Frowned upon decks/strategies

[Smadin]

HI guys i'm new to competitive play and i was wondering if any decks or strategies are considered unsportsmanlike but are not banned outright.

I'm mostly wondering about a deck based solely around forcing your opponent to draw and discard until their deck out. Is it more fair to face your opponent head on and is decking out an underhand tactic?

 

[Auride]

I can't say there's a deck that's considered outright unsportsmanlike to play in-format right now, but there are decks that seem to be more disliked than others to play against

Lock decks, like Trevenant/Accelgor are the first thing that come to mind. Many players don't like the idea of a deck which, with the right combination of cards, simply make it improbable for the opponent to win from an early point in the game.

Mill decks (which you described) are genuinely uncommon nowadays, as there are no strong milling cards. However, the Durant archetype from previous formats did frustrate many players due to the games essentially turning into a race against time. I personally don't find mill decks to be too annoying, but that may be due to the current lack of consistent mill in the format.

Before the rule changes, decks which could do a lot of damage on the first turn due to a strategy called "donking" which involved knocking out your opponents only pokemon (especially against decks playing low-HP basics, like many evolution decks do) before they could even make there turn and play down more pokemon. This is often unsatisfying to the loser, or even both players, since very little actual "play" occurred.

All in all, the strongest strategies in the game at the moment are the most direct. Abusing alternate win conditions, like deck-out, is so uncommon that it's not really a problem. You can go ahead an use it to see your success. No matter what, there will always be cheap wins and sore losers, so it's best to just keep on playing.

Just remember to have fun.

 

[Ironman131]

That is one strategy to force your oppenent to deck out. It is not unsportmanlike but it is a deck that could have trouble competing with the top decks. There are cards like Red card or Hugh were your oppenent could end up having to reduce the number of cards in their hand. A pokemon that will be able to cause your oppenent to discard cards would be Durrant from the new flash fire set that hasnt come out yet. Its first attack is Chip off and if your oppenent has 5 or more cards you randomly discard cards untill they have only four cards. Durant from the Nobal victories also allows you to discard cards from your openenst deck based on the amount of Durant you have in play. Other cards that you could use include Hooligans Jim& Cas, Dialga EX, Malamar with mental Trash.

 

[EricDent]

Also Talonflame has an attack that makes the other player shuffle thief hand into their deck & draw 4 cards.
That could be pretty disruptive.

 

[Tash]

Trapper (destroying your opponent's entire hand before they get their first turn) and Sabledonk (sending the opponent's bench back to their hand then KOing the defending Pokemon before they get a turn) are the two biggest contenders from the past. Milling is mildly annoying by comparison.

 

[EricDent]

Yeah I remember Sabledonk, I almost quit the game because of that.

 

[PumpedAaron]

I'm pretty sure that there isn't any deck strategy that would at all be considered "unsportsmanlike". In truth, I feel confident in saying the only unsportsmanlike behaviors in the game you can do is taking a loss with too much noise, cheating, stuff like that.

 

[ForeignDude]

No unsportsmanlike decks out there. It's more of unsportsmanlike responses from your opponents when they face decks likes those mentioned in this thread. That and if you happen to be beating an "elite" player while using cards like ether, or Tierno, etc. (cards that apparently should be NEVER be used in tourney winning decks).

Basically you can make whatever deck you want and add whatever you want and in a perfect world nobody should have an issue cause you're doing nothing wrong.

 

[GadgetJax]

Per se, there really isn't such a thing as a frowned upon deck, or really even out-right banned. Now, there have been banned cards, like Neo Genesis Sneasel. If you're going to play a fair match with your friends, I wouldn't recommend using a Yveltal EX/Darkrai EX deck, since they are Tier 1 decks that counter pretty much anything. And since there aren't any good Tier 1 Electric or Fighting decks, there isn't too much you can do to stop them. Fairy might work, since they have resistance, but I still wouldn't recommend using Yveltal/Darkrai. Garbodor is also a very troll-like deck in my opinion, along with BlastKyurem decks.