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Maybe They Aren’t Dead? — Single-Prize Decks Post-LAIC
- Thread starter PMJ
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"I am a big fan of formats where there is a clear best deck in format, such as the Silver Tempest format last year with Lugia VSTAR"
That's a very bold statement. I personally know many players who quit playing during formats similar to this where 1 deck completely dominates. Adp rings a bell.
That's a very bold statement. I personally know many players who quit playing during formats similar to this where 1 deck completely dominates. Adp rings a bell.
You're missing some nuance here. "A clear best deck" is a very different statement than "1 deck completely dominates". A deck can very clearly be the best deck, because of factors other than "it's just insanely stronger than everything else". In fact it can be just a bit better than the next best choices, and still be clear in why it is that tiny bit better. That's completely different than the whole ADP fiasco.
I think he meant that there was an easy matchup guide. This format is the exact opposite, arguably any tier 1 and 2 deck can top and win a regional or IC. The format is changing, very fast each tournament with no clear deck being Teir 0.
ADP and Lugia were comparitively different decks because one permenantly changed how the game was played for a majority of that format whilst the other was just dominant because it played on a very different axis and had multiple answers to every other meta deck
Speaking of missing nuances, I still don’t see many people pointing out how Iron Hands ex is Lugia EX Plasma Storm, not Arceus & Dialga & Palkia GX. Not only the same prize (albeit directly on the attack, not as an Ability), but the same Energy cost, same damage threshold, even same availability of a compatible Energy acceleration item (in Lugia’s case, Colress Machine). The main exception is that games are faster than they were in 2013 and that Iron Hands ex is a tech in many non-Lightning decks, whereas Lugia EX was one option for building a Team Plasma deck around if you didn’t go the hyper-aggressive Kyurem/Virbank City Gym/Hypnotoxic Laser route instead.
Perhaps I’m not being fair on other people, though. I’ve been looking at the Lugia EX in my binder for years. It was given to me by a friend. It went through the washing machine in his trousers pocket, so it doesn’t look great, but I still treasure it.
Honestly, I like formats where everything is viable because it means that you can have fun playing just about any good deck, and it allows the format to really expand and decks to change and include new options. it’s led to some very interesting decks and techs and I love it.
Yes, they’re fun to play. I enjoy playing the EX Block Format (a format using all cards from generation 3) on TCGONE because of the wide variety of playable decks. In fact, there are probably over a dozen tier 1 decks in that format, including both popular decks from the 2005, 2006 and 2007 seasons and all-new decks that could never have succeeded—or in some cases even have existed—in any worlds season. (For example, Japanese players broke Delcatty from Ruby and Sapphire wide open when they paired it with Surprise! Time Machine to reuse Energy Draw multiple times on the same Pokémon and Electrode ex to attach those Energy.)
However, the more viable decks there are in a format, the harder it is to pick a deck that gives you the best chance of winning. Every deck has strong and poor matchups, and when the top players invest $70 to go a tournament, they want to maximize their odds of winning and claiming champion points, as well as a more financial return on their investment. (After all, you can sell your deck after a bad run, but you can’t sell your ticket stub.) When one deck dominates the format, you can focus on beating that one deck, and if you can beat most of the other decks even semi-consistently, your odds of succeeding are strong.
Here is an article Grant Manley wrote during the Silver Tempest era. https://www.pokebeach.com/2023/02/destruction-or-bust
Remember how much his ticket cost him, and perhaps you’ll understand why he was upset as he was about everyone teching against a deck that comprised 1% of the field.
In any case, Grant’s 8-12 run was carried by a 7-0 Lugia VSTAR matchup, and would have been vastly improved had he run into fewer tech-heavy Lost Box decks. Other players during the Silver Tempest era made top 8 with Control, Flaaffy box, and even Durant Mill. Lugia would then tech against those decks for the next event and go unrivaled, but with each event that rogue decks went unnoticed, less people would tech against them, until they would eventually make top 8 again.
Now there are many different play styles of deck, and it is hard for any one deck to compete with all of them. Let’s say your deck has a favorable matchup against Lost Box and Iron Valiant but has a poor matchup against Charizard and Gardevoir. You face several Lost Box, Iron Valiant, Snorlax Stall and Chien-Pao decks, meet only one Charizard deck, and go 7-9 in Swiss. You make top 32 only to find that eight Gardevoir players also made it. With lower stakes, having to battle through as many as four Gardevoir decks in a row may not seem like a big deal, since you’ve played against five other types of decks and are having the time of your life, but at a tournament, it can seem like the end of the world, as the chances of making good on your $70 investment are looking more and more bleak.
Incidentally, there is an online tournament being held for the EX Block format, and I am definitely feeling the pressure of not knowing what deck to play in a format with over a dozen top decks. Not that I will have to have to pay an entry fee or anything, but there is some prizing on the line, and it would feel great to win something. I haven’t played Base-Fossil for very long, but the smaller number of top decks there frees me up to focus on learning the format. Sure, Wigglytuff/Magmar has to have some bad matchups, but with only three other top decks (Lickitung Stall, Moltres Lickitung, and the go-big-or-go-home Arcanine/Electrode), I can learn those matchups without worrying as much about other viable decks like Rain Dance which I already have an answer to. (As for Prop 15/3, some days I wonder if Jason Klaczynski is the Prop 15/3 meta, as most players continue to build their own decks from scratch well after Jason identified the current top 3 decks. To be fair, there has only been one modern Prop 15/3 tournament with over 8 players, the 11 player Woodfield Mall tournament.)
Yeah, I didn't bring it up on my first response up there, but I 100% can understand why competitive players like more somewhat defined metas for those reasons. In fact, I always thought that was a bit of a double-edged sword, not only for Pokémon. For instance, I kinda got tired of playing Modern in MtG precisely because of how insanely open the field could be at certain points, with completely lopsided matchups for pretty much any deck. Sometimes you just want a field full of 60/40 matchups so most of your games can be played with real chances for both sides, making everything more fun overall.