SplitHeavens said:
I get what you are saying, but it's not simply "what players want to play".
What me and other people are saying(from my understanding) is that SPs and fast decks are still the most powerful no matter how you look at it.
If anyone is familiar with competitive video gaming, SP(dominating) decks are comparable to Meta Knight in Brawl or a shoto in SSFIV and slower decks being R.O.B or Makoto.
Are they beatable? Sure. Easily beatable? No.
Can they win huge tournaments? Possibly. Likely? No.
SP decks works so well and have so much support that making any other deck is basically asking for a downgrade. I'm all for building new decks and having some sort of new combos or themes, but SP decks can literally shut anything down.
Dialga, Garchomp, Luxray are all really fantastic cards with no form of downsides what so ever. And then include in SP-exclusive Trainers such as Power Spray(trap cards in my Pokemon?) and Poke Turn(guaranteed SSU for cards better than Stage 2 cards). All that without even trying to shut certain decks down.
Other decks are very, very, very specific about dealing with certain various cards while SP decks are "fearless" in terms of whatever they face, except maybe for certain decks that are MEANT to kill SP decks, but dies with any other deck.
Basically, everything now rotates around them instead being able to built your own true deck and not worrying about 1-2 very specific decks.
actually, I'm very familiar with competitive video gaming, I was doing it back when it was being done in arcades with games like SFII, SFA (1,2,&3), any of the NeoGeo fighting games...long before the console competitions
SP decks are very dominate...why?...because they are very cheap...but even with being cheap, they are very consistent, that is part of what makes them good...if they were easily beatable, then they wouldn't be good decks and you wouldn't see them in the meta as much as you do...but there are SP decks that are still considered good and don't really get all that much play...DialgaChomp for example...many people consider this to be a good deck, but yet, it doesn't see the play that LuxChomp does...same with InfLux and BlazeRay...these were considered good decks and many players were running them, however, they started taking losses...so players start jumping ship to the new winning SP deck...now you say that decks other than SP decks are unlikely to win big tournaments...that's funny, because it hasn't been all SP decks winning big tournaments, and last year's worlds is clear evidence of exactly that...it wasn't an SP deck that won worlds
the support that SP decks have is what makes them cheap decks...that and the fact that they can be made very consistent, making them good...makes them good cheap decks...I wouldn't neccessarily say choosing to go with something different and not cheap is a downgrade, especially if it's a good deck that you are choosing to go with...there is alot out to counter SPs or slow SPs to put them on the same level with many EVO decks, but once again, almost nobody is choosing to put in much work to make the decks work...in competitive card gaming, you have to account for your metagame, that's in nearly any TCG that has high attendence tournaments
Donphan variants give alot of LuxChomp players fits, but Donphan has a big problem with decks based around {W}...Plox variants give every deck fits, but there were more people that wanted to play SP instead of Plox...if there is a way to check the attendence of these big tourneys, I would love to see the amount of players that ran SP decks compared to other decks, that too is a factor in decks getting big tourney wins...there wasn't really that many LuxChomp decks at the St.Louis Midwest Regional, and yet, LuxChomp didn't win...there were LuxChomp decks there, I know, I went against one myself...and throughout the day, he was complaining about how many Donphan decks there were at the tourney that he had to face...I don't even think he made top cut...like I said, it is what players want to play...most players are wanting to play decks that have already gotten the most amount of wins
Tyraniking said:
That's the thing. People know them so they run decks that have Pokemon switch out. That's why Spiritomb tech decks fail against Blazeray (T1 Luring Flame is beast).
not if there's an unown G attached to that Spiritomb...Luring Flame means nothing then...many EVO decks should be running Spiritomb anyway, in order to assist with setup and slow down trainer usage from Spiritomb...sure you can get that Spiritomb out of the active...however, the game isn't going to end immediately after that happens...and more than likely, Spiritomb is still alive...so all it takes it to put it back up front ,Guard it, and continue on
wait...did you say BlazeRay? I haven't seen on of those since before Cities...people still play that?
) is when will i know what they are rotating out? i want to buy the cards that make games fun fast and exciting but only if i will be able to them in a year... i hate to buy a piece of cardboard for 30 bucks and boom! all the sudden in one month i cant do anything with it... as for the pace of the game slowing down possibly hurting popularity- i dont think it will... and if it does it says something more about our culture than it does the game- but that's a philosophical argument meant for other forums... not this one 
