New Year Round-up: 10 Lessons from 2017 (Part 2)

Continuing our series on the big lessons from 2017, we’re now going to dig deeper into the year, finding important lessons about playing, deck-building, and metagaming that are relevant to our growth as competitors. If you would like to see the first part of my year round-up, please click here; otherwise, please enjoy my last premium program article of 2017!

Lesson Six: Don’t Focus Solely on One Format

[cardimg name=”Sky Field” set=”Roaring Skies” no=”89″ align=”right” c=”custom”]Zoroark-GX and Sky Field is a potent combination only available in Expanded.[/cardimg]

The event: Standard and Expanded are now a 50 / 50 split throughout the season

The lesson: Focus your testing to avoid being type-cast to one format

I’ve actually touched on this idea before, but with Regionals year-round, players are given numerous ways to show off their skills aside from just Internationals or Worlds. From my “Runner-up Reflections” article:

“Worlds is an incredibly cool thing to be a part of, and day two is even cooler if you qualify. But as many of you head into that 2017-2018 season right around the corner, I would encourage you to aim higher than a mere Worlds invite. The obvious conclusion you may get from that is “do well at Worlds,” but you can actually make incredible accomplishments throughout the whole year now. Between the serious prestige and cash prizes associated with Regional Championships and International Championships, the world’s best players are now coming to you no matter where your next big event may be.”

In the same vein of finding major success in venues outside of Worlds, I’m also noticing that some personalities could reasonably be considered “type-cast” players. By that I mean they are much more at home in Standard or Expanded, and for whatever reason perform better in their format of choice. You might find that this also applies to you, especially if you’ve noticed all of your success coming from one format and not the other. As an old-school player who just takes all the formats as they come his way, I personally don’t see myself as a specialist, and I have honestly done more or less the same in both formats. However, I can certainly imagine a few reasons why:

• A player has a pet deck they are really good with. You can see the “pet deck” symptom split either in favor of Expanded — where far more classic archetypes are legal — or in favor of Standard — where several decks unplayable in Expanded become top-tier.
• Expanded complements different skills than Standard. While both are fundamentally the same game, Expanded rewards players who are good at “reading” their opponents, similar to poker pros picking up on body language. The king of this trope is [card name=”Ghetsis” set=”Plasma Freeze” no=”101″ c=”name”][/card], a somewhat risky turn one play over a [card name=”Brigette” set=”BREAKthrough” no=”134″ c=”name”][/card] unless you’re reasonably confident you can steal a game. Yet Expanded also opens up a whole world of oppressive lock decks not available in Standard, such as hard deckout (Durant, [card name=”Sylveon-GX” set=”Guardians Rising” no=”92″ c=”name”][/card]), soft deckout ([card name=”Wailord-EX” set=”Primal Clash” no=”38″ c=”name”][/card]), and hybrid builds ([card name=”Sableye” set=”Dark Explorers” no=”62″ c=”name”][/card]  / [card name=”Garbodor” set=”Dragons Exalted” no=”54″ c=”name”][/card]). In Standard’s favor, wars of attrition are much more common than the slug-fests you’ve come to know and love from Night March, Turbo Turtles, and Archie’s [card name=”Blastoise” set=”Boundaries Crossed” no=”31″ c=”name”][/card] — a point which I’ll address later.
• Card ownership — that is, people just don’t own enough old stuff! While this may be relevant to what you see at local League Cups (especially Expanded ones) I’ll be assuming that this is irrelevant to an audience paying to read my article.

Considering those three reasons, the first one is in my eyes the most justifiable reason for why one player might be “type-cast” into one format over the other. However, this is a poor place to be. Usually the film and TV-consuming public consider “type-cast” acting to be a poor place to be. This is due to the fact that the actor in question is trapped in a limited set of roles, and can’t obtain the sort of widespread acclaim across genres like Tom Hanks can.

So how do you get to be a Pokemon Trading Card Game version of Tom Hanks? Test thoroughly in both formats, and look to identify the reasons why you might struggle with one format more than another. This doesn’t mean you have to know every possible matchup Expanded has to offer, but you should at least know all of the major cards from Black and White through Crimson Invasion. Similarly, when translating a deck from one format to the other, know that some important elements will not be available in Standard. Finally, if you still find that one format evades you, or that you simply do not have the time to plan carefully for one format that might make up only 20% of your season’s schedule, it might help to find a good tier one deck and stick with it. I would advise testing the formats relative to their importance to your schedule — not necessarily a perfect 50 / 50 split between the two.

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Lesson Seven: Metagaming is Difficult at Large Events

[cardimg name=”Giratina” set=”XY Black Star Promos” no=”XY184″ align=”right” c=”custom”]Deciding if Giratina is worth a spot is difficult.[/cardimg]

The event: Local tournaments still matter, but not quite as much.

The lesson: Metagaming’s importance has shifted.

It was not until the later parts of 2017 where we began to see a complete shift in the balance between small local events and large regional tournaments. A whole category of mid-level events, State Championships, had been removed in the prior tournament year, and with this transition came a zig-zagging tournament structure defined by concurrent schedules of small and big tournaments, rather than a seasonal build-up culminating in progressively more important events.

This shift in seasonal structure has many implications on your own competitive pursuits, but if we’re talking about pure strategy, the biggest implications concern metagaming. Otherwise known as a game within a game, metagaming is when you change your decisions based on what your opponents are either using or likely to use. It should come as no surprise that metagaming’s importance changes for a season that looks like this:

• 12 little tournaments
• Two medium-sized, 100-person State Championships
• Two 500+ person Regionals

As opposed to one like this:

• Eight little tournaments
• Four 500+ person Regionals

Similar to part one’s discussion on big tournaments, the theme here stays consistent that the larger the tournament, the more generalized your list choices should be. Therefore, it makes sense that more people are making more general choices for more events! The unintended consequence of the changes to our tournament structure is that players are struggling to approach their local events in the right way. Rarely do I actually hear players say, “I expect a lot of such-and-such deck, which is why I will use such-and-such deck or tech at today’s League Cup!” Instead, you’ll commonly see carbon copies of whatever the most recent successful iteration of an archetype were. This isn’t to bash the process, and in fact sometimes netdecking is not as bad as it sounds. But there is still a lack of real interaction with all aspects of the game successful players need.

Fear not though, because metagaming is not a dead art, and in fact can be more valuable now than it was in years prior. Players making fewer and fewer decisions targeted at countering local competition can be used in your favor, as that essentially functions as free knowledge. In turn, predicting an opponent’s next move becomes easier, and overall threats in your area become much easier to size up and counter with proper techs.

A prime example of good teching in the local scene would be [card name=”Giratina” set=”XY Black Star Promos” no=”XY184″ c=”name”][/card] Promo, the scourge of BREAK Pokemon decks everywhere. At a Regional Championship with 1,000 people and a very high bar to advance to day two, I would not blame you for wishing to cut the Giratina Promo in exchange for more draw or search cards. After all, if you dead draw, you’ll auto lose against pretty much everything, right? But in a local League Cup with only 30 – 40 Masters, if you expect that playing the Giratina Promo would result in “auto wins” against at least three of those players, suddenly its value goes way up, and may perhaps justify the loss in consistency or resultant bad starts. This is doubly true when you consider players are not trying as hard to counter the local meta as they once were, so your techs are less likely to be responded with “counter-counters.” Normally counter-counters are less helpful, less effective, and more likely to become dead weight than regular techs, which is solid justification for why you might not be seeing a single copy of [card name=”Silent Lab” set=”Primal Clash” no=”140″ c=”name”][/card] targeted against your Giratina Promo anytime soon.

Keep on metagaming at those League Cups. Metagaming is the active choice to interact with your competition, and if you refuse to metagame when appropriate, you’ll sink to stagnation.

Lesson Eight: Take Advantage of Online Resources!

The event: Online resources are expanding in ways we haven’t imagined.

The lesson: Familiarize yourself with everything, while investing your time/resources wisely.

Thanks to larger attendance, better media exposure, and bigger cash prizes, competitive Pokemon is becoming a much bigger deal these days! That means the resources are changing too, so it’s important to be aware of all the valuable information at your disposal.

Premium article websites: Websites that charge a fee in exchange for advice and decks from accomplished players. Since you’re already here presumably as a paying member, you’ve place a lot of trust in us and I thank you for that trust.

Free article websites: Like the above, but free. There isn’t as much of a financial limit on how many of these you can absorb, but the quality varies much more dramatically between various free articles. They also very rarely have the same ability to attract as many varying personalities and opinions in contrast to a paid site. Using my own free blog as an example, it goes into an incredible amount of depth and of course produces quality content, but it will never have a dozen international players all giving their perspectives all at once the way a paid site does.

Streamed matches: The official tournament games where competitors are in real-world tournaments facing off against one-another.

YouTube video makers: Individual channel hosts who play and talk about the Pokemon Trading Card Game.

Coaches: People who “tutor” the game to newer or younger players.

Rules and Resources: The official rules and resources of the game, found here. Includes the floor rules, tournament structures, judge procedure, a scan of the rulebook, and penalty guidelines.

Okay, so that’s a lot of stuff — awesome! However, for the thousands of videos , articles, and web pages out there, there is only so much content you can consume in a day. So With 2017 being a stand-out year in the history of competitive Trading Card Game content, let’s operate on some guidance principles when choosing what or what not to spend your time on…

•  Take that link I just gave you for “Rules and Resources” and bookmark it. Bookmark it on your phone, on your laptop… whatever you’re using to read this article, just have it immediately available to you. As proud as I am of my content on PokeBeach and other sites, our advice is not the foundational rules and competitive structure under which you operate. Not only does it include a handy PDF of the rulebook as mentioned above — you’ll see all of the important details of your day-to-day life in a tournament. You’ll know how many rounds you should play, your rights as a player, and what will normally happen if you make game play errors.
• My personal favorite Youtube videos to watch are deck profiles. That may be a bit hypocritical since I personally enjoy making videos where I’m just playing the game, but if we are thinking strictly about instant competitive value, then the explanation of lists tends to have more impact.
• There are a ton of streamed matches at all levels, but watching multiple games of your favorite players can be really enlightening. You can learn their general approaches to matches, the way they think about the game, and ultimately get into their minds. That’s a lot harder to do when you’re just binge-watching a tournament, which will mean getting exposed to much more inconsistent styles of play.
• The more you focus on extracting information out of content, the better you’ll get at consuming content. This doesn’t just mean you’re a fast reader, but are picky about the content you read and watch, are focused for the reason you’re reading, and have a good eye for finding the main point of a post or video. So if you are only interested in reading articles to get better, you might benefit from skipping out on the social pieces.
• Coaching is a less common niche resource, but can be very helpful if you have some isolated help you need. Whether it’s unlocking a whole approach to the game, or just getting some quality testing against a quality opponent, developing a coach-student relationship can be really helpful. Running anywhere from $20 – $40 per hour, these sorts of one-on-one tutoring sessions become almost as expensive as entry fees, so factor that into any decision you make to include them in your portfolio of resource usage.

Unfortunately I cannot give you an exact breakdown of time spent on each activity, or even if you should use a particular set of resources –excluding the Rules and Resources/Compendium, of course. Still, I hope that by seeing these resources the same way I view them, you can make better decisions in what you consume and how often you consume it next year.

Lesson Nine: Heal and Deal Two-shots

[cardimg name=”Acerola” set=”Burning Shadows” no=”112″ align=”right” c=”custom”]Acerola allows players to reuse attackers and keep up the pressure.[/cardimg]

The event: 2HKOs rule the current Standard Format

The lesson: Games are now much more attrition-based than they have been in years, so build your lists around that fact.

Rounding off our list of topics will be our most strategically substantive point yet: the evolution of attacking in 2017. Starting with the dominance of Yveltal-EX / [card name=”Garbodor” set=”BREAKpoint” no=”57″ c=”name”][/card] at the 2016 European International Championship, but not quite culminating until [card name=”Decidueye-GX” set=”Sun and Moon” no=”12″ c=”name”][/card]/[card name=”Vileplume” set=”Ancient Origins” no=”3″ c=”name”][/card]s rise in the following months did we see a major shift in the game. Although huge Attacks are still hugely important to both formats, Standard is now largely defined by multiple two-shot Knock Outs between bulky attackers — usually Pokemon-GX.

Now that the 2017-2018 Standard is in full force, we have seen several cards rise in prominence, either to reinforce the two-shot meta or to find some way to break free of it. It may be about a month too soon for me to start broadcasting thoughts and predictions about Ultra Prism, but I am comfortable analyzing which of the following critical cards will continue “dogging” Standard.

Note: I will be referencing cards listed in our Ultra Prism translations post

• [card name=”Acerola” set=”Burning Shadows” no=”112″ c=”name”][/card]: From its release until now, Acerola has become a common inclusion in the Standard format, and was just recently featured in Michael Pramawat’s Mempis-winning [card name=”Zoroark-GX” set=”Shining Legends” no=”53″ c=”name”][/card] / [card name=”Lycanroc-GX” set=”Guardians Rising” no=”74″ c=”name”][/card] build. I expect it to continue to be commonly-played, but it may diminish in playability if Garchomp or Dusk Mane Necrozma-GX become popular attackers in BKT-on. There will continue to be more efficient attackers that require less setup, so its place in February’s metagame is uncertain; however, it is certainly worth keeping an eye on. The more players are simply Knocking Out stuff, as opposed to feverishly calculating damage totals, the worse time you’ll have with Acerola.
• [card name=”Max Potion” set=”BREAKpoint” no=”103″ c=”name”][/card]: Max Potion will more or less follow the fate of Acerola but is a slightly harder one-of to justify because [card name=”Tapu Lele-GX” set=”Guardians Rising” no=”60″ c=”name”][/card] cannot fetch it directly with the Wonder Tag Ability — you’d need [card name=”Skyla” set=”BREAKthrough” no=”148″ c=”name”][/card] to do that. Even then its role as an Acerola replacement goes up or down depending on how badly you need to preserve the Energy you would otherwise discard. Considering being able to attack is a key element of the two-shot war that defines Standard right now, I’d say Max Potion’s overall stock is much lower than Acerola’s, especially after Memphis and heading into Ultra Prism.
• High [card name=”Guzma” set=”Burning Shadows” no=”115″ c=”name”][/card] counts: I expect decks in general to keep on packing a high count of the card no matter what happens with Ultra Prism. That’s because there is no clearer way around taking two-hit Knock Outs than to target lower-HP Benched  Pokemon. Sometimes this even amounts to taking out an undamaged Tapu Lele-GX, creating a domino effect that results in an easier game to close out.
• [card name=”Puzzle of Time” set=”BREAKpoint” no=”109″ c=”name”][/card]: Currently the best recovery card in Standard, I anticipate most Zoroark-GX variants to keep on running four copies of Puzzle of Time. In forcing two-shots as well as getting around them, being able to reuse your full arsenal of Trainer cards is a monumentally valuable tool. Because so few decks can as elegantly fit and draw into Puzzles, I doubt anything else will be running them en masse.

All of these cards are important to the two-shot dynamic we have in the current format, and I expect them all to at least be somewhat played for the next few months. If any of them see a sizeable change in play, it should either be players cutting Max Potion for other cards or running a higher Guzma count (if they do not already run four).

Conclusion: The 10^th Big Event of 2017

The event: PokeBeach.com had an awesome year, and it’s thanks to you guys!

The lesson: I need to keep improving my content so that it can be the best possible.

The same way I’m constantly looking for ways to improve my game, I’m also looking to provide you the strongest, most helpful competitive Pokemon Trading Card Game content possible. This “year in review” concept was different, so I’d love to hear what you thought about this two-part series over on the forums. And if you have a more specific question, please do not hesitate to ask me — I’m here to help.

Thanks again for an incredible year, and I look forward to sharing several more articles with you in the near future. Cheers!

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