Discussion Could Octillery (BRT) Devalue Shaymin EX?

[Yo-yos]

So it's affordable by the greater community? Seriously - the demographic are often students or casual workers, so they wouldn't have hundreds of dollars to spend on the game. A format that caters only for the rich is no fun for anyone. I actually hear people going on about the expensive staples of TCGs like Magic and how difficult it is to begin. Pokemon is unique in that way as it is much easier and more affordable to begin. For this reason is why this thread was made in the first place.


I'm not sure about everyone else, but I know that I have never looked at a game and called serious/not serious due to how much a single card costs. Instead, I rely on the word of mouth to determine if a card game is serious. Basically, there may just be a reason why I keep hearing of this TCG - along with Pokemon, Magic and Yugioh are those that I hear thrown around a lot. Also may check an official/fan site to see if widespread tournaments are available, as a larger tournament program might just suggest a greater popularity.


You obviously have the money to do whatever you want, so good for you, but keep in mind that little of us earn an income spendable on hobbies.


Unfortunately, Primal Groudon (nor Donphan) is not a very viable or competitive in the current format, meaning you probably won't be getting to the top tables in organised play any time soon. There also no viable strategy for making "playing Shaymin-EX hard". If there was a viable strategy, we would have seen it by now.

tl;dr The expense of Shaymin-EX is a very real problem, hence this thread in general, and calling a TCG "popular" should not be reflective of costs but instead word of mouth and tournament expansion. Shaymin-EX currently has such a high price as basically ALL top-table decks require multiple copies of it, and the Shaymin strategy does not have a reliable counter.

There is also a large amount of people who have already gone through school or have jobs, 50$ isn't a lot for your deck, more people play magic and the game is generally more expensive overall so how is it that more people still go into that game over pokemon? When every deck has a staple card that cost's 50$ per card you need 4 of in your deck per deck and it's never the smae card you could put in every deck unlike shaymin, so how is 2 cards at 32$ that much more. If this card is worth x it's because a large amount of players in the community can afford this card, if they couldn't the value of the card would lower, but the actual reason why people aren't willing to spend x amount on 1 card is because people are just being cheap even though they can easily afford the card or trade for it. Now it's getting to a point where the player base is just being to cheap about affording cards, shaymin being expensive is not a problem here.

I don't have the money to do whatever I want with it, I just know how to trade the cards I don't want for cards I do want, I haven't legitimately payed for a single pokemon card outside of my earnings for close to half a year now, and I still have to many cards to trade for what I need.

Groudon has made top 8 at various high level tournaments over the past year in all age divisions so that's where I tend to disagree with you completely.

This thread was made about a card devaluing another card not about the card game being cheaper for all.

 

[bbninjas]

There is also a large amount of people who have already gone through school or have jobs, 50$ isn't a lot for your deck, more people play magic and the game is generally more expensive overall so how is it that more people still go into that game over pokemon? When every deck has a staple card that cost's 50$ per card you need 4 of in your deck per deck and it's never the smae card you could put in every deck unlike shaymin, so how is 2 cards at 32$ that much more. If this card is worth x it's because a large amount of players in the community can afford this card, if they couldn't the value of the card would lower, but the actual reason why people aren't willing to spend x amount on 1 card is because people are just being cheap even though they can easily afford the card or trade for it. Now it's getting to a point where the player base is just being to cheap about affording cards, shaymin being expensive is not a problem here.

Without Shaymin, a deck may cost you 50 to 75 bucks. With two Shaymin, a deck costs you 110 to 145. You cannot tell me that a deck doubling in cost due to two cards is not significant. Hence why the OP was considering Octillery as a potential card to devalue Shaymin.

I don't have the money to do whatever I want with it, I just know how to trade the cards I don't want for cards I do want, I haven't legitimately payed for a single pokemon card outside of my earnings for close to half a year now, and I still have to many cards to trade for what I need.

You obviously had the money to buy a nice collection of cards a year ago. Many of us haven't had that opportunity. :/

Groudon has made top 8 at various high level tournaments over the past year in all age divisions so that's where I tend to disagree with you completely.

Do you mean past year, 2015 rotation? Cause we have had a rotation and a couple new highly influential sets mix up the game significantly, so results from the 2015 rotation means next to nothing in the current format. I mean, Toad/Giratina (which recently has been a popular deck) is really not a good matchup for Groudon...

 

[Yo-yos]

Just because there is a card that offers the same sort of effect but doesn't even come close to functioning in the same way doesn't offer a substitute or comes close to devaluing a card that is better by functionality or rarity (go back to 2009 claydol versus uxie, uxie was and will be the better and more expensive card). and just because you want to make a 50-70$ deck that's fine, but your not buying 2 32$ cards for just that 50-70 dollar deck your buying it for every deck you build and have a use for 2 shaymin in it not I gotta make a new deck and buy more shaymin.

And again, I saved up 300$ every 4 months which means I saved just under 30$ a week to afford my pokemon habit, doesn't really seem that expensive by my estimate, so as long as your making 300-400 a week it shouldn't be that hard to save under 30$ a week, but that's just simple budgeting. I also spent 3-4 years of in format cards to get to this point so time is a factor, it's not start playing a game and you get good automatically and have the card pool automatically.

toad/tina has a 50/50 matchup to groudon as you can see by the list's I post in my signature, I have no qualm's testing standard versus expanded just because it's a different format doesn't slot for better or worse deck building. And since over 90% of groudon is made up of standard cards even though it's for expanded that made 5th and 6th place at regions last month I again have to disagree with you, the proof is in the pudding on that one.

 

[bbninjas]

Just because there is a card that offers the same sort of effect but doesn't even come close to functioning in the same way doesn't offer a substitute or comes close to devaluing a card that is better by functionality or rarity (go back to 2009 claydol versus uxie, uxie was and will be the better and more expensive card). and just because you want to make a 50-70$ deck that's fine, but your not buying 2 32$ cards for just that 50-70 dollar deck your buying it for every deck you build and have a use for 2 shaymin in it not I gotta make a new deck and buy more shaymin.

And again, I saved up 300$ every 4 months which means I saved just under 30$ a week to afford my pokemon habit, doesn't really seem that expensive by my estimate, so as long as your making 300-400 a week it shouldn't be that hard to save under 30$ a week, but that's just simple budgeting. I also spent 3-4 years of in format cards to get to this point so time is a factor, it's not start playing a game and you get good automatically and have the card pool automatically.

toad/tina has a 50/50 matchup to groudon as you can see by the list's I post in my signature, I have no qualm's testing standard versus expanded just because it's a different format doesn't slot for better or worse deck building. And since over 90% of groudon is made up of standard cards even though it's for expanded that made 5th and 6th place at regions last month I again have to disagree with you, the proof is in the pudding on that one.

It looks like neither of us are going to be changing our stance on our views (and thus will be repeating arguments), and even though this was a nice persuasive conversation, I don't feel like it is productive to be continuing any further.

 

[Yo-yos]

As a question why did you have to spend a majority of your time attacking my statements while I was merely pointing out alternatives and my prospective? The issue comes from your lack or unwilling resolve to meet me half way, so in the future I ask that if ever anyone is as challenging as me at any level in the game don't pick apart what they are saying, try to understand why they are saying it.

Octillery, as I mentioned before, gives us an option to find another deck engine for the game, so as opposed to thinking about it as octillery versus shaymin in your current deck, why not build a deck engine for octillery as current deck engines are modeled after shaymin.

 

[Mora]

As a question why did you have to spend a majority of your time attacking my statements while I was merely pointing out alternatives and my prospective? The issue comes from your lack or unwilling resolve to meet me half way, so in the future I ask that if ever anyone is as challenging as me at any level in the game don't pick apart what they are saying, try to understand why they are saying it.

The issue comes from your statements being quite difficult to understand if not completely wrong. For example:

I don't see how octillery is a cheap shaymin, it's not in theory and in play they are 2 completely different cards regardless of if they offer a "similar sort of effect".

Playing along with this logic that cards are completely different "regardless of if they offer a similar sort of effect", Thundurus EX and Yveltal are completely different cards, Muscle Band and Silver Bangle are completely different cards, and Professor Birch and Shauna are completely different cards. None of these cards are completely different as their lists of differences are quite short. Garchomp and Emboar are completely different cards; these examples are not. It seems that your definition of completely different does not include the lack of similarities that the two words, completely different, would imply. Or perhaps you do not see how all "draw until you have X effects" are inherently similar. Let's be real, the cards have only a few differences; this actually means that the cards have quite a lot in common.

 

[MelancholyFairy]

Well I don't want to be that guy, but I feel it is the better choice in some decks. For example, some decks that take more than one turn to set up. Primal Kyogre, Groudon perhaps, Chesnaught. It's a consistent 5 cards per turn, Shaymin-ex seems to be the better choice for Speed decks like Yveltal, Quaza, Vespiquen, and so on.

 

[Otaku]

@Yo-yos

It is good for you to share your reasoning with others: even if they disagree (and I know I do), it means we can know why. There are things we agree upon I want to cement first:

Octillery (BRT*) is not a true replacement for Shaymin-EX (ROS) because while they both are Ability based draw, there are enough differences that few decks can use them similarly. Octillery is the successor to Electrode (PLF); while there are still several differences, the main thing is having a Stage 1 Bench-sitter with a "Draw until you have X cards in hand." Ability. Unless someone comes up with a way to use Octillery better than Shaymin-EX for competitive decks (seems quite unlikely) then Octillery won't be affecting the price of Shaymin-EX more than anything else.

Where we differ is the value of time and money. Even if I had the money to drop on a competitive deck right now, I wouldn't. I no longer enjoy how the game plays as much as I once did and I certainly don't expect to win enough "stuff" to have made it a worthwhile investment; even playing in tournaments is still largely about doing what you enjoy. If you do enjoy the game that much and/or believe you will win enough to sufficiently profit from it, don't let me stop you!

Just remember that you are you; some people have more responsibilities (fiscal or otherwise) and think that as the-powers-that-be control the card supply with the actual product costs being quite low that they should keep card availability high enough that secondary market prices/odds of getting what you actually need to compete don't chase people away or present too high a barrier for newer players. Someone might be a kid without a lot of money. Someone might be an adult but a student again without a lot of money. Someone might be an adult that is done with school and earns a lot of money... but is married, has kids, maybe a mortgage, definitely a couple forms of insurance to cover, should be saving up for retirement, should be maintaining some sort of "emergency fund" because life happens and not every kind of insurance is cost effective (or exists at all).

Even costs of living differences matter; if things are inexpensive where you are at, $50 might be one of your major utility bills. If things are very expensive where you are at, $50 might not buy much but that also means having it to spare isn't easy.

 

[asdjklghty]

Never because they serve different purposes as explained. Even back when Uxie was legal, there were decks that ran both. Now while the game was different back then, the reasoning was the same: Uxie was for a fast draw of cards while Claydol was used to continuously draw after you've Set Up (literally).

You would need a 2-2 line+ some Wally to get it out T1. You also used your Supporter for the turn. Which one is better? Shaymin of course. Primal Groudon decks should never use Octillery. They use Tropical Beach.

Because of this, Octillery will never devalue Shaymin, ever. I expect the price to rise up against during Cities.