Hey everybody, and welcome to the next installment of Battle of Wittz! Last article had me hyping up the insanely fun Pokémon TCGO program, but I’m planning on using today to get right back to business and cover my testing for this year’s first tournament series. Can you believe the first tournaments of the new series begin in less than a week? I know I sure can’t!
Battle Roads — What’s new?
So, what do we know about Battle Roads this year? Unfortunately, not nearly as much as we should. At the time of writing this article, it’s just 4-5 days until the first Battle Roads events start. We know the time, date, and place of most events (I highly recommend going to fellow member LosJackal’s website if you live in North America to find events near you).
We also know the prize support, to some extent. 4 Packs for 1st and 2nd, 2 packs for 3rd and 4th, and 1st-3rd will be getting the elusive Victory Cup promo card. This is a new, English-Exclusive card, and we have no idea what it does! That being said, I haven’t heard any tournament organizers saying they have the cards in hand yet, so I hope those shipments make their way out soon.
But, unfortunately, we DON’T know what we’re playing for in the long run. We don’t know how tournaments are going to effect our rating this year. We don’t even know how the system is going to work this year at all!
By all means, this is not an event to sweat over, and not likely to be an event where you end up with more than you spent to get there. However, we’re coming dangerously close to the events without knowing their true worth in the long run, and that is frustrating.
While I would like to get my hopes up and say that Pokémon has formed some kind of new, fair system for earning points that both encourages play and prevents the urge to drop events, that prospect is looking unlikely.
Looking at the current rankings thread we already see that players from France, Austria, and Germany already have some points earned over our traditional 1600 +/- point system from a Battle Roads-type event that was ran BEFORE worlds that was supposed to count for the next season. Oh no!
The problem with our current system, if you are a new player or if you just aren’t aware, is that each game is played on a system that does not account for luck. It assumes that a higher ranked player will DOMINATE a lower ranked one most of the time.
However, because we play a luck-based game, this just isn’t true, and it damages results. Because the system subtracts points (a good amount!) for every loss, some players (myself included) are encouraged to sit out of events once your rating reaches a certain level to prevent you from dropping out of the cutoff for Worlds this year.
Being the optimistic person that I am, here is my hope:
1) Pokémon is running the traditional 1600+/- system, but has modified it in some way to take luck into account (perhaps by decreasing the factor of how much you win/lose in points based on rating).
2) Pokémon is taking so long to let us know what we’re playing for because they are frantically at work releasing some kind of new ratings system, and the German event that has already been completed will be re-added to this new system.
Granted, this is just wishful thinking, but I sure wouldn’t mind the change. If there was a change to the system, I’d personally forgive Pokémon for any problems that they had taking so long to let us know what’s up.
That being said, I do wish that we as players had better communication with the company, and I do hope that ties increase over time. Pokémon has unfortunately not been known for their timeliness on a multitude of issues in the past few years, and this doesn’t do much to change that.
A few days ago, one of Pokémon’s biggest employees sent me a message saying that they wished to talk with me. I have no idea what they want to talk about, but I can’t help but be excited that it’s some kind of new big news. Even if it isn’t, it at least leaves the potential for me to open up a dialogue about increasing player to company conversation and awareness. More wishful thinking, but I can’t help but cross my fingers for a great season of Pokémon, and I’m hoping for the best.
Anyways, that’s enough of my personal opinion and my report on the current state of the game. Let’s talk about the event itself!
What to Expect
On a whole, as I’ve hinted at earlier, Battle Roads have not been considered heavy competitive events for some time. Since they’ve changed their weighted value to just ¼ of a City Championship (and docked the prize support too), they rarely leave an impact on a players’ ranking at the end of the year: to put things into perspective, I went to a single Battle Road last year in the Fall, and zero in the Spring because I didn’t agree with the new Japanese rules + an MD-On format.
Winning the Battle Road raised my rating an impressive 8 points—the equivalency of winning a single game at a City Championship. Granted, if you were REALLY devoted I’m sure you could pocket some kind of small ratings boost if you went to enough Battle Roads, but let’s be realistic here. We’ve all got busy lives (school, work, etc), and Battle roads are just not economical.
They are, however, a great way to make your forage into competitive Pokémon events. Because the stakes are so low, players are much more focused on getting a feel for the competitive atmosphere, meeting friends, and testing out deck interactions. Even if you do terribly at battle roads (or even if you do great), it’ll unlikely sway your rating enough to make a big impact.
That being said, there’s no reason you shouldn’t go out to win if you’re making the trip out to a tournament, and I’m set out to help you guys with the decklists I’ve been working with. Because our own Chris Fulop already covered an enormous count of decks in his last article, I decided that I’d try and cover the decks that he didn’t cover or went into less detail with.
Lucky for me, my three favorite decks right now are all ones he didn’t hit too hard, and I hope that one of the three can lead you toward earning that elusive Victory Cup.
My three favorite decks right now are
