What does everyone think of the aspect of losing a game when your last Pokemon in play is knocked out? This is commonly brought up as a design flaw in the card game, so I was curious what people thought.
It's problematic, to be certain. you're gonna have bad lucks of the draw more often than not, sadly. thankfully, this is from a time long before you could get something silly like 60 for a double colorless or such nonsense garbage.
That being said, I'd like to take a moment and get this thread kicked off with a couple of tips for folks that might be new to this whole thing or maybe only collected cards in their childhood and didn't actually try playing the TCG.
For example, there's a few Pokemon that you will want in your deck no matter what sort of deck you're running. sometimes you should fill up on these until you can mould your deck into something far more formidable, or sometimes you should run a lone copy or 'tech' it in to give your deck a sort of not too common trump play in a tight spot.
SCYTHER Lv. 25This is a pretty great filler card. granted 30 damage for 3 colorless is not the best thing in the world, but what is is that Scyther is a basic pokemon with 70 HP, a fighting resistance, and most importantly, no retreat cost. Scyther is the go-to lead-off pokemon of the formatand can usually even take a weak hit from it's fire weakness from your opponent's basic fire type once or twice before eating a KO. Put these in your deck until you have something else with free retreat and a chance to stall (For me, this is usually Horsea since I run blastoise turbo usually. I'll get into what my deck looks like another time.)
HITMONCHAN Lv. 33
Fighting is probably one of the most splashable types early on in the game, as you can get a lot of mileage out of fighting's basic pokemon that have low energy costs. Mankey is a decent scout that doesn't have a lot of HP but that coveted 0 retreat, Onyx is 90 HP you can thorw out, even if it doesn't build to much, and Machop gets you 20 for one fighting energy.
Then again, so does Hitmonchan, who's also fairly beefy to boot. he also can build up to 3 for 40, which... again, not super great? but it's a basic pokemon that can really put in the work in the early to mid game while you're still scraping together for cards. I use a lot of him, hitmonlee, Ryhorn, Onix, and a couple of others in my Aerodactyl deck that I keep as a secondary deck to shut down stuff that has evolution based win conditions.
Likitung, Chansey, KhangaskahnI group all these three together because they all serve a similar purpose of being colorless pokes that are beefy and can help you stall or accelerate the game.
Chansey has a whopping 120 HP, a health pool that will allow it to survive anything besides Charizard's fire spin. it also gets a coin toss to prevent damage and an 80 damage attack if you need one final gambit to desperatley get rid of something and you have no other options.
Likitung is probably the most common of this trio, and really isn't amazing other than he's 90 HP with 1 colorless for 10 damage and a coin toss for paralysis, which puts in a little more work than chansey, who just sits there until you hit a switch or you decide to pay the exorbant retreat cost.
Khangaskhan has the 80 damage final gambit of chansey and the HP of Likitung, but rather than being a stalling card, fetch gets you garenteed extra draws, which is extra chances to hit your draw engine, the pokemon/evolutions you might need, or a switch to get it out of there if it's running into trouble!
Professor Oak/Bill/GamblerAll of these facilitate keeping your deck moving, keeping the flow of cards going, keeping an advantage. more cards means more options, and you always want the options to get out of a jam if your opponent puts pressure on you. Pokemon TCG in the beginning had a TREMENDOUS ammount of draw power, generally because energy attachment dictated the pace of a game and not so much having cards in your hand. I still feel drawing is good in any TCG you play, as it gives you the access you need to the rest of your tools. just make sure you don't burn through your deck too fast.
SwitchALWAYS Run switch, NEVER full restore. your pokemon are cured of status conditions upon a switch, and if you're playing this game right, you should always have a pokemon on your bench with zero retreat cost to cycle back to the pokemon you are curing of a status effect.
Switch also, y'know... lets you get past retreat cost when things get bad, or even lets you rebound from your opponent hitting you with something crippling like a super energy removal or a gust of wind.
Super Energy Removal/Energy Removal
as I said before, this game's primary version of advantage is energy. because you are (usually) limited to one attach per turn, the opponent who misses a turn of energy attachment is usually the one who ends up in deep trouble early on. for the cost of a trainer card (and possibly one of your own energy attaches), you can set your opponent back in this ever-important cycle. Dish out the big damage sooner than they can, and ripple them from being able to bounce back.
Bonus points if you ever snipe a double colorless energy with energy removals. That's why stuff like Enhanced Hammer is so good these days.
Anyhow, I hope those give you some generalized cards to look out for in the early games. I can't be bothered to remember what packs they come in, but know you've gotten a bit of a gem in any of those, no matter what deck you are running. It is currently 5:15 AM. good night.
Topic: RetroActive #31: Pokemon: The Trading Card Game (Official Discussion) (Read 27130 times)
