Lack of Drawpower

scizorlicious

scizorlicious

Now with one fewer 's'
Member
One problem this format has is a lack of raw drawpower.

Think about it: we have no drawpower whatsoever from Trainers, and very little from Supporters (Cheren's really the only one now, Bianca's not going to be played much).

We have Magnezone, but that's a Stage 2, and basically just a Bianca per turn.

The other Supporters we have all come at a cost - PONT, Judge, Copycat all make you shuffle your hand into your deck, and Juniper makes you discard it. Oh, and Sage's discards 3 cards.

Last format, we had so much to use - Uxie, Poke Drawer +, Pokedex HANDY, even Night Teleporter. Not to mention the cards that could search out Uxie - Luxury Ball, Quick Ball, Dusk Ball.

This format just seems so much more prone to having bad starts where you're unable to at least thin your deck with these plain old draw cards. I guess it's better than having Sabledonk running rampant, but it's still annoying to start with almost nothing to work with, then using hand refresh and getting nothing again.

It just seems like the complete opposite of when the game was starting out - there were Trainers that had great drawpower, like Professor Oak, or Erika. But now we have less stuff like that, so I don't believe this is "the way the game's supposed to be played" or anything.

Any thoughts? Sorry if it seems like I'm spouting, but I think this is the largest problem with the game right now.
 
Not every format has good draw. This format is similar to the Delta format where it was very supporter based because of Holon Transceiver. Just think about it, if every deck had access to stable draw, the best decks would just get better. I'm fine with the way the format is right now. There are plenty of ways to draw into the cards you need.
 
This might be true, but I agree with ESP. I feel its fine the way it is now and it makes teh game much more fun
 
We have Cleffa for bad starts. Honestly it's not that bad of a format at all. We have a major RPS going on right now as far as the deck choices so there's plenty of room to be creative. Compare this format to the Plox format or the SP formats. This one is better in so many ways. It's not the best we've ever had - Delta gets that hands down, but this is certainly a good one.
 
Yeah, as other posters have said, there's no need for a good draw every format. If there was a good draw card this format, Zekrom would be too overpowered. Zekrom is already tier 1 in most lists.
 
@Celebi23: I didn't say it was a bad format, I just thought this was one flaw.

The problem with Cleffa is that it just resets your hand. Sure, you get 7 new cards (with the turn-draw your next turn), but you lose all the cards you had, much like our other Supporters.

That is a good point though, Tyraniking. Zekrom would be even better, and probably BDIF with draw like we had last format.

I'll continue to gripe when I get one good card in my hand that I have to PONT away, though. I guess there's never a perfect format...
 
amisheskimoninja said:
I wish we had PK delcatty back. It was much better than ninetales.
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^This.

I think that's what PUSA was trying to do, though. We're pretty much in the same phase as we were when EXes were out. (Before DPP came out, thus sparking InfernCatty.) The only draw we really had were Professor Oak's Research, and Holon Adventurer. Now granted we have like a bazillion search cards (Holon Mentor, Holon Lass, Fearow CG, Nidoqueen DF, Castaway, Scott, etc.), but we had very little draw.

What my bud Yoshi pointed out at my league holds very true- in this format, you win because you are a good deck builder, not because you are a lucksack. Think about it. With No Claydol, no Uxie, etc., there's not very much you can run. There's no more random "Uxie set up for 6... ZOMG I JUST DREW MY RANDOM 5-CARD COMBO OFF OF 6 CARDS, NOW YOU LOSE!!!!" Now the format is based purely off of deck consistency, and who has the least amount of bad starts. Will you still get back starts? Yes. Will it cost you a BAttle Roads or a Cities? Maybe. But in a big tourny like Nats or Worlds, where there's 7+ rounds, consistency in your deck building will be what gets you into top cut. Not what you can/can't draw off of your Cosmic Power.
 
Bad luck was lost me my last Nationals match - if anything, Nationals is more luck-based than BRs and Cities. With more rounds, you have more chances to draw bad, flip bad, etc. All it takes is a little bad luck against a good player, and you're out. There's a reason a lot of people are betting there will never be a 2-time U.S. National Champion.

And you can still dead draw off of Oak's while your opponent hits everything they need off of theirs. That didn't change and it probably never will.
 
^yes there's more chances. But there's more rounds to compensate. If you have 1 bad round in a Battle Roads, and go 3-1, that just might cost you top cut, depending on your resistance. If you have 2 bad matches at nats, and 1 loss from a bad matchup, you can still go 6-3 or 5-3, which is usually a top cut. I don't see why we haven't had a 2-time national champion yet, actually. We've had a 2-times Worlds champion already, and you'd assume that would be harder to do.
 
^Except, Worlds is a higher level tournament that players of high skill level play in, not everybody who shows up
 
The Power Of Three said:
What my bud Yoshi
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Your bud who? :p

Yeah, Delcatty PK was a very nice drawpower card. I'd like to see things like it, but maybe this format just doesn't need drawpower. Cheren is really our only good card, and I see players doing fine without cards like Uxie LA and Claydol GE. I truly think that this format does fine with or without drawpower, however, I do see the reasoning behind needing more of it. (did I just contradict myself?)
 
thefleeee said:
^Except, Worlds is a higher level tournament that players of high skill level play in, not everybody who shows up
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You just proved my point. Worlds has a very centralized, unique meta. You won't see any random crap that you deal with at Nationals or any other tournament ever hosted by TPCI. I don't know about most people, but I would have been really scared to play Reshiram at Nationals just because of the random water crap you might run into the first couple rounds.

Furthermore, they make worlds a very small tournament compared to Nationals. There are less rounds and therefore there is less room for dead draw, bad flips, or an opponent getting extremely lucky. There's (usually :/) a top 32 at worlds, so going 5-2 lets you make cut. In nationals, you also have to X-2 to get a guaranteed top cut, but then you're looking at a top 128 cut after playing more swiss rounds than worlds.
 
To be fair, we do have drawpower given to us. Delibird for a 'Gatr Prime combo and Shuckle Promo aare obvious draw engines that are underrated.
 
^With Catcher in this format, don't expect either of them to very commonly used in this format.

Yeah, I agree with thefleeee, Worlds isn't a place where you'll lose often because of one bad start, and you won't see random Samurott decks beating skilled players with Reshiram.
 
P0KEVORTEX said:
To be fair, we do have drawpower given to us. Delibird for a 'Gatr Prime combo and Shuckle Promo aare obvious draw engines that are underrated.
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Technically Gatr/Shuckle doesn't work, and as Yoshidude stated, Catcher stops Gatr.
 
P0KEVORTEX said:
To be fair, we do have drawpower given to us. Delibird for a 'Gatr Prime combo and Shuckle Promo aare obvious draw engines that are underrated.
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We have it, but no much of it. Shuckleonly works well with Emboar, and Emboar's 4 Retreat cost will be horrid to pay. Also, 3-1-2 Emboar and 2 Shuckle, plus {r} isn't easy to fit into a deck just for draw power.
 
Yoshidude10 said:
^With Catcher in this format, don't expect either of them to very commonly used in this format.

Yeah, I agree with thefleeee, Worlds isn't a place where you'll lose often because of one bad start, and you won't see random Samurott decks beating skilled players with Reshiram.
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Have you played the Samurott vs Reshiram matchup? It's absolutely horrid.
 
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