BREAK Evolution: Taking a Break from Tournaments While Staying Productive

[cardimg name=”Beheeyem BREAK” set=”XY Black Star Promos” no=”XY135″ align=”right” c=”custom”]Did someone say BREAK Pokemon?[/cardimg]

The Pokemon Trading Card Game is a constant affair, but for many of its individual participants, circumstances can change and one may not be able to play as competitively as they once did. For these players, this means a significant decrease in tournament attendance over a lengthy period of time. However, you don’t have to set yourself up for a poor performance in your initial return to the competitive scene; in fact, you can very well win your first tournament after a year’s absence!

In today’s article, I’d like to help you subscribers who are presently or will soon be inactive in the competitive tournament scene. We will go over the current structure of the tournament system, the types of breaks you could take, factors and considerations you should take into account before taking a break, how to go about making your break productive, and ending with a list of dos and don’ts related to your inevitable return.

1. The Seasonal Merry-go-round

It’s no exaggeration to say that the current tournament season is a grind. Between League Challenges, League Cups, Regional Championships, Special Events, and International Championships, you could easily spend every weekend playing Pokemon if you’re serious about getting your invite. This is doubly true if you want to be among the top-ranked players of your region to gain extra travel stipends and an automatic day two invite to Worlds, which requires constantly increasing your Championship Point count to stay competitive with your rivals.

Granted, choosing which direction to take your own season in depends heavily on your early performances. Still, the silver living of a year-round system such as ours is that you can score great achievements while not necessarily going to every tournament. While your early results may not seem enough to qualify you for contention for that day two invite, you can still make the most of the time you do have to play even if you take time off from competitive tournaments.

2. Types of Breaks

Not all breaks are equal — different types can have different impacts on your competitive future. Listed below are the two most common kinds of breaks you see, alongside a third kind of quasi-break worth discussing.

Months-long Break

Most competitive players simply don’t take a break, but in case you do, then this is the most likely thing that will happen. Either you had a great start to the season and just opted to coast until the World Championship, or you started poorly and decided to hop off of the seasonal merry-go-round. Regardless, the defining trait here is that you are out of the season for a portion, but not entirely.

Players with more modest or targeted goals (e.g. “get invited to the World Championships” or “win a Regional”) can function fine with this sort of break; however, players with more strenuous aspirations, such as staying in the top tier of their rating zone, are essentially unable to take a months-long break.

Season-long Break

Several players take an entire season off — and sometimes even more than that. I find that players doing this are simply distracted or dissatisfied with the game, and may want to quit. However, in the rare case where you are a player who wants to keep playing but has other time commitments, you will be facing an uphill battle to stay fresh whenever you return to competitive play.

Focused Season

Rather than taking a break, you can just focus your season on a specific level of tournament. If your goals are fame and fortune, then maybe you’re playing in nothing but Regional and International Championships; if you’re simply interested in obtaining a Worlds invite, or being the top dog of your locals, you might just play in League Cups and one or two Regionals. While this is not a break in the traditional sense, it is a sort of abstinence from Pokemon you don’t see from the most dedicated players.

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3. When to Take a Break: Factors and Considerations

By now you’ve figured out that the decision to take a break depends entirely on your personal circumstances. To what extent should you “fast” from Pokemon? How long should you be gone? These are questions I can’t answer for you, but I do have some pieces of advice to help you make the best decisions about briefly escaping the tournament season…

Reasoning

Making any decision brings consequences, so to get the best consequences, you need to be clear about the reasoning behind your decisions. Are you taking a break because you constantly lose to better players and need to take some time off to get better? That’s fine, and you might benefit from a bit of in-depth practice with a trusted mentor, but that would probably not justify skipping more than a few tournaments in a season. Perhaps you’ve picked up a new hobby and don’t want to treat your efforts in Pokemon as something half-baked? In that instance, you would probably simply skip whatever small number of tournaments you need to in order to juggle both hobbies.

In dissecting these issues, I try very hard to discern actual reasons from speculative reasons. Both of the above examples are major, substantive reasons to weigh the costs and benefits of League Cups that cost you a minimum of $10 each, Regionals that cost a minimum of $40, and travel/time investments in the hundreds — if not thousands — of dollars (more on that later). However, countless players who still enjoy the game trick themselves into thinking they need to take a break, only to hop back in because they got the urge to rejoin the competitive scene. When you do this, you are threatening your chances of succeeding. This practice is common among college freshmen who are convinced they “don’t have time” for the game anymore, only to realize when it’s too late that they actually had a lot more time than they thought. The key is this: simply don’t limit yourself until you know there is a solid reason for doing so.

Resources

Speaking of money and time, you might have the drive, but not the resources, to make a full season’s competition sustainable. Normally a lack of resources isn’t too much of a problem — you simply work around your limitations and make the most of what you’ve got. For those of you with busy work or school schedules in particular, try to practice as intelligently and efficiently as you can, so that your results at the few events you can attend will be fruitful. Many of my competitive friends who are strapped for cash or time will adjust and focus their seasons on specific goals. Those without much cash will probably stick to local events and maybe a couple of big tournaments, while more time-crunched players may focus on bigger events and save League Cup weekends for other endeavors.

Reality

Finally, your decision might be fueled by a realization bigger than reasoning or resources. Maybe you’re just not that good at the game and trying to come to grips with it, or perhaps you’re just not having fun anymore. These are two different realities that need to be addressed in different ways. If you are finding you don’t enjoy the game, and there is no way to remedy the conditions which have caused you to fall out of love with playing, then this is really more of a reason to quit than it is to just “take a break” — so in this case, you’d be best to take a permanent or long-term leave from the Pokemon TCG. If, however, you find your skills are not up to par with the many thousands of people who attend competitive tournaments, then you might not even have to take a recess from playing at all. Maybe all you would need in this instance is more practice!

Whatever the reality is, you need to face it head-on, as well as understand what it means for you. Only actually quit if your realization is an absolute deal-breaker, but stick around and try to make things work under other circumstances.

4. Tools for a Productive Break

So, you’re already on your break, or have decided you’re about ready to take it. What do you do now to make that “break” as valuable as possible?

Grind, Grind, Grind…

[cardimg name=”Wobbuffet” set=”EX Legend Maker” no=”28″ align=”right” c=”custom”]… grind.[/cardimg]

Simply playing games isn’t the essence of playtesting; it’s about maintaining sharp skills and the ability to handle all of your format’s biggest obstacles. The vast majority of successful players I know credit their success not to some innate talent, but to dogged dedication to grinding out important matchups. Maybe they’re just being modest, but I would bet most of them are being honest in that assessment.

The grind doesn’t have to end even if you’ve taken a step back from the competitive circuit. You can still go to league, meet up and practice with your friends, and of course play hundreds of games on the Pokemon Trading Card Game Online. Granted, no amount of grinding can perfectly duplicate the unique challenges of a tournament environment, but by having familiarity with board states, decks, and metagames, even a player who hasn’t attended events in months could swoop in and win a Regional Championship.

Test Bolder Ideas

This game gives us ample opportunity to exercise our creativity. Unfortunately, the constant cycle of tournaments makes it difficult to bring exciting, new deck concepts to events when your invite or top rankings status might be on the line.

Naturally, then, players who are skipping out on an entire segment of a season should enjoy this opportunity to experiment with decks, techs, or engines they otherwise would never consider. This is less about “playing to favorites” than it is about being on the lookout for a great idea you might have missed while testing more mainstream decks. Inactive players are far less likely to be plugged into the competitive “hivemind,” and can oftentimes return with some format-shattering innovations.

Practice in the Present, Not the Future

Because players who are on break are not playing for any tangible results, it may be tempting for them to start dealing out games full of proxies for cards that were just released in Japan. This actually is part of a larger issue of whether to test unreleased cards, but regardless, my answer is to stick to the current format and avoid playtesting unreleased cards. The biggest benefit to sticking to current cards is that usually, your playtesting partners will be more ideal: their lists will be better, their skill with the decks will be stronger, and you’ll be playing in a format that exists in the competitive scene in real time. Just as important is the fact that your testing stands a better chance of applying to future metagames, especially when it involves long-lasting archetypes like [card name=”Volcanion” set=”Steam Siege” no=”25″ c=”name”][/card], [card name=”Vikavolt” set=”Sun and Moon” no=”52″ c=”name”][/card], or [card name=”Greninja BREAK” set=”BREAKpoint” no=”41″ c=”name”][/card].

Finally, some cards slated for worldwide release could see their appearance frustrated by unforeseeable circumstances. For example, several players incorrectly assumed that Tapu Lele SM45 would be a near-broken card in the Expanded format due to its Magical Swap attack in combination with decks like [card name=”Garbodor” set=”Guardians Rising” no=”51″ c=”name”][/card] / [card name=”Necrozma-GX” set=”Burning Shadows” no=”63″ c=”name”][/card] or [card name=”Trevenant BREAK” set=”BREAKpoint” no=”66″ c=”name”][/card]. Unfortunately, this card has had its release seriously delayed even as of the time of this writing. This means that anyone who spent tons of time testing decks with Tapu Lele might have a bunch of wasted testing results!

Stay in the Loop

This topic deserves an article of its own. However, staying in the loop is especially critical for on-break players because they are at the greatest risk of being disconnected from the latest metagame developments.

As I briefly mentioned earlier, there are some players who seem to always be ahead of the metagame curve, constantly planning the next hot deck or tech. However, there are many more players who are in line with — or even behind — the metagame, making them vulnerable to much worse showings upon returning to tournaments than their skill level might suggest. Since the Pokemon TCG is such a metagame-reliant hobby, losing touch with recent changes could make a player’s post-break return quite difficult.

The manner in which you address this problem depends on the amount of connections you already enjoy. If you are already a well-connected player but are about to take a break, be sure to keep talking with your friends about the game during your time off. Heck, maybe even contribute some good ideas of your own to keep your testing circle on top of things! However, if you are temporarily leaving the game and didn’t have any significant contacts in the competitive scene, consider your break a time to start building that network. I’m not advocating that you pester every well-known player, but feel free to shoot a quick message to one or two, or take advantage of public spaces like social media or forums in order to pick their brains a bit. You’ll find that while sometimes there simply aren’t things these players will want to disclose, there are many more pieces of insight they will freely and happily offer you!

You might be out of the tournament scene, but you certainly aren’t out of the community. As long as you remember that, you can still stay reasonably on top of the latest trends without playing in tournaments yourself.

Getting Back on the Ride: Dos and Don’ts

You’ve been gone from the game for a month, a year, or even more, but are now back in the fold and ready to dominate your next big event. What should you do, or not do, in order to achieve that goal? To close out today’s article, here are some bite-sized suggestions to make your return easier:

[cardimg name=”Oricorio” set=”Guardians Rising” no=”56″ align=”right” c=”custom”]”What’s this card do?”[/cardimg]

• DO read and remember what each marginally playable card does. A lot of success in this game comes down to knowledge, and the quickest way to put yourself ahead of your competitors is to know your threats. Imagine for a moment you’ve been out of the game for a year, but were a very successful Night March player after the first couple years of it being legal. Night March, a deck which depends entirely on Pokemon being in the discard pile, now faces numerous cards that threaten its ability to either put or keep those Pokemon in the discard pile. While I wouldn’t blame you for wanting to play the deck again after returning from your hiatus, it would be a serious mistake to not have at least educated yourself about all these new, dangerous cards.
• DO go over your general understanding of the current metagame, decks, and formats with friends. Even if you fancy yourself a great player, if you’ve been gone from the game, your on-the-field friends will often be miles ahead of you in terms of the latest changes. Be a little humble and take this as a chance to relearn the lay of the land.
• DON’T think everything will be the same as before. Pokemon TCG is a game that tests many skills, including tactics, strategy, anticipation, creativity, and mathematical applications. Various formats will weigh these skills differently, so if you have been inactive for a while, few cards with strong effects in an older era can be equally applied to a new era.
• DON’T forget to play a few games physically if you’ve only been testing online. In 2015, I took a short break from Pokemon tournaments in order to study for an important exam. While the exam was my central focus during this time, I occasionally logged games in PTCGO in order to test for the World Championships. My mistake was not playing nearly enough physical games, which certainly affected my results at Worlds. I certainly did everything a bit slower that event, or at least less efficiently.
• DON’T forget to have your cards and gear in order! Players who aren’t constantly playing are far less likely to fail spot-checks on all of the most basic things, such as uhhh… cards. It only adds that much more stress to your grand return to be missing a playset of [card name=”Tapu Lele-GX” set=”Guardians Rising” no=”60″ c=”name”][/card], or even missing damage counters and status markers. Make life easier on yourself, because no matter how long it’s been, returning from a break requires a bit of an adjustment.

Conclusion

Being “the very best, like no one ever was” is a tough task, but it’s even tougher when life gets in the way. Nevertheless, the tips and tricks offered above should make your return from a long period of inactivity much simpler, or help prepare you for a future period of inactivity.

Got any questions about today’s content? Maybe have a specific concern related to your return to the game? Feel free to ask me in the forums!

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