a Warp Point, since it takes up your energy attachment for the turn, but it also is effectively a “free” inclusion, as the difference between a 7th and an 8th P Energy in a Gengar deck, for example, is negligible. So you could run 2 Warp Point and a Warp Energy, and safely cover your desired 13 energy and 3 switching cards. Call Energy works the same way, to a degree, by giving you additional consistency/Basic searching. Those too can be disguised in the energy count. Little tricks like that let you augment your counts of vital deck role performers without really taking up as much space. These little condensing tricks really add up in the long run.
pokemon-paradijs.comCards like Holon Transceiver are always great because they are transitional role players. They can adapt to whatever need you have. Cyrus’s Conspiracy mimics this to a degree in that it lets you grab another Supporter of your choice (letting you be pretty reactive to your game state) but also grabs you either a Poké Turn, Power Spray, SP Radar, or Energy Gain. It effectively gives you up to 8 copies of Poké Turn, Power Spray, SP Radar, or Energy Gain if you need to draw into one of them. (It isn’t as literal, due to the fact it takes up your Supporter for the turn, but if you are hunting an Energy Gain off of a Set Up early on, it does offer you 8 draws into it.)
More similarly are VS Seeker and Junk Arm though. Midway through the game, these cards give you an additional copy of a tremendous number of different cards in your deck. If you are running both of them, each Junk Arm can become an additional VS Seeker, which gives you access to more Supporters. Interestingly enough, you could take your SP deck and instead of running 4 Poké Turn, 4 Power Spray, and 4 Energy Gain, you could run 3 PokéTurn, 3 Power Spray, 3 Energy Gain, and 3 Junk Arm. At the cost of running one less copy toward drawing into one early game, those additional 3 Junk Arm are flexible in being 3 copies of which ever of those you want.
In certain games, you want more Power Spray, and in others more Poké Turn. Now, it lets you be reactive midgame. That is the same sort of logic I used in my LBS list with VS Seeker, where it was a 3rd Rocket’s Admin., 2nd Steven’s Advice, etc. When the different Supporters serve different roles, the one VS Seeker can cheat and add a 2nd copy of either, which is, again, saving space.
One of the things I want to address that is really important in this current format is your energy count. I think that last year with both Claydol and Roseanne’s Research that players were able to greatly reduce the number of specific energy cards they ran. Now, the only deck with cards that search for energy would be SP decks with Cyrus’s Conspiracy. Decks like Kingdra/Machamp were able to get away with running 4 Multi Energy, 2 W Energy, and 1 F Energy because they had a 3-3 Claydol line and 4 Roseanne’s Research.
Now, I’m stuck running 12 energy and still facing issues just trying to replicate the same consistency. SP decks still suffer from the loss of Roseanne’s even though they have Cyrus still. Other decks face the same problem, and I still see players not quite running enough energy. I’ve added 2-3 additional energy to most lists since last format, and still have some challenges. Energy Exchanger helps, but really takes up space and has to come in addition to a higher raw energy count.
It does allow you to cheat, and run smaller counts of cards like Call Energy and Warp Energy, and now Rescue Energy, while still getting them. The card is really only practiced in SP decks at the moment because getting access to additional Double Colorless Energy draws is so powerful that it warrants the use of those card slots. Those are also decks with multiple energy types. They also benefit from solo copies of Rescue Energy and Warp Energy.
The Ultimate Goal
I guess that brings me to the major point I want to try to make. Your ultimate goal should be to have the most number of options for the least number of card slots in your deck. In order to really know how to tweak the counts in your deck, you really need to know your deck inside and out. This is why it is very rewarding to playtest pretty heavily. At a certain point, you know how your deck plays so well that you can reliably make changes to it purely based on theory without having to do much additional testing.
This is generally an awful idea, and will backfire more often than not when done with most decks. If you have a lot of experience with a deck and sound deck building theory, as well as matchup knowledge, it is more than capable of being done. By the time I had reached Worlds with LBS, I knew the deck like the palm of my hand and could reliably alter the deck and know how it would impact all of its matchups.
One of the things that is important to know is that the more card variety you have, the more you have to know your deck. You are going to have to be a bit more flexible and able to run with what your deck hands you at the start. You need to know how to adapt your game plan to your options, and you really need to know in advance what you have prized or not. I’ve seen a number of players borrow my deck and lose games because of bad prizes or “awkward hands” that really are not that bad or awkward. You need more foresight and planning. In my LBS list, if I had a Steelix prized, there are still plenty of other attacking options that you can form a game plan around. If you only know how to approach a matchup from one angle, it could be crippling, but a strong player can adapt.
Another good example of this would be with my preference to a 3-1 Garchomp C LV.X line opposed to the popular 2-2 line. I’ve heard a number of people complain that if it is prized in a mirror match that you are in trouble. Your SP deck is not entirely crippled without the Garchomp C LV.X. Your opponent also does not have to know it is stuck in your prizes. You can free up plenty of Prize cards without it, and hopefully get it. That is all assuming that you are unable to force an Azelf through.
You can bait out Power Sprays with other plays, such as tricking them with Bronzong, Crobat, or Uxie plays that look more important. If your opponent is aware that you have major prize issues, it is far harder to play without your key piece. Don’t play an SP Radar and go “Are you kidding me?” when you see Garchomp is not there. Just make your game plan appear natural, and it greatly increases the odds that Azelf might make it though. In playtesting, I’ve seen a lot of games where a key Pokémon is prized and the opponent had no idea it was until after the game. You know what you have in your prizes, don’t play to let your opponent know too.
Conclusion
pokemon-paradijs.comTo tie everything together, I feel that being a nearly-flawless player isn’t good enough to get you to perform at your very best. Playing the game is only half of the battle. If everyone’s deck was static, then the best in-game tactician would be the most favored to win any given event. Fortunately, the game is very fluid, and preparation, second guessing, and the ability to quickly adapt to ever-evolving metagames can give any player a huge edge.
It has always been a fun little game I’ve played with other players where we look back at any given event, and ask ourselves what the best deck for that tournament would have been. Sometimes it was what won it, and other times it was simply a deck that would have had a great edge versus a majority of that field. Usually we narrow it down to one or two decks. You don’t have to be the player looking back with perfect hindsight. You should strive to know the best deck for that event before that event. Or, at the very least, you should try to have some sort of read as to what will be popular and adjust your deck choice and decklist accordingly.
Often, a bad player with a good deck choice will consistently go farther in a big tournament than a great player with a bad deck choice. You should strive to be the great player with the great deck choice at all tournaments. By improving your deck building skills, and thus making sure you are able to adjust your own list is crucial, you are improving your overall ability to succeed at tournaments. Hopefully, some of these theories will help to open your eyes to some of the deeper aspects of careful deck construction.
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