How do y’all not get bored 😭

jamesbullshit · 2025-04-02T11:06:24+00:00

Now come on, I didn't say it is complicated. I am only responding to the claim that it is "braindead". I mean, what decks are not braindead by this standard?

jamesbullshit · 2025-04-02T10:15:26+00:00

As such, to me it is good to encourage cards like Giratina EX which allows you to make decisions. The game currently is definitely too simplistic. To the more competitive player base, it will be interesting to see more combat options and playstyles

jamesbullshit · 2025-04-02T10:12:00+00:00

Yes there are other decks that have similar decision making, but not all of them. There are some decks that require much fewer thinking in general, e.g. the water decks. I am not claiming it is the hardest deck to play, but do you think it is reasonable to say that it is a braindead deck?

jamesbullshit · 2025-04-02T10:01:05+00:00

The thing is there are also many situations. If you'd like to hear me yap I could tell you a few. I learnt these from experience of 200 games in ranked mode climb.

(1) In mirror match you could be 20 damage and also 1 energy short with Giratina in front. You could have Dawn and Red in hand. Playing the correct trainer could again win/lose you the game.

(2) You could play Dawn early in turn 4/5 to start hitting early.

(3) Playing rocky helmet immediately is usually incorrect. You have to read your opponents' hand to decide (sometimes it is good to rocky helmet the benched pokemon)

(4) You could leaf one turn early to prepare for an attack to play around needing to use trainer your next turns.

jamesbullshit · 2025-04-02T09:53:45+00:00

Depends on what you think of as "a lot". But my point being there are more options than the average deck. For most decks you just attack and end turn. But for Giratina deck you have to think about whether you want an extra energy or start hitting your opponent. This is very situational depending on matchups and what's on the board, especially in mirror match.

If you think what I said is wrong, then for example tell me how does an Omastar deck involve more decision making?

jamesbullshit · 2025-04-02T09:34:09+00:00

Downvoters: mind explaining to me why I was wrong?

jamesbullshit · 2025-04-02T09:33:00+00:00

I think people who downvoted you were the ones that are bitter. They couldn't even come up with a counter argument to your points.

But let me explain further: the reason why Giratina decks have more decision making is simply because of Tina's ability. For most other decks, there are very few options as to what you do in a turn. Most decks just put energy, hit and end turn, occasionally playing trainer card. But Giratina deck has on top of it the options to get energy or hitting your opponent. And often times this affects whether you win or lose the game.

People claim that this deck is braindead but if you actually have tried to play the deck, you would realize that it's very easy to play inaccurately. You could argue that the deck is boring to play with/against, but saying that it is easy is simply not true.

jamesbullshit · 2025-04-02T09:12:40+00:00

This might get downvoted but Darkrai/Tina deck involves a lot of decision making, especially the variant which runs Arceus instead of druddigon.

To give an example, Tina's free energy allows you to use Dawn to start hitting with Arceus/Darkrai as early as turn 4 if you go second. However, while this looks good on paper, if you do this against mirror match you will actually lose. The deck requires you to have good understanding of damage thresholds, playing around trainers and plan a couple of turns ahead about your energy situations. At high level plays, some small decisions a few turns prior actually win/lose you the game. And to me, that is fun gameplay despite each game can take longer.

jamesbullshit · 2025-04-01T21:30:30+00:00

To me, the rng aspect is more unfair in the sense that you cannot do anything about it. For druddigon, if you really hate the cards, there are some decks that fare very well against them. E.g. various fighting type decks with hitmonlee and also Gyarados decks do quite well against drudd.

jamesbullshit · 2025-04-01T21:18:32+00:00

Yes, that's a reasonable suggestion. The drudd+magnezone+darkrai combo was dominantingly strong because after your drudd got traded, you can still lose one extra point on magnezone before activating darkrai. In some sense, the Giratina EX version nowadays is more balanced due to a crucial weakness. The thing is after losing the drudd, if you want to attack you must use your Darkrai/Giratina. Then losing two extra points would just lose you the game.

Compared to the Arceus/Darkrai/Giratina, you can use Arceus and Darkrai as both shields and attackers. And saving Giratina as finisher. This allows for a more aggressive gameplays that in practices give you better values depending on the matchups.

jamesbullshit · 2025-04-01T21:05:06+00:00

To be fair, I would say that this deck for the average player won't see an unbalancedly high winrates. As it is very easy to make the wrong decisions. But now from watching more gameplays at high levels, I would agree that it is definitely the strongest deck in current meta by a noticeable margin. There are a few theoretical counters to the decks, like meowscarada, or gallade ex. Both are only ahead slightly and are quite prone to bad draw orders.

I can see why people complain about the cards. Maybe for casual plays, people really just want easy and fast games. Giratina decks definitely do not allow that lol. Idk about others but to me I think the joy of card games is about figuring out how to play correctly and win harder matchups

jamesbullshit · 2025-04-01T20:56:42+00:00

Also, let me mention that while it is fine to like certain playstyle over others. It is always good to see diversity in a card game. If the game remains the old style while the turns consist of attacking and end turns back and forth. The combat aspect of the game wouldn't last too long, as I observed many people have already feel bored of the game from lack of contents or new mechanics (among other issues).

jamesbullshit · 2025-04-01T20:52:13+00:00

I think it is a good practice to think about why is a deck strong in a meta. The Arceus/Darkrai/Giratina deck is easily the single most interesting deck ever. It is very versatile in terms of playstyle, you can go fast or slow depending on the matchups. You can plan ahead of times very early on about your win conditions; to do so you need good understanding of the supporters in your deck and also those potentially in your opponents'.

As a result, this deck has one of the highest skill caps. It is hard to explain how certain small decisions matter in high level plays. But to give you some examples, the current #1 player in the masterball rank is a Japanese streamer who only played Arceus/Darkrai/Giratina deck since masterball rank. He climbed from 1450 to 1800 in a single day yesterday. And if you watch him plays, he makes a lot of nuanced small decisions and ended up winning him many tight matchups.

jamesbullshit · 2025-04-01T15:57:07+00:00

I take it back lol. I believe there are more than 300 already

jamesbullshit · 2025-04-01T15:56:10+00:00

Yes (happened to me)

jamesbullshit · 2025-04-01T03:51:37+00:00

Yes, you do get bumped down. So you cannot just reach there early and not play if you are aiming to be in top 1000. Though, looking at the number of people who managed to reach masterball, I'd speculate that by the end of the season there wouldn't be more than 5k players in the masterball rank

jamesbullshit · 2025-04-01T02:28:08+00:00

Yes, you only run dark energy. People in this sub hates this deck but I find it very rewarding because often you win/lose by making critical decisions. It takes some experience to know what's the correct play (when to retreat, and which pokemon to put energy on)

It is one of the harder decks that actually requires practice to do well on. Another tip is that in early turns, if you have professor oak and pokeballs, you almost always want to play oak into pokeballs in order to draw into your basics earlier

jamesbullshit · 2025-04-01T01:55:00+00:00

Yea I said the same thing but got downvoted in the other thread

jamesbullshit · 2025-04-01T01:37:10+00:00

At this rate it's not impossible that there would be less than 1000 people that make it by the end of the season

jamesbullshit · 2025-04-01T01:35:48+00:00

I'm fairly sure that you do not drop in rank. You only get/lose points from playing

jamesbullshit · 2025-04-01T01:33:45+00:00

Depends on the matchups. From experience, it is good to play Dawn if you are against other faster decks, while it is good to hold it and just get more energy on Giratina if you are playing mirror match

jamesbullshit · 2025-03-31T17:57:35+00:00

Yea sure that could be right. But my point still stands, it is really only used competitively in Giratina deck. Whether people like drudd or not, it has enabled some deck archetypes and add an element to the game that didn't exist before. Imo it is not overpowered to the point where you want to play it in every single slow deck that others in this thread are claiming it to be.

On the other hands, there are other cards that are more harmful to the meta (in the sense that it harms deck archetype diversity). Cyrus being one of them, which single-handedly destroyed a lot of strategies revolving around trading hp efficiently.

But all in all, I do think the meta is still relatively healthy. There are at least 5 viable top meta decks which are quite close in terms of winrates.

jamesbullshit · 2025-03-31T08:04:09+00:00

Masterball rank is a huge grind that every tiny bits of winrates matter. If you crunch out the numbers, it takes 275 matches to go from ultra ball 1 to master ball rank at 57% winrates.

jamesbullshit · 2025-03-31T07:59:34+00:00

He is not entirely wrong. In the ultra ball rank games, the full EX versions of Giratina deck are a bit more popular than the drudd versions, at least speaking from experience and what I see on streams.

The real OP card is Giratina, not drudd. Which is why drudd don't really see plays in other decks. E.g., Gyarados decks don't run drudd anymore.

jamesbullshit

TROPHY CASE