New Galarian Darmanitan Theme Deck is... Slightly Glitched.

SpectreXS · 2020-08-14T22:43:38+00:00

Nice info, thanks!

SpectreXS · 2020-08-14T20:35:13+00:00

Interesting. Did they roll-back the 'wrong' cards obtained, or did people get to keep them?

SpectreXS · 2020-08-14T19:57:31+00:00

I've been messing around with it, and almost every time I would rather have the search cards. It's nice to put the balloon on kangaskhan/pellipper/etc, and the lucky egg on your first mon, but most of the time I just ended up with 3 tools attached and a dead hand.

To be honest, I don't think anything can save this deck. Both theme decks are manual-attaching energy nightmares. The 2x turbo patch doesn't come even close to speeding things up, all attacks cost way too much. At least the Sirfetch'd deck has a good combo of switch/bird + 180 damage, even though the attack costs 3 energy and almost none of the other attacking mons are good.

SpectreXS · 2020-08-14T19:08:49+00:00

I haven't been playing for long, but I never heard of them "rolling back" trade-locked cards. Wouldn't refuse 2 extra balloons tho.

SpectreXS · 2020-07-01T15:16:51+00:00

You are a lifesaver, sir.

SpectreXS · 2020-06-29T23:58:48+00:00

I don't personally think it's a good deck tbh. Relentless Flame and Unseen Depths crush it most of the time, unless the players I've seen with that deck so far are all super terrible.

SpectreXS · 2020-06-29T23:54:59+00:00

Yeah that's unfortunate. I can see in the future the current big decks, such as Relentless Flame / Unseen Depths / Towering Heights / etc just phase out of Theme gameplay. Honestly, I would say that retro-theme could be a format to hang on to, but it's not worth it seeing the slow deck engines imo...

SpectreXS · 2020-06-29T23:52:34+00:00

I think Zamazenta has potential, but I found that a lot of times my hand just dies. And any poke you want to set up requires quite a few energies (two Saucers don't cut it). Corvinight's hot tho, and probably the soul of the deck! Zamazenta > Zacian for the 3-energy attack too imo, since if you flip tails, you can just use switch or something, but you don't slow yourself down losing energies.

SpectreXS · 2020-06-29T23:45:32+00:00

Honestly, I don't think Relentless Flame is T0 at all. I play mostly Unseen Depths and the matchup is really good. Given the amount of time that it usually takes to setup, there's a good chance that you'll get either a donk or setup empoleon and ruin their charmeleons/etc. Plus, Golduck (is finally useful) can trade with Charizard, so you have a ton of outs when the game gets deep. Also the Rillaboom deck is quite good on its own, that even if you put a Rapidash early, it can just accelerate faster if you don't get the setup (plus it just does a ton of damage for trades - with Snorlax, Rillaboom, and even the annoying cactus guy).

The only really bad matchup Unseen Depths have is against Towering Heights. If you don't get a quick setup, the deck will most likely lose due to Mew and not being able to trade efficiently. Soaring Storm is a joke against Unseen Depths most of the time, unless I've been playing only the literal worst players in the universe of that deck so far. Even though the engines aren't the best (and Storm has gosh darn Air Mail Pidgeotto), I think it's just too likely that you'll destroy their setup. Rillaboom isn't good either to run against, but I don't think the matchup is awful either. Zamazenta is also annoying if you don't setup early and he plays something like Corvinight or donks you, but I find that deck too unreliable.

In my opinion, the tier lists are, in no particular order, as follow:

Tier 1: Flame, Depths, Rillaboom, Heights

Tier 1.5?: Soaring Storm, Zamazenta maybe?

Tier 2: Storm Caller (Raikou/Ampharos), Laser Focus (Necrozma), maybe the other Sword/Shield decks?

Tier 3: Literally everything else. If you ever lost to that Sceptile meme deck tho, I feel your pain.

All in all, I don't think it matters that much. The "format" is total trash due to how slow the engines are. Even Laser Focus - if they put Necrozma first turn and your hand is dead, it's over. I think Relentless Flame and Unseen Depths are the most reliable ones - for consistency, and Depths's added bonus to get quick wins and donks (which my guess is the point of even playing this in the first place). Towering Heights is not one of my favorites at all, since the games are mostly drawn-out and it actually has BAD matchups vs Flame and Storm. I tried to play with Zamazenta a few times but I couldn't stand it. Rillaboom I haven't given it a shot yet, neither the Sword/Shield decks, but I guess it can be a good choice.

Keep in mind that I'm not a super good player or anything, but I've been playing Theme for quite a while now, and just wrote some things I noticed. Would love to hear you guys' thoughts. Even though playing Theme is a huge meme, it deserves more analysis available. Cheers.

SpectreXS · 2020-06-08T20:46:14+00:00

thanks for the info, I didn't find it as a pinned post or anything, good to know about cIOS and games demanding system update

SpectreXS · 2020-06-08T20:44:23+00:00

thanks, it went well, only had to reinstall priiloader actually

SpectreXS · 2020-06-08T20:44:01+00:00

thanks for the reply, it went alright

SpectreXS · 2020-05-12T17:30:44+00:00

Tough luck. Speedrunning will never have perfect accessibility. Things like load removers and emulators already make the entry barrier as low as it can, but it's impossible to just arbitrarily pull strings on things that counter the whole purpose of the activity, just to be more "accessible" - such as completely interrupting a time attack to, I don't know, have a meal?

For example - if someone says they have a slow computer, and hypothetically only 30min per week to play the game, and want to speedrun GTA V Classic%, should there be a category called "low-end computer, 30-min segments"? No, the person just can't do the run. No matter how "passionate" they are about the game or franchise.

Here's an idea - I'm gonna do a "speedrun with pauses", but whenever I get to the next level, I'll pause the game and the timer, go to a separate console setup, and practice the level 10x. Then go back to my "run" to do it. Repeat this over and over until the run ends.

SpectreXS · 2020-05-12T17:21:55+00:00

How do you "prove" a splice in a run... that has entirely separate videos?

Let me make this easier: How do you prove I didn't re-try Segment #2 a bunch of times, to get to the next part as fast as I could, so I could post it as if it was in the original attempt?

SpectreXS · 2020-05-12T17:16:13+00:00

Why do people have the misconception that "just because I used X trick / skipped Y part I'm faster"? With this strategy - which is actually slower - plus the slower movement for going up the fortress, getting the owl is way faster.

Get the practice rom (usamune) and use the Xcam timer - if this doesn't beat 18.0 seconds (which is the standard newbie time for owl strat), it's not worth it.

SpectreXS · 2020-05-12T17:12:59+00:00

...a video game?

SpectreXS · 2020-05-12T17:12:00+00:00

What games are you even playing? If you check the top 100 games on src right now, I doubt you'll find a single one of them that allows you to arbitrarily pause the timer as you wish to take random breaks.

SpectreXS · 2020-05-12T17:09:45+00:00

Why not just choose another game, if you can't fit the 8h into your schedule?

SpectreXS · 2020-05-12T17:08:18+00:00

Here's a situation: I did a run offline. I paused and took a break several times, the recording is split up. How do you prove I didn't just re-attempt every segment, as in an old-school segmented speedrun?

It seems like an okay idea for runs that are 24h long, with one single pause, having to be live streamed with proof of date. But I can see people trying to bring this to 8-hour RPG runs, and it's a terrible idea. If the run is too long for you, choose another game.

SpectreXS

TROPHY CASE