Is POP trying to kill competitive play?

Do you agree with this rant?

  • Total voters
    50
Vulpix Yolk

Vulpix Yolk

\ \ durant gang \ \
Member
Sup guys, I don't know if any of you have heard about the new Pokemon World Championships Last Chance Qualifier rules being changed, but for those of you who don't know, the tournament is now going to be Single Elimination, best two out of three. That means you can spend all of that time, all of that money, all that time traveling, so that someone can go "Sableye, Special Dark, Expert Belt, Game" twice. I don't know about you guys, but I play the game for fun, and going all the way to San Diego, so you can sit down at a table, and lose, without even being able to draw. doesn't sound like fun. Think about it, especially if you don't live in America, the tournament is about having fun, it is possibly the last chance that you will have to play with cards from this format, and there is roughly a 50% chance you will only get to play two games? No really guys, why bother? I was planning on trying to go to the Grinder this year, just for the fun of being able to play 8 or 9 games against world class players, but now that I heard about these new rules, I don't think I will even make an attempt to go.

These rules wouldn't bother me so much if Donks weren't such a large part of the game. Pokemon tried to address this issue, their solution? Make it so Plus Power is a stronger card, make it so you can now play Trainers on the first turn, but it is OK, because now Rare Candy is worthless, no more getting donked by Machamp, it is still 2009 right? Now, what card could make it so that you can go first, that would be pretty neat if there was a card like that, oh wait! There is, oh and guess what, it was already THE BIGGEST ONLY DONK THREAT IN THE FORMAT, but it is ok, now it can hit 70 for one, with only 3 cards needed in your hand, and automatically makes it so your opponent doesn't have a chance to even draw into a Basic to save themselves. Well, with a ridiculous donk engine in the format, the one that won US Nationals, there was only one logical thing for them to do. Brake Rare Candy? Lolwut? Lets kill all the interesting decks, that take skill to build, and replace them all with STRAIGHT SABLEYE, and while we're at it, lets make the rule also benefit SP, so we can continue make 17 bucks a pop off of Garchomp tins.

Its not like anyone who creates the cards can seriously be that stupid and at the same time rude to their own loyal fan base. As much as POP likes to act like they have no idea about Competitive Play, with all the articles they write, like their most recent article Your Time To Shine! they are actually quite educated about it, it would be pretty hard for them to not be. I read this and it was too noobish for me to laugh, it is just depressing, imagine if you were a new player trying to get into the game and reading these articles, you thought you would do well with these concepts at the tournament you found out about, the one day the website wasn't down, because they were from the Official Pokemon Website. You go to the tournament and get absolutely creamed with a finishing record 0-6. It is crushing, I saw someone at States do this, they don't think "oh that was a bad deck", they think it is their fault and that they're bad players, and just are not inspired to play the game anymore.

So basically, through ruining the rules in one of the most fun tournaments in the world, giving a ridiculous amount of power to donk decks, making Stage 2 even more worthless, killing the rules, and printing worthless sets, they have given amazing reasons for competitive players to complain. Not only that but through making it so new players are not inspired to play the game because they are reading this, noobish propaganda so they think they have to buy the newest sets, they have given people reason to never become interested in Pokemon in the first place. Congrats Pokemon, if you keep this up the TCG Department will be closed before you know it.
 
Your right. They should "ban" Sableye IMO, and then we will be a bit better. OR, we could just wait til next rotation, have it be HS-on, and it will be fine because no Sableye, and Donkphan won't have BTS.
 
Yeah, Sabelye will just wreck and the user will just switch decks for worlds where they will play swiss
 
I think the whole idea of playing T/S/S on the first turn is counterproductive. Look at the irony. They want to reduce donks, yet they create a rule that makes donking easier. If this continues, I'm just going to collect cards from now on(that being said, the Pokemon company may be closed by then).
 
I've built a sabledonk list thats basically perfected, and the deck is wayy to broken. If they start with 3 pokemon, you can still win easily.
 
I think the new rules absolutly suck, but I think that they won't be as bad as they are now when rotation happens. If its HGSS on, donking is impossible. But I do think breaking Rare Candy was stupid. Now it only save you a turn, and Pyramid lines will be back. Those things are the absolute worst.

EDIT: I just read the "Your Time to Shine(!)" article. I was too disapointed to laugh...
 
Kids that go to my league read articles like that (Your time to shine) (6-8 year olds) and Then I have to tell them that their deck of random water pokemon won't win them cities..and then they get sad. (I do of course help make a viable deck for them though), but still articles like that shouldn't be allowed. If anything they should be reporting on top decks, like luxchomp, sp, and NOT suggest things like "Pururgly G will certainly Scratch up your opponent" because that's just untrue on so many levels for anyone who WANTS to be a good player. I'm going to the grinder this yr if i cant reclaim my ranking and am thoroughly upset at the new rule :(
 
Only donk threat in the format? I think you should play some more tournaments.

The fact that Sableye goes first means he can't attach Expert Belt (yet), but he does have some donk potential, sure.
So does Machamp (now). And Zekrom (B/W). And even Pachirisu (CoL) or Garchomp C. Just because a card can hit for 50-70 on the first turn does not make him overpowered or bannable.
By the time the B/W rules are in full effect, Sableye will be almost gone probably, he is from SF after all.
Besides, Sableye as a deck has not been winning all that much. The only real Sableye action I've seen is in Gyarados and they only play 1 Darkness Energy. Apparently, focusing on the donk is not worth it. The fact that after the rules change they can stick a Belt on him on turn 1 doesn't change this that much.
If you really detest Sableye that much, then just wait a few weeks (after B/W) until after the rotation. It's not that big of a deal, really.

What you should be ranting about is not 1 specific card that probably won't be much of a threat, but the fact that Pokemon keeps getting speedier. It's almost as bad as YuGiOh now, because you can already judge by your starting hands who is most likely going to win. In my opinion, Pokemon should just back off with the low energy high damage attackers for a while since we have plenty of those now, and make the lower HP Stage 1s and stage 2s that need 2-3 energy viable for tournament play again.
Remember when Flygon ex delta was good? We need to get back to that speed, where matches could go either way the whole way, like it should be. Pokemon is quickly losing its 'excitement' factor because of rulings and cards like this.

On another note, I don't like how you call decks that utilize Rare Candies more 'interesting'. There are many variants of decks and it's not appropriate to call one deck type better or more interesting than another, especially if you're trying to make a point here with this 'rant'. It's okay if you like stage 2 decks better, but there are plenty of people out there who like other decks and calling all their decks uninteresting is totally out of place here.

And on yet another note, the articles that are written for the POP website have always been of dubious quality, to say the least. I have not found one of them that showed me something new or interesting. So nothing changed there, lol.
 
^I meant a few weeks after the B/W set and rules (May/June or something?) are released, obviously. Changed it in my original post as well.
 
OMG... WTF... I was gonna go to the LCQ just for the fun of it, but now... Ugghh, I don't know if I even want to play anymore with crap sets, crap LCQ, and crap P!P.
EDIT: I didn't say crud I said crap
 
And on yet another note, the articles that are written for the POP website have always been of dubious quality, to say the least. I have not found one of them that showed me something new or interesting. So nothing changed there, lol.
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And that's why I stopped reading them after the first one I saw.
~~~
Single-elimination in Pokemon, non-topcut? I think they're failing to take into account that Pokemon is heavily luck-based, and it's quite easy to get donked in the first turn if one player has notoriously bad luck. Swiss is a lot fairer style, and if they're going to be doing this at the main Worlds tournament that's going to be silly. Grinders...eh, I don't know. I have not been to one myself, and so can't make an educated enough call on that.

This is why I'm pushing for a Black/White-on rotation.
 
Sabledonk is a pain in the but and so is getting donked in swiss, but donks are a part of the game.

I would enjoy a mid-season rotation (possible RR on and then HGSS on after worlds), POP needs to slow down the format, I remember back a few years ago when decks hardly set-up T1 and games were longer than a couple of turns.

Also a BW rotation would be amazinng. Not only would it change the metagame completely, but it would also put a challange on players to create new decks from only 1 set.
 
If they do this, they are bad in marketing.
B/W rules + Battle roads is pretty bad for newer players who get easily donked and will eventually quit.
They should enable these rules while Sableye SF is rotated out.
The thing they should ban is (Gengar Prime) + Gengar sf + Vileplume combo ( i hate it k?) Because there is actually NO way to counter it perfectly.
''OMFG DGX COUNTERS'' Leveldown :/ ''OMFG POWER SPRAY'' good luck spraying it while you most likely sprayed their uxie/azelf drops so they can't get Lv.x out.
''Weavile G / Honchkrow SV / Absol G Lv.X counters'' When they see one of those things they will auto shadow room those.
 
And while we're at it, why don't we ban Machamp too? There is no perfect counter to Machamp either.
Asking specific cards to be banned from the format is no way to vent your frustration over them.
 
I am SO ANGRY about grinders. It was going to be the only other tourney I went to this season, seeing as I don't have a chaperone for Nats or Regs, but I guess it's not worth the trip now, unless I play sableye.
Shaymin lv. X makes a good argument about Gengars also.

@DNA: You don't need to counter Machamp, it's not that good against anything but SP. Take it from a Machamp player.
 
@ StealthAngel667: You present a valid argument, a lot of the cards you mentioned are large donk factors, however the reason I feel Sableye is a problem is because you don't even have the chance to play something like a Call Energy because it steals your turn, IDK if Sableye will even be excellent as a deck itself, but the fact you can play it like a Shuppet, except automatically go first makes it a little overpowered for my taste. The deck might have consistency issues we will see. The reason why I called Stage 2 deck more interesting is because they is more tech room, you can see 100 LuxChomp list and they will all only differ by 5 cards max, but if you looked at say 100 Kingdra lists you would see it takes more creativity. This is just a general statement, don't take offense to it or anything.

Also on the VileGar/Machamp topic, notice LuxChomp is BDIF not either of those, if they were truly broken they would win more tourneys IMO. I'm not saying Sableye is broken (although it may be REALLY good with the new rule), I'm saying Pokemon was trying to prevent Donks, but instead they made them more powerful.
 
@DNA: You don't need to counter Machamp, it's not that good against anything but SP. Take it from a Machamp player.
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I know - I'm just saying that both Machamp and Vileplume give people frustration, but that there is absolutely no reason that those cards need to be specifically banned from this format. (It's clever use of sarcasm.)

Of course, since I run Gigas, I need to have at the very least an answer to Machamp or I'm done for :p
 
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