I've been interested in the idea of ranking decks by the 4/2/1 point
count
for awhile. My experience has been that if two players of equal skill
play
with decks with about the same point count, the game is a lot more
interes-
ting. If the decks are above 130 in the point count, they devolve into
some
form of Haymaker. In contrast, Wizard's theme decks typically total
about
80 points. I like decks of 90-110 points. The scheme is very simple, I
think
that complex schemes won't work in Pokemon. Because it is simple, there
are
limitations. I'd say Gligar is a very broken card in this scheme. But I
still like it better than Prop 15-3.
The purpose of the scheme is not to prevent people from using rare
cards.
With 100 points available, you can make a deck with 8 rare/holo/promo
cards,
16 uncommon and 36 commons (I'm partial to 110 points, allowing 10 rare,
20
uncommon and 30 common cards as one possibility). The purpose of
imposing
a limit on total points is to require more trade-offs in the game, and
thus
give it more balance. I can have my 4 Rocket Zapdos, 2 Sneasels and 4
Dark
energies, but then I won't have any more rare trainers, like Computer
Search.
So maybe I want to keep just the Sneasels and Dark energy and have a
dark-
themed deck. Or keep the Zapdos and have an electric themed-deck.
Different
people will make the choices differently, producing more variety. With
no
limit, decks tend to have a few very powerful Pokemon (usually basic)
and
an army of trainers to back them up. Whereas the restricted deck is
likely
to have several Pokemon supporting each other.
Also, while the relation between rareness and power is far from
absolute, a
Bill is 1, while an Oak is 2. SER is 4, while ER is 2. The deck will
have a
combination of rares, commons and uncommons, and using less broken
trainers allows for more points used elsewhere (Pokemon). It's seems to
me
a good reason to include Pokemon with decent Pokemon powers.
When my son and I first started Pokemon League, I could play with a
"no-rare"
deck. They closed. The next Pokemon League we joined had more
experienced
people and I needed about 3 rares to stand an even chance of winning.
That
place closed also. We found a new league, and I've had to beef up my
decks
again. I was curious how high a point total I am now using, so I
checked.
The two I've played won about half the time, and they total 92 and
96 points, respectively. They don't beat Haymakers, of course. After the
second league closed, we thought for awhile tournaments would be the
only
place to play Pokemon. So my son took all our good cards and made a
turbo-
Wiggly deck. That is 139 points. I took what was left and made a
Clefairy-
maker. That one is 141 points. They win consistently, but I think if we
felt the option was to lose all the time or win playing the same deck
over
and over, we'd have gotten bored and quit.
I've also tried to think of other ways of balancing the game. The Neo
expansion gave me an idea. Neo seems to have been an attempt by the
Japanese to balance some of the problems with the game. Sprout Tower
is an example. And there seem to be a fair number of decent commons and
uncommons. But the card that really interests me is Professor Elm "you
cannot play any more trainer cards this turn."
A lot of the banning talk (which I'm against, by the way) relates to the
most broken trainers. But supposed Wizards made one modification to
these
cards-
Professor Oak - discard your hand and draw 7 cards. You cannot play any
more trainer cards this turn.
SER
- discard one energy card to remove two energy cards
from
your opponent. You cannot play any more trainer cards
this turn.
Rocket's Trap - pick three cards from your opponents hand and discard
them. You cannot play any more trainer cards this turn.
Taking my cue from an earlier article by Erik, I would say RSA, IOR, CPU
Search, and Item Finder should be given the same limitation. I think a
lot of thought should be done before putting a card in this category. It
should only be applied judiciously, but I suspect I left a few out.
What if Wizards only made this change? Same rules, no banned cards. I'm
curious as to what people think. Would this be enough to allow more deck
variations? The Haymakers tend to rely a lot on trainers to get their
combinations. This would slow that down. But not stop people from
making
Haymaker decks.
I have one more suggestion for Wizards. I think they badly broke part of
the game from the start. Their packs aren't like the Japanese packs.
There
are so few holos, it takes a lot of the trading out of the trading card
game.
Think how nice it would be to have 1 holo, 1 rare, 3 uncommons and 5
commons
in a pack. Right now, if you buy a whole booster box, you'll get about
12
holos. People (unless they are rich or the eccentric, as PsyFlame
pointed
out) just don't get enough of any one holo to experiment with decks. If
you
want to try something, you can trade, but for example, I'd bet to get 4
Rocket Zapdos right now, you'd be trading many of the 12 holos you get
in
a booster box. People that do that are now locked in a corner, no way
they want to ban a card that they sacrificed so much to get! And if you
expect that it will be difficult to get a deck together by trading
cards,
how likely are you to just try something because it sounds good, as
compared with going with a proven archetype? I think Wizards could make
a major contribution just by making cards more available. Maybe that
would be an idea for Base Set 3 (or Neo 2).
Jon Swanson
jswanson@mail.win.org