Chat, the Mir Family cruise just disembarked this morning. After leaving, Katie and I drive from Tampa to Viera and I promptly drove another half hour to Indialantic to work a half day. My PTO is strapped this year, so I have to log a lot of extra hours near any vacations. After getting off work, Katie and I went to feed our friends' naked cats and get some Long Doggers with Katie's parents. I sat down after dinner and have been struggling with writers block ever since. Long story short-- I'm cooked and this vlog is gonna be MID.
I do at least have a topic to jot down some of my thoughts for posterity. The topic? It's in the title, man. Read.
TCG Deck Selection
That's right, folks. Nate and I have chatted endlessly about what decks we're playing, maybe mentioning some specific attacks in the decks that we like or the ability synergy that makes the deck good. I don't believe we've ever mentioned how we decide what deck to bring to any of these tournaments. From what I can think of right now, there are three pillars used to determine what deck I bring to a tournament:
- Deck Strength
- Metagame Position
- Familiarity
Deck Strength
This portion seems the most straight forward. When I'm talking about a deck's strength, I mean how much raw power the deck is bringing to the table, and how consistently that power is brought. The world's most powerful deck is useless if it only gets to that level in 1/10 of its games, and the most consistent deck is just putting one basic Pokemon with 59 energies.. nothing gets done. You have to strike a balance with the deck between strong outcomes and getting to that outcome in nearly every game.
Some people may think the strongest deck is always the best play, but the meta right now is a good example of when that isn't true. Dragapult is considered the most powerful deck in the current format--using the consistency of Drakloak's Recon Directive ability to support that claim--, but Gardevoir has won something like 8 of the last 12 major tournaments. Gardevoir's strong matchup against the uber-powerful Dragapult allows it win all of these tournaments despite it's 10% play rate, which makes it only the 4th most played deck over this span. Gardevoir is still a very strong deck, but what's really carrying all of these finishes is its...
Metagame Position
For those who don't know, the term metagame in this context refers to the play rates of other decks in the format. For any small sample, this will vary depending on where you are, but each format will generally have a metagame that is predictable (to an extent). For my fantasy football players, think about deck play rates as a much less volatile version of that. In the same way Ja'Marr Chase should outscore Jalen Coker in 2025, Dragapult should have a higher play rate than Blissey at the next major.
By taking the metagame into account, some decks that would otherwise be strong can be very very bad plays to a tournament. A neutral win rate would be from 45-48% (keep in mind ties count as 1/3 of a win and happen at a ~15% rate). A favorable matchup would be anything from 50-60%, while anything above 60% would be considered an "auto-win" (with ties, an auto-win would work out to a record like 40-15-10 W-L-T). Over the last 8 major tournaments, Gardevoir has a 53% win rate against Dragapult, and neutral win rates against most other heavily played decks.
A deck that is being played by some strong players that is very specifically played because of the metagame is Zoroark. Over the last 8 tournaments, this deck has had a ~40% win rate against nearly every deck, highlighted by a 35% and 20% win rate against the 3rd and 5th most popular decks respectively. How is this a meta call, you may ask? It holds favorable matchups into both Gardevoir and Dragapult. Tournaments are littered with these two decks, especially if you are able to win your first couple games and climb up the winner's bracket. Thus far, these guys have been a little bit too big-brain and haven't made a final. But that doesn't mean it's a bad process! None of my locals play Gardevoir, so if I took Zoroark to an Challenge or Cup, I'd need a lobotomy.
Familiarity
Deck strength makes sense for low-skill attacks. Just play the decks that can be strong and are strong most games. Makes sense. Metagame strategizing makes sense for high-skill tournaments. You are confident you can pilot any deck and decide to pick whichever one has the best projected matchups. Deck familiarity works best as a medium-skill attack. Maybe your deck isn't the strongest, or the best positioned, but You know it. Familiarity can come in a couple different ways.
One is to be familiar and comfortable with the play style of a deck. Nathan went over some of the different deck play styles (labeled "Deck Strategies") in his first blog. Nathan is most comfortable with fast-paced decks, so bringing a fast-paced deck to a tournament is what's most likely to give him success. That is what led him to the decision to bring Raging Bolt to Atlanta, despite it not being as powerful as Dragapult or as well positioned in the meta as Gardevoir.
Another way to get familiar is practice. Realistically, anybody can get good with any deck. It may feel unnatural to play a slow deck if you're used to playing aggressive decks, but with enough games, a decent player should be able to adjust. I personally don't see myself as favoring any specific play style and mostly rely on practice to get familiar with the decks I play.
One last back-door reason familiarity is so important is playing off-meta or unusual decks. For example, Nathan plays Raging Bolt. What's unusual? He doesn't play Raging Bolt like the other thousands of people do. 313 people took Raging Bolt to Atlanta, but probably only about 3-5 took builds similar to Nathan's. This can lead your opponents playing lines that could be good against the mainstream Raging Bolt, but are very very bad against yours. I can actually give a very good example I just thought of that I'm sure Nathan can corroborate happens a lot:
A main strategy from mainstream Raging Bolt players is to use the non-EX Raging Bolt, which will henceforth be referred to as Baby Bolt, to attack Drakloaks on the bench and stunt the Dragapult player's evolution options. In other words, these mainstream Raging Bolt players have difficulty pulling off hyper-aggressive attacks on their opponent's benched Pokemon, so they use the Thunderburst Storm attack from Baby Bolt to snipe lower-HP evolutions. Dragapult players have responded by attacking the Luxurious Cape to whichever Drakloak they attack energies to, preventing the snipe attack. The Luxurious Cape gives your opponent an extra prize if the Drakloak is knocked out, but because Raging Bolt has a lot of difficulty moving around your Pokemon AND attacking in the same turn, it's not very risky.
Here comes Nathan's deck.
Let's say a Dragapult player thinks they're playing the mainstream deck and attaches Luxurious Cape. What can go wrong, right? This is how the matchup is played. Except Nathan's Raging Bolt is specifically tooled to move your Pokemon around and attack in the same turn using Pokemon Catcher and Prime Catcher. If Nate KO's a Drakloak with Luxurious Cape on it, that's pretty much GG on the spot.
Conclusion
I'm playing Dragapult to a must-win tournament Saturday despite it having pretty mediocre showings at the last few tournaments because I'm most familiar with it (I consider myself a medium-skill player). I'm going to bed for now, though.
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