TCGO and Night March Trash Talking

Raigetsu

Raigetsu

Lightning Trainer
Member
I don't know if it's amazing coincidence or a brilliant twist of fate... but two of my favorite Pokemon are Joltik and Pumpkaboo. Joltik because he's so darng adorable, I requested a friend with a japanese import to make me a Joltik egg so I can run it as my starter in Black/White. Pumpkaboo is a wonderful Pokemon manifestation of Halloween, the one day of the year where i'm all smiles and giddy (and let's be honest, it's adorable).

And as most of you know, Pumpkaboo and Joltik are the driving force behind the Night March deck. Which I've run online since I managed to get the necessary card.
I run a straightforward Entei/Charizard deck, I run a generic Electric deck, a Yvetal deck, a Lugia deck ad a fairy deck I wish would kind of be as amazing as I want it to be. But I always find myself going to Night March because for me it's just so much fun, and it's nice to win with the little critters, and I understand fighting them is a pain. But they're by no means invincible, I've lost to plenty of greninja snipe decks, bats, ariados and semsitoad.

But for the past week, I don't know whether to chalk it up to bad luck or what. I've been attracting the worst kind of players. The trash talkers and unsportsmanlike ones.
"You're lame and your deck sucks"
"With a deck like that you don't even deserve the final kill"
"You must suck if you run that deck"
etc.
etc.

And I'm under the impression theres a way to disable chat, but I don't want to do that because when i run something outside of Night March, I can genuinely have conversations with nice people. I guess I don't entirely know what i expect people to say in regards to this post. I have fun, and I don't want to quit, but the unsportsmanlike-ness of my age group, truly, truly hurts.
 
Personally there's two things that I think when I see trashtalkers: first is that I decide whether to listen to them or not. I recommend you don't listen to them, obviously. The second thing that I like to think is "Can you beat me in a Night March mirror match?". This is probably how you determine the skill of the player. If you beat them, you are more skillful at the game/deck. A mirror match is not a walk in the park.

To be honest, Night March requires a decent amount of skill. For starters, you have to be very good at managing your resources to do well at all. You then have to play everything in the right order and come up with complex schemes to get the damage output you want. You then need to decide whether you should go for the Pumpkaboo/Joltik/Mew-EX power up. And if you're running Mew-EX, you have to know when in the game is the right time to place. You also need to know how when to Sky Return with a Shaymin-EX. Perhaps most importantly, a Night March player needs to know how to win under item lock. I could probably go on forever but what makes Night March a deck that requires skill...
 
You can disable chat on a person by person basis. I can't remember the exact steps without opening up the PTCGO (not an option right now) and trying it, but I think it is relatively simple to do while actually facing a person and I have done it myself.

Unless there are some extenuating circumstances, report them. An example of extenuating circumstances would be when you absentmindedly wishing your opponent "good game" when you know it was a flat out bad game for them; "good game" is very context specific and goes from friendly end game talk to "I am not allowed to use vulgarities here, but you know 'good game' is actually '[insert expletive] you!' due to the circumstances." I have also had oddly censored comments make it look like I must be cussing up a storm. ^^' Still better to report; I'd rather I get muted than know someone is getting away with harassing other players, especially in such petty ways.

Also there is a big issue with people not understanding that different decks use different skills. Usually the most popular deck is the target of such things.
 
Just ignore them. F the haters. When people harass me about my deck it's cause they're mad and don't know how to adapt. If they say stuff to you, just smile (as in, emoticon smile) and continue your curb stomping.
 
I just wanted to give an update, I've accepted that Night March is and will be unpopular and haters gonna hate. I also can't help but notice Girls are much better players/sports than men, as this NEVER happens with girls on my end.

What started off as me complimenting that his energies from Black/White where gorgeous and I wish I could've been around to get them before they where removed from the shop, he proceeded to rip into me. I'll admit the auto correcting him was a bit over the line, but in my defense, I thought he would stop or quit afterward, but then he began to get personal:

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He proceeded to get in a "im sure. thats what makes you worthless" before i dealt him the killing blow. His entire deck consisted of Malmar-EX and nothing but energies and support, so i'm not sure how "original" his deck truly was.

I'm going to look past it and accept that i can't let people like this ruin a fun game for me, especially since I made many ne friends through the game in recent months.
 
I mean, in my opinion: Night March isn't creative, and I honestly don't think it takes much skill to play at all myself. It just bores me, and seeing it run rampant in the format irks me a lot and makes me feel like the game has gone even more bland than when Mewtwo was dominant.

But ya know what? Play it. Play what you want, have fun with it. Love the Pokemon YOU want to love and use a deck based around it. Don't let what other people say get to you about it. Your reason for playing it has meaning to you, and I'm sure it has meaning for others. People get discouraged from playing a deck they like if it gains popularity. Every time I play Yu-Gi-Oh! I try my best to get the Turn 1 Dark Law, and let me tell you that when I do - YGO Players are NOT pleased and I get a lot of whiny players telling me I "settled for the cheap deck" when I not only did that, but did it because I LOVE Elemental Heroes and have been waiting for Dark Law since her appearance in the manga. Omni Heroes and Masked Heroes are my favorites. Getting Top 8 with them is good enough for me.

Take it from someone who hopped on the Zekrom bandwagon after it died down a bit - don't get discouraged. :') The Pokemon TCG may not be as fun as it is for me anymore but the fact that you play it so faithfully and something you love makes it to top tier - makes it worth playing.
 
If you find a deck you love, don't let anyone talk you out of it. Night march is honestly only good at the moment because it's the most consistent thing in the format, and it's definitely not unbeatable. It's just much less prone to dead draw than the rest of us. The return of N and the eventual rotation will end up killing it off, so ignore the people who complain and win some games while it's BDIF. I think the format would be much more varied without it, and i'd love to see it rotate out to bring some freshness in, but that doesn't mean it doesn't take skill to manage properly.
 
That's some pretty classless conduct on the part of your opponent, there. I won't play NM on principle, and I do get frustrated at it's prevalence, but that's no excuse to be a wretch. The internet excels in bringing out the worst in people though. Play on, and ignore the haters!
 
So yeah, this just happened >.> needless to say I was not pleased to be playing this person. I was fine about the Night March portion of the comment, but not the other part. For future reference, how do I report people?
 

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There have been a few decks that people on PTCGO have gotten nasty about, and aside from Shiftry (which was never a legit tournament deck and was short-lived) Night March has been hated on the most. A lot of people don't want to play against the deck, one because it's too powerful for it's own good, and two, it has been highly competitive for a long time. I have played PTCGO since the beginning and it's prevalence is certainly up their with Eel or Darkrai variants. Sure, this makes it easier to run decks that give it a hard time, and I will do that, but when I want to try out something new, NM after NM after NM can provide a tough footing for exploring new ideas. This is a problem from any deck that becomes overplayed.

The ladder on PTCGO does no favors to NM's popularity either. Getting 2,000 flash points in 21 days is really hard to do if you are not winning consistently. While prizes are great, the downside to the ladder is it nudges people into a BDIF or bust mentality even in such a casual setting. You get people that might only have time to play a few matches a day and want to maximize their chance to win so they can get as far up the ladder with the time they have.

If you play NM you just going to have to deal with the hatred. I'm sure for many they are just venting their frustration with the card game as a whole allowing NM to thrive for so long, although they are venting in the wrong way.
 
ProZlockie said:
So yeah, this just happened >.> needless to say I was not pleased to be playing this person. I was fine about the Night March portion of the comment, but not the other part. For future reference, how do I report people?
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You can report 'em by clicking on the icon next to their comment and selecting the "report player" option.

If you forget to or if the match ends before you have a chance to due to them conceding the match, just just write down their username and submit a report ticket via the main site's support page.
 
I myself am a bit puzzled by the hatred for Night March. Not entirely though, because whatever is dominant will be hated whether it deserves it or not, just as it will have advocates whether it deserves it or not. If I have to choose between being

  • steamrolled - losing where the opponent is practically playing solitaire because their offensive setup just doesn't care what I do, its going to push through and take six Prizes before me.
versus

  • insta-lock - where at best I get a single turn before at least one key resource the designers have made integral to winning in all but matches against insta-lock decks are denied me by my opponent's efforts, and usually two or three such resources, so once again it is practically solitaire as I draw and pass or take an action but am unable to attack and then on the opponent's turn they can effectively "undo" what I just did.
When choosing between those two, I'll take being steamrolled. Except most of the time I am not being steamrolled by Night March. Maybe I am just facing poor builds, players, or both. Maybe I am abnormally lucky. It isn't that I win all the time because I don't. XD I just don't run most of the instalocks and I don't run most of the steamrollers. I run decks that tend to be able to deal with Night March by making careful plays. Even when the match-up is unfavorable, it isn't an autoloss.

If need be I can outline why steamroll and instalock decks are not fun to face and how they seem to operate in a manner contrary to the "Spirit of the Game" that the-powers-that-be once liked to celebrate. Get rid of these decks and yeah, then I'll worry about Night March and Vengeance/Bee Revenge decks... unless their absence allows something else to be even faster and more reliable. Which to be fair, we do still have. There is a lot wrong with the game...

Oh, but focusing on the PTCGO, at least when my opponent is steamrolling me, unless they take pains to cripple whatever I am trying to setup (such as by spamming Lysandre), I can still work towards Daily Challenges.
 
It's ok. Haters gonna hate. There's no point arguing with them. If they're going to be sore losers, then that's their problem.
i.e. don't take it personally. It's a game, so have fun! :)
 
Kind of silly people are just hating on night march only, why not all the meta decks? I understand nm is used alot but that reflects the tournament meta as its everywhere. I'd rather learn how to play against it and win at an event then never play against it and get creamed by it over and over because i dont know how to counter its plays.

Hate on toad more instead! :D
 
Heh... I'm a VGC player mainly, but I get that stuff all the time. In VGC 14/15 I played Perish song, which is a very powerful/annoying strat, and the hate was real. I just got a think skin, and then just had fun back. They never bothered me. It's now got to the point that I call my flat mate over, and just laugh at the utter nonsense some of these people sprout out. And its gotten worse in VGC 16, with the format how it is. Its the anonymity of the internet that makes people like that. When you face them irl, they might say some stuff, but they won't say stuff like that straight to your face.
 
Hippydude said:
Kind of silly people are just hating on night march only, why not all the meta decks? I understand nm is used alot but that reflects the tournament meta as its everywhere. I'd rather learn how to play against it and win at an event then never play against it and get creamed by it over and over because i dont know how to counter its plays.

Hate on toad more instead! :D
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It's probably because Night March is really popular at the moment, and are defeating a lot of decks people like. If Toad was this popular, it'd definitely get hated on.

(I must say, I'm really not liking those Hammers atm...)
 
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