How do you pick he right techs. It seems like there are so many tech cards. How do you know what cards are the right pick for the deck you are playing and the best counters to the decks you suspect your opponents to be playing. Im sure most of you have multiple decks that you have a handful of techs for. For example I play a plasma deck but with kyurem, put i also have my lugia EX and umbreon with the deck.
Picking the Right Tech Cards
- Thread starter Ironman131
- Start date
Depends on the deck you're playing and the decks you expect to play against. If you're running, say, Virizion/Genesect, and you expect to play against a lot of Yveltal decks, you tech in Raichu. If expect to be playing against a lot of plasma, you might tech in some Drifblim and enhanced hammer.
It takes playtesting, metagaming, and a little bit of intuition. Look at what's popular, what your deck does poorly against, and tech against it.
It takes playtesting, metagaming, and a little bit of intuition. Look at what's popular, what your deck does poorly against, and tech against it.
Well, you usually want to play a tech that fixes a certain match up. Like if your deck loses to Yveltal, you play Raichu, or Dedenne, or whatever. If your deck beats Yveltal already, you don't need to play those. Just by playtesting, people rule out what techs don't work. For example, Latias doesn't work in Plasma against Pyroar (in my opinion), so it can be ruled out as a tech card that's worth playing. tl;dr you want to play a tech that helps you beat a popular deck your deck has a bad match up against.
Of course, even if you know what techs are good, there's a decent likelihood of you not even playing against the deck you teched against, or not playing against it as much as you expected. It sucks, and there's not much you can do when that happens, but that's the risk you take when playing tech cards. This is the reason you want to try to avoid devoting several spots of your deck to teching against other decks; they weaken your match ups against other decks. If you deck's match up against a popular deck is so bad you have to play 6-10 cards just to beat that deck, you should either play the deck normally and accept the bad match up to it, or play a deck that does beat that popular deck.
Of course, even if you know what techs are good, there's a decent likelihood of you not even playing against the deck you teched against, or not playing against it as much as you expected. It sucks, and there's not much you can do when that happens, but that's the risk you take when playing tech cards. This is the reason you want to try to avoid devoting several spots of your deck to teching against other decks; they weaken your match ups against other decks. If you deck's match up against a popular deck is so bad you have to play 6-10 cards just to beat that deck, you should either play the deck normally and accept the bad match up to it, or play a deck that does beat that popular deck.
One of my Poke pals has a strong belief in keeping his decks "straightforward" in that after he develops a deck strategy around a core set of cards, he then focuses on the secondary group of cards which provides the "consistency" (i.e., fast, efficient, and effective card draw, Poke search, energy access, etc.support) he wants. He will not over tech his decks if either of his core or secondary card groups' objectives are jeopardized. Of the remaining open card slots (5-7 perhaps), he'll consider (in no particular order) techs like:
Like others above noted, one can tech for a particular weakness in your deck; but you can not tech for every deck you might encounter at a tournament. Every deck will just have some bad match-ups. Like my pal, I subscribe to his principles of keeping decks simple and consistent, and hope the few tech cards I did incorporate can just provide an edge.
- Muscle Band / Silver Bangle - damage output is damage output and more is better
- Ht Laser - defeats Resistance, counters certain Abilities, doesn't trigger Retaliate-type attacks, etc.
- Potion / Max Potion / Cassius - prize denial, definitely can disrupt opponents' calculations
- Poke - free retreating, bench setup, counters for this or that...
- Poke - supporters for primary/secondary attackers (e.g., Deoxys EX)
Like others above noted, one can tech for a particular weakness in your deck; but you can not tech for every deck you might encounter at a tournament. Every deck will just have some bad match-ups. Like my pal, I subscribe to his principles of keeping decks simple and consistent, and hope the few tech cards I did incorporate can just provide an edge.
I think a good tech is something that will help you stand up against your weakness.
Examples of Teching for Weaknesses:
Problem: Slow Start, and can't stand up to EX Pokemon's speed
Solution: Tech in Sigilpyh to stall and use up your opponents resources(Having to Lysandre/Catcher it away)
Problem: Losing because of dead hands late game.
Solution: Tech in a 1-1 Electrode PLS line to get a free Bicycle every turn, or add in more of a draw engie.
Problem: Mewtwo EX is wrecking your Keldeo Deck
Solution: Bring in your own Mewtwo EX or Dendenne.
Examples of Teching for Weaknesses:
Problem: Slow Start, and can't stand up to EX Pokemon's speed
Solution: Tech in Sigilpyh to stall and use up your opponents resources(Having to Lysandre/Catcher it away)
Problem: Losing because of dead hands late game.
Solution: Tech in a 1-1 Electrode PLS line to get a free Bicycle every turn, or add in more of a draw engie.
Problem: Mewtwo EX is wrecking your Keldeo Deck
Solution: Bring in your own Mewtwo EX or Dendenne.
Basically in Pokemon TCG a big part of "techs" are the side deck part of others games, if you played for example Yugioh or Magic i think this part would be easy to you , like others said, a lot of the "tech" spots in the decks are used for helping you against certain decks that beat your deck more easily than they should do in a normal match up.
Typically, I try to build decks so that they can account for all weaknesses, but I try to use cards with uses beyond what they are teched against. For instance, the new Dedenne can put the hurt on Yveltal players (especially ones that get aggressive with energy attachments), but it also has the useful call for family attack that helps with setting up. Druddigon is great against BKEX and other BW Dragons, but it's also a good card in general; doing 90 damage for a DCE is never bad (and at the very least, can serve as a one prize attacker). Mewtwo EX also covers quite a bit of weakness while still maintaining it's stasis as one of the most efficient attackers for any deck.
For me, the big problem is Pyroar. Some decks have built in solutions to it (Garbodor, Empoleon), but others need to rely on tricks (lasers/lysandre/alternate damage). The worst has to be Genesect; who's entire deck is weak to fire in addition to being all fire pokemon. Some will say accept the autoless, but with my luck, I'd end up facing those troublesome decks so if I'm going to play Genesect, I want to have a chance against what is likely to be a big deck. And while I haven't played it much, I think Abamasnow is the best solution. It's cost is more specific, but with a muscle band, you can take out ANY fire weak pokemon and still take out Pyroar with 2 energy.
There are other troublesome pokemon who can shut things down. Some have easy solutions (for safeguard pokemon, you can just run a non EX or 2), while others I wouldn't be too worried about (no one plays Froslass and even if they do, a single Lysandre followed by a raiden knuckle). But really, once you tech against Pyroar, a strong strategy can find ways around other strategies.
For me, the big problem is Pyroar. Some decks have built in solutions to it (Garbodor, Empoleon), but others need to rely on tricks (lasers/lysandre/alternate damage). The worst has to be Genesect; who's entire deck is weak to fire in addition to being all fire pokemon. Some will say accept the autoless, but with my luck, I'd end up facing those troublesome decks so if I'm going to play Genesect, I want to have a chance against what is likely to be a big deck. And while I haven't played it much, I think Abamasnow is the best solution. It's cost is more specific, but with a muscle band, you can take out ANY fire weak pokemon and still take out Pyroar with 2 energy.
There are other troublesome pokemon who can shut things down. Some have easy solutions (for safeguard pokemon, you can just run a non EX or 2), while others I wouldn't be too worried about (no one plays Froslass and even if they do, a single Lysandre followed by a raiden knuckle). But really, once you tech against Pyroar, a strong strategy can find ways around other strategies.
Yeah I know what tech cards I use. Like absol in plasma deck or raiuch with VirGen. But when you guess are planinng for a bigger tournamnet does that change the cards you chose. Do you guys more or less just guess what the meta will be at a tournamnet.
Ironman131 said:
Yeah, you should always try to predict what decks you're going to face at a big tournament. You don't want to play Vir/Gen in a field full of Pyroar. You also don't want to play a tech card that helps against another match up you're not going to face. When guessing what decks will be at a big tournament, go look at the tournament results from other recent tournaments. That's usually what the meta will be based on.
Ironman131 said:
You simply have to predict what will be popular and tech for that. You can see that, in predicting that Yveltal-EX / Garbodor would be very popular in the past US Nationals, many players opted to play Raichu instead of Garbodor in order to gain an advantage. As it turned out, this made the deck more vulnerable to dedicated Pyroar decks, which exploited the prediction of players.
You can sort of go in a cycle, starting off with what deck(s) appear to be strongest going into a tournament. You could just tech against that/those deck(s), and move on, or you could predict that others will try to do that, and build your deck to beat those decks. Or you could go even another step further.
The only real solution is to pick some point along this chain of prediction and just stop. Go with your gut and play something you know is reliable if your predictions aren't perfectly accurate.
What If your deck loses to both Seismitoad EX and Trevenant? Of course Leafeon PLF is a solid tech against Seismitoad EX but there's only one good tech against Trevenant and that's Garbodor to shutdown Forest's Curse with Garbotoxin If you're lucky enough to attach Float Stone to Garbodor before Trevenant is active. :/
Card Slinger J said:
Lysandre wrecks trevanant
Active Abilities have taken a huge nerf from Lysandre and Garbodor. All I have to do is Lysandre. Take out your Donphan/Accelgor and boom it is in the discard. Unless you are using Sacred Ash there isn't a really good way to get stuff out of the discard since Super Rod left the format.
I look for techs that will either counter bad matchups, or perhaps more importantly, give me an advantage in the mirror match. Mewtwo-EX is basically the universal tech because it can be slipped into any deck and always hits hard. If it doesn't hit something on your opponent's field for weakness, you can still expect to X-Ball for a lot and keep a more important Pokemon out of danger.
What's most important to remember is that a tech is not likely to win you the game or even level the playing field against a bad matchup. A single copy of Latias in a Plasma deck won't defeat a Pyroar deck on its own (since they'll usually be running Mewtwo / Charizard), but it will make their play more awkward, and perhaps swing the odds in your favor on a good day.
The bottom line however, is that a good tech should either do heavy damage to what it's expected to counter, if it's not one-shotting it entirely. Alternatevily, it may have an ability like Safeguard which protects it from what your mean Pokemon are weak against.
What's most important to remember is that a tech is not likely to win you the game or even level the playing field against a bad matchup. A single copy of Latias in a Plasma deck won't defeat a Pyroar deck on its own (since they'll usually be running Mewtwo / Charizard), but it will make their play more awkward, and perhaps swing the odds in your favor on a good day.
The bottom line however, is that a good tech should either do heavy damage to what it's expected to counter, if it's not one-shotting it entirely. Alternatevily, it may have an ability like Safeguard which protects it from what your mean Pokemon are weak against.