I'm...well, I suppose the best way of putting it is that I'm a "Switch". I flipflop between decks that are incredibly aggressive and decks that take the slow and steady wins the race approach. For instance, up until Emerging Powers (when I took a break until the release of Noble Victories for reasons unrelated to pokemon), I'd been playing a very aggressive variant of Reshiram Typhlosion, which I'd been piloting since the release of BW1. After returning, I felt discontent with playing a deck that relied on setting up and then steamrolling through the opponent with brute force, and started spending the majority of my time testing and building decks such as The Truth and Gothic Lock. Recently, I've gone back to testing more Aggro decks; Lantrik and Zoroark Rush specifically.
To relate this back to the discussion, I tend to play it more safe than risky; when it comes to attacking, I want to guarantee that I can put damage on the board; attacks that require flips to do damage are unnaceptable to me, and I'll never touch Vaniluxe, Audino, Sharpedo or any others like that because of it (regardless of it being an approximately 95% chance of successfully using Vaniluxe's attack, I can't stomach that 5% chance of it not working). Unless the situation was as bad as a fully charged Zekrom against my Raichu, with no other pokemon on either side, I wouldn't go for the Iron Tail; I'd Thunderbolt and hope to recover from the return KO.
On the other hand, I'm quite happy to allow an element of chance in my trainer cards; Dual Ball, Super Scoop Up and Pokemon Reversal are all cards I'll happily play. I feel that even though whiffing on these cards is a heavy blow, it isn't as crippling as your turn being made invalid by your attack failing. You can always get it back with a Junk Arm, or play a different Trainer or Supporter.
Another thing that I think really influences my playstyle is that I'll never play the "best" deck. Once Reshiphlosion started becoming a big deck, I really didn't want to be piloting it anymore, and that was really the recent I dropped it and picked up something else; playing something that everyone knows and understands, and has a good idea of what to do against, means that you are really relying on your deckbuilding and your luck. Playing a lower tier deck gives you more breathing room, and more space to make the deck your own. Pre-HGSS (which was a long time ago now) for example, I played Leafeon/Hippowdon Lv.X, which used a combination of resource denial using Hippowdon's Power and a crude form of Acceration and decent damage using Leafeon's attacks (along with Hippowdon RR's own attack to get Fighting Energy back into play), which would catch many players off guard. It was fairly clunky, but it worked well enough.
Then, HGSS came along, and I scrapped it for a Typhlosion Prime energy denial deck, using Nidoqueen RR as both a backup attacker and tank. Spiritomb AR, Ninetales HG and BTS made the deck run quite smoothly, and I used it to great success all the way up to the HG-on format, which is where I jumped onto Reshiphlosion.
Now that we're on the brink of the EX format, I'm building and testing decks for the format coming, using stuff like Empoleon/Terrakion or Zoroark/Weavile, or Regigigas EX/Kyurem/Reuniclus/Vileplume and Gothitelle with Jirachi, Shaymin and Mewtwo EX to try and find the best of both worlds, and be able to play with both.
In most respects, I am a safe player, and I don't like taking risks during games unless I can't see other options (or if the rewards for taking that risk are quite high, like a first turn donk using a flippy attack). I like my consistency cards, and I like shuffle draw over discard draw. I don't like needing to choose between loosing potential resources and getting more outs.
So...yeah.
To relate this back to the discussion, I tend to play it more safe than risky; when it comes to attacking, I want to guarantee that I can put damage on the board; attacks that require flips to do damage are unnaceptable to me, and I'll never touch Vaniluxe, Audino, Sharpedo or any others like that because of it (regardless of it being an approximately 95% chance of successfully using Vaniluxe's attack, I can't stomach that 5% chance of it not working). Unless the situation was as bad as a fully charged Zekrom against my Raichu, with no other pokemon on either side, I wouldn't go for the Iron Tail; I'd Thunderbolt and hope to recover from the return KO.
On the other hand, I'm quite happy to allow an element of chance in my trainer cards; Dual Ball, Super Scoop Up and Pokemon Reversal are all cards I'll happily play. I feel that even though whiffing on these cards is a heavy blow, it isn't as crippling as your turn being made invalid by your attack failing. You can always get it back with a Junk Arm, or play a different Trainer or Supporter.
Another thing that I think really influences my playstyle is that I'll never play the "best" deck. Once Reshiphlosion started becoming a big deck, I really didn't want to be piloting it anymore, and that was really the recent I dropped it and picked up something else; playing something that everyone knows and understands, and has a good idea of what to do against, means that you are really relying on your deckbuilding and your luck. Playing a lower tier deck gives you more breathing room, and more space to make the deck your own. Pre-HGSS (which was a long time ago now) for example, I played Leafeon/Hippowdon Lv.X, which used a combination of resource denial using Hippowdon's Power and a crude form of Acceration and decent damage using Leafeon's attacks (along with Hippowdon RR's own attack to get Fighting Energy back into play), which would catch many players off guard. It was fairly clunky, but it worked well enough.
Then, HGSS came along, and I scrapped it for a Typhlosion Prime energy denial deck, using Nidoqueen RR as both a backup attacker and tank. Spiritomb AR, Ninetales HG and BTS made the deck run quite smoothly, and I used it to great success all the way up to the HG-on format, which is where I jumped onto Reshiphlosion.
Now that we're on the brink of the EX format, I'm building and testing decks for the format coming, using stuff like Empoleon/Terrakion or Zoroark/Weavile, or Regigigas EX/Kyurem/Reuniclus/Vileplume and Gothitelle with Jirachi, Shaymin and Mewtwo EX to try and find the best of both worlds, and be able to play with both.
In most respects, I am a safe player, and I don't like taking risks during games unless I can't see other options (or if the rewards for taking that risk are quite high, like a first turn donk using a flippy attack). I like my consistency cards, and I like shuffle draw over discard draw. I don't like needing to choose between loosing potential resources and getting more outs.
So...yeah.