Hello again everyone. After a lovely month off (I wasn’t scheduled for January… contact your local representative/Adam Capriola to prevent this from happening again) I’m back and chock full of deck ideas, thoughts on the newest set, and what I think will be the best play headed into the flurry of State Championships starting up at the beginning of March. The new set introduces quite a few new, powerful cards, a number of which can spawn potential new archetypes.
Using What We Learn from Cities
Before we get into that, we should recap the big decks which emerged from the City Championships, so we have an established metagame by which we can approach incorporating the new set into. This is always important when looking for ways to use new cards. It allows us to make the easy “upgrades” to established decks, simply by updating them. That is the easy part.
Once you do that, it’s time to make an estimate as to which of those decks stand out as the most powerful, and judge which decks lose the most ground. Based purely on updating lists, most of the decks don’t really lose a whole ton of ground, or gain much, usually. Sometimes you’ll get a card that really just breaks an archetype wide open, but this is fairly rare.
Once you make the “obvious” changes, you can jam a few games, get a feel for the updated interactions, and then, build the “obvious” new decks. Pokemon is not a very subtle game when it comes to card design. In general, cards that will have decks or strategies built around them are easy to spot. 90% of most Pokemon sets are entirely useless cards, and the strongest ones are so far and away better than the others that it’s easy to zero in on them.
Most cards aren’t too hard to build around (Emboar BLW 20, for example, was pretty self-explanatory) so throw a list or two together for those stronger cards. Then, try and make a good educated guess as to whether the composition of the best old decks, alongside the newcomers, leave any holes in the format that otherwise previously Tier 2 or weaker decks may be able to capitalize on.
The Three Types of Decks
Generally, a new format is made up of the three types of decks I addressed above. You have the “port overs”: previously successful decks that either stay strong, or get stronger as a result of obvious new additions. Next, you have the new set all stars: cards that just came out, but are obviously going to be used in a big deck. Every set has the new hyped cards, and the hype exists for a reason. They are strong enough to build around, and generally are so hyped because, hypothetically at least, they should be well positioned to compete against the “old format’s” archetypes.
For reference, I know a lot of people like to say that a format really “changes” when sets rotate each year… like, we currently have the 2011-2012 format… but really, for practicality’s sake, a format really changes every time the card pool changes. Technically every time we get as much as a new promo card, but really, the big changes stem from new set releases because they introduce a large card pool, including at least a substantial number of powerful cards.
The 3rd type of deck are the “metagame decks.” These are easily the hardest types of decks to build, and even for experienced deck builders and strong players, it is difficult, if not even unwise, to attempt right out of the gate. These are decks that are able to capitalize on the resultant metagame supplied by the first two pools of decks.
Therefore, in general, you have to do enough testing to flesh out the first two sets of decks before you can begin to work on new options which capitalize on them. These decks are very reactive in nature. As a result, you really need to know what you’re reacting to before you can reliably come up with a plan.
Why You Shouldn’t Play the “Best” Deck
Even if you go as far as to spend weeks testing the new format, and coming up with what you feel are the best decks, and can come up with your personal brew that you feel is well positioned against the decks you find to be the best, it is still a bit unsafe to try and pilot that deck. You can’t expect what you find to be the BEST decks to be what everyone else finds… even if, at the end of the day, your findings are generally correct.
The first weekend of States, I expect to find a lot of subpar decks, and a very confused metagame. You’ll find a lot of deck selection choices which, by the end of the 3rd weekend, would seem like silly choices.
This brings up the issue of playtesting “inbreeding,” which is a very difficult fallacy to escape from. If you test with good players, you end up coming up with very good decks fairly quickly, and at a certain point, you begin “upgrading” them to beat your other best decks, to the point where your own testing metagame actually accelerates above and beyond what you’ll actually see out of other players. While on one hand, this makes it so that your decks are likely better tested and more streamlined then other players, it can also leave you a bit more vulnerable.
You end up hedging your bets, and making deck construction compromises to skew your deck towards beating decks and strategies that many players may not even end up playing. You really need to be playing one level above your opponent. I know this type of theory is huge in poker, where what strategies work best against a strong, knowledgable opponent aren’t the best ones to use against weaker opponents who play differently. It is a bit more difficult to apply in a TCG though.
In poker, you have to identify what level your opponents play at, and just adjust your play accordingly. Every hand is played with the same 52 card card pool. In Pokemon, though, you have to preemptively build your card pool before an event, being prepared to face all levels of players. You can’t simply switch gears from opponent to opponent because you have your pre-set tools to work with for the whole tournament.
Case and Point
I’ll use an example from the 2008 format. With the release of Secret Wonders, the big decks all seemed to revolve around Blissey MT. It was paired with Electivire DP, Lucario DP, or even just on its own. There were a number of other decks, but the metagame revolved around Blissey, and decks that beat Blissey. Now, as we all know, the “deck to beat” for that format wound up being Gardevoir SW/Gallade SW.
Yet for the first almost month of Cities, the first wave of events with SW legal, very few people played GG. The events were still dominated by Blissey-centric decks. (I was the first player in Ohio to use GG, and went undefeated in 2 straight Cities before people started to catch on and use it as well.)
Now, assume you did heavy testing in this format, and QUICKLY identified GG as the best deck. You have 3 more weeks worth of testing to do, and you and your team jam another hundred-plus hours of games, and find the decks which beat GG.
You update your GG decks for mirror match, and even build a really strong Banette SW deck which throws up a 65%+ win rate against your best GG builds, which is huge since GG was literally destroying all the Blissey decks, which you then ruled out as a viable choice. So the first week of Cities rolls around, and you sign up with the Banette deck which just steamrolled your entire gauntlet of viable decks, all based around your new found, advanced GG metagame.
And if this happened and you rolled into the first week of Cities, you then get crushed by all the Blissey decks, and play vs no GG at all. Your findings weren’t WRONG… GG WAS the best deck, and it DID wipe out all of the Blissey decks. Banette WOULD turn out to be a perfectly viable counter to GG. All of your findings were very accurate. You were just too far ahead of the actual metagame.
Something to Think About
Now, this is clearly an extreme example, and more often than not, the gaps are not this wide. Yet it is clearly something you need to consider when deciding on deck choices. You need to plan for the metagame you expect WILL show up, not the metagame you feel SHOULD show up. It’s a tough guess to make with unknown formats. By the time you have an established metagame by weeks 2 and 3 of States, deck choices become more clearly, but that first week is always a bit of a gamble.
This is why playing reactive, metagaming deck choices can be too risky to be advised for the first week. For a wide open format, you often want to play a straight-forward, powerful deck. Play something that will just overpower weaker deck choices; play the “best deck.” In 2004 this was Blaziken. In 2005, this was Rock Lock. In 2006, this was LBS. In 2007, this was Metanite, in 2008 this was Gardevoir/Gallade, and so on. These are the decks with the most powerful, pro-active game plans. They started off the formats as being the best decks, and eventually, they get kept in check as players build decks with beating them in mind.
This didn’t make the choices bad, but it kept them from being head and shoulders above the rest of the field. For the first week of States, you want to be the guy playing the streamlined, fine tuned “best deck.” As the metagame evolves, there are plenty of reasons to shift away from those decks as people prepare for them, and build around them, but in a wide open field, full of players who are unsure of what to play (this includes even the best players… no one is THAT confident going into their first tourney of a new format) you want to be playing the deck that has the most degenerate, game breaking Plan A possible.
Cities Recap
Now, let’s take a step back a bit, and review the outcomes from Cities. Before we can make an educated dive into the new format, we need to see what port over decks we have to work with. Here is a list of all of the decks which saw substantial play through Cities. Certain ones wound up being better, or at the very least, more played, by the end of the season, but it’s important none the less to at last acknowledge those that fell out of favor, to escape the whole theory of inbreeding.
Sometimes, the decks left behind are still strong concepts that got “hated out” of the format by how the metagame progressed, and if those changes are no longer as prevalent in your new metagame due to a focus on new threats, those decks may find themselves a field where they are once again viable. When decks are condemned back to a Tier 2, or Tier 3 status, you should take note of what conditions and factors are PREVENTING them from rising higher because sometimes the metagame will shift and those issues wind up being non-factors.
“Bad decks” can certainly become good again with very minimal changes to the metagame’s deck pool, so even if you write off a deck, go back and revisit it, at least in theory, and reconsider from time to time.
- ZPS
- Reshiphlosion/TyRam
- Six Corners
- Vanilluxe Vileplume (VVV)
- EelZone/MagEel/Thunderdome
- Durant
- Zekrom Eels
- Gothitelle
- The Truth
- Electrode Prime variants
- Chandelure
- Typhlosion Magnezone
- Magneboar
- Emboar Reshiram
- Stage 1s
Alright, this should cover pretty much all of the decks which saw play during Cities, even the ones that quickly became obsolete. I’ll first “write off” the ones which made little impact during the season…
- Gothitelle
- Magneboar
- Emboar Reshiram
- Stage 1s
Let’s figure out why!
Decks You Can Write Off
Gothitelle
Gothitelle NVI saw a number of problems rise up with the release of Noble Victories. First off, it had a fairly hard time dealing with Durant NVI, a deck that wound up becoming the surprise MVP of the middle of the Cities season. Durant, with Resistance, and Metal Energy, and Eviolite, required Gothitelle to attach an absurd number of energy to actually score KOs against a Durant, and by the time it did, the amount of cards milled was huge.
Gothitelle builds also relied pretty heavily on cards like Twins, which Durant cut off, so their slower setups often became even further nerfed. Reuniclus BLW, and all associated cards became blanks as Durant circumvented them altogether with the alternative win condition it strived for.
In addition to Durant issues, Gothitelle didn’t like Cobalian NVI. This Pokemon was very hard for it to kill, and could “lock” Gothitelle down, forcing it to retreat and burn off precious energy attachments. Plus, if Gothitelle did get enough energy in play, it fell victim to Cobalion’s first attack.
The fact that a number of Durant builds splashed this guy, and the inclusion of it in decks like The Truth and even some Chandelure NVI builds made it such an overarching presence that even if Gothitelle was able to incorporate some counter measures, it made so Gothitelle would end up struggling to stay viable, opposed to a deck that was beaming with reasons as to why to play it.
Electrode Prime decks also became a very big issue for Gothitelle because they used Cobalion and also Kyurem, which could lock them out of Reuniclus altogether. With Kyurem often swinging on the second turn due to the Twins disabling Electrode, you’d find yourself in a position where you couldn’t ever get Reuniclus out, and would just lose. Even when you did, the 30 spread attack would threaten a ton of damage, and your healing options could be overrun. Paired with the presence of Cobalion, it became very difficult to keep up with the deck.
You wound up on the receiving end of bad matchups against Trainer lock decks as well. The Truth would eventually orchestrate a setup where they could use Outrage on one of their dragons to OHKO Gothitelle. The inclusion of Cobalion made it worse. Vanilluxe NVI would Paralyze lock Gothitelle. Chandelure’s Lampent could keep Reuniclus active, and a Chandelure’s Ability use, plus attack, actually one shot a Gothitelle.
I know that Ross Cawthon had piloted Gothitelle to the finals of Cities out in WA during the latter part of the season, though, so perhaps he made some innovations which made the deck more viable. Perhaps they had an example of a very inbred metagame, where the decks being played wound up leaving an exploitable gap for Gothitelle to capitalize on.
(I know that ZPS saw a ton of success towards the end of Cities there, which is, in fact, weak to Gothitelle, so that could have been a justification for using it. Whether Ross has his invite locked up for Worlds this year or not, I’ve always trusted his metagame calls. He rarely uses a subpar deck choice, so I can’t imagine it simply being a “mistake” on his part. Or maybe someone bet him he couldn’t win with Gothitelle. That could be it too.)
Stage 1s
Well, I’d hope this should be obvious. Noble Victories not only flooded the format with even more monstrous huge HP Basics, but also released Eviolite. How you can expect Stage 1 Pokemon to compete past these Pokemon which not only outclass them on their own, but can also abuse Eviolite is beyond me. Yanmega Prime and company simply can’t keep up damage wise, or in terms of durability.
That being said, you pretty much had decks like Electrode and Six Corners pop up to fulfill the same role. You had decks full of fast, durable, multi-typed threats to basically play the aggressive rock-paper-scissors type advantage decks. I’m really not sure how Eviolite was a good idea, design wise, but whatever, it’s legal, so we have to accept it.
Right now, Basics are so much stronger than evolutions as it is, they really didn’t need to print a card that furthers that gap. Even the best Stage 2 Pokemon can barely compete, and I’m not sure where the gap for a middle ground Stage 1 template is. In order for Stage 1 Pokemon to be viable, they have to be notably better than the Basics, especially with Eviolite now.
With Stage 2s being weak as it is, there’s no gap for Stage 1s to fit in to stay better than Basics, without utterly outclassing Stage 2s as well, meaning the power creep is going to get further jammed down our throat, or evolutions are going to just progressively get worse and worse. They don’t even seem to be trying anymore, with all of the EX cards being Basics now.
