Discussion What Will Be the Main Draw Support After Rotation?
- Thread starter BULBASUAR BOIIIIII
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I dont share your opinion on N, it's the healthiest card in the format and it doesnt define winners by luck. N is a card that is in every deck and you as the player with the lesser prize count must be prepared for it in the last turns. The sole existance of this card in the opponents deck makes a skillful player prepare in advance.
I think you are confusing "luck" with "chance" (1st you cant control and its completely random, 2nd you do control for the best possible success rate)
When you get N'd this things imediately matter:
Deck building choices (supporter count/tapu lele count, remaining card count in general) - resource management / skill in deckbuilding
Every little move you did in the past turns in order to thin your deck - no doubt skillfull plays that count
If you preemptively recycled resources or not (rod / stretcher / energy recycler / pal pad etc)
If you have in bench octillerys / zoroarks and orangurus (oranguru fits in most decks, if you decided not to play it/recycle it was your choice)
Your field in general (for example prepare retreat costs on your benched pokemon so they dont get locked in the active with few cards in hand)
Also, note that N in the first turns can give your opponnet massive advantage, when playing IRL you can even decide to play this card or not based on your opponent's reactions to their own hand, etc. I think all these points are far more skill based than "the skill of cultivating a good hand and hope not to get disrupted"
I hope it gets reprinted or they make similard cards, in the rotation im most likely going with Judge or consider adding red card (dont know if it will rotate) depending on the meta and my deck of choice.
No one’s mentioned Baby Marshadow and Hala 
I’d play Marshy over judge any day. It allows you to disrupt and use Lillie/Kiawe/Fan Club on turn 1. And Hala should be used now ImO
I’d play Marshy over judge any day. It allows you to disrupt and use Lillie/Kiawe/Fan Club on turn 1. And Hala should be used now ImO
never reprint shaymin
No "Looker" ? - card of the future right here.
UPR Oranguru... But that's only really viable for certain classes of decks.
@Wechselbalg @Wowowiwo
I don't believe either of you understood my previous comment; no, not because I'm so smart, but because sometimes I don't make things very clear and because you seem to be arguing against a position I didn't take. Let me try rephrasing my points in the reverse order.
Remember the original post that began this thread?
After responding to Wowowiwo's earlier claim about N, I used the phrase, I went on to address the general topic of this thread. That is why I brought up maxing out Cynthia. To be fair, I shouldn't have claimed I was universally running every deck of mine with four of the card. I'm not, and that was careless of me. It is quite possible, as I haven't played as many Standard Format games lately, that I'm even behind the curve, and I'll find she's really just a one-of or two-of for decks that I currently believe need three or four copies of her. My point, however, was that it is that we have already begun moving away from a metagame dictated almost entirely by N and Professor Sycamore usage... and that I've experienced many formats from before either of those cards were printed. Cynthia wasn't even the first step for this; Pokémon-based draw, even excluding Shaymin-EX (ROS), has again become a common thing for decks.
Now let us move onto N. You are free to disagree with me, but please actually disagree with me, not with something I didn't say. There is a difference between acknowledging wins through chance/luck/variance/etc. as well as cards that may increase the overall amount of it involved, and between claiming tournaments are won through sheer luck. The latter is a strawman argument, and not what I said.
There is more than one skill required for the Pokémon TCG. As such, the question is not whether a card increases how much skill the game requires, but which skills become more important and which skills become less important because of a particular card, whether the change is a net increase or decrease, and whether the change is beneficial to the experience of those playing the game.
There is some overlap with the skills N rewards; thinning the deck, hands that are easy to play out (even if for suboptimal returns), and some sort of in-play effect that can restart your resource flow should you be on the receiving end of a poor draw from N. As I tried to explain, N in still involves luck; unless you've been able to thin your deck to the point that nothing is a bad draw for you, whether you N has you draw one card, six cards, or something in between you may still be put into a worse position due to the luck of the draw. Likewise, unless circumstances are fairly specific, there is a chance that you will actually give your opponent a better hand when you use N.
That such a thing rarely happens to you does not mean that it only ever happens to others because they aren't as good as you. If it only ever happens to a player once, it still happens too often. Losing due to a desperate N is no fun even when you are just playing casually among friends; imagine only ever having it happen once, but it is at the World Championships. Context matters... and that applies to your claims that feel very much like a more politely worded version of "git gud". Preparing for N makes you vulnerable to other strategies; maybe you truly are very skilled in this area, or maybe you should seek more skilled opponent's and/or a greater variety of decks (or deck builds).
I really ought to have finished this comment at least 15 minutes ago, so I'm going to rush to my last point of contention.
Given how you've defined the terms, this is a pretty meaningless distinction; how often does something fall squarely between one and the other in the Pokémon TCG? In this case, you can prepare to receive an opponent's N but doing so comes at the cost of taking a different approach. When that opportunity cost is irrelevant... count yourself lucky. As I pointed out earlier unless the success rate is 100% you're still counting on luck. It may be less luck than with another approach, but it is still luck. Any draw card can fail to get you what you need unless it claims your entire deck... and unless you before your next draw phase or can return a card to your deck, doing that will cost you the game as well.
So, to summarize, my previous comment was meant to remind that decks are already shifting more towards Cynthia, just one example of the many replacements for what we'll be losing that are already here and proving competitive. My other point was that I believe N creates a net reduction in skill; deck thinning (and a few others) become more important, preparing your hand for future turns (and a few others) becomes less, but in either case you a shuffle-and-draw effect that hits both players and has become one of the primary draw cards naturally increases the reliance on lucky draws. Skillful players maximize their odds of drawing well and/or minimize the opponent's odds of drawing well but in the end, lucky breaks can and do happen, whether both players are of equal skill or one clearly outclasses the other.
I don't believe either of you understood my previous comment; no, not because I'm so smart, but because sometimes I don't make things very clear and because you seem to be arguing against a position I didn't take. Let me try rephrasing my points in the reverse order.
Remember the original post that began this thread?
After responding to Wowowiwo's earlier claim about N, I used the phrase, I went on to address the general topic of this thread. That is why I brought up maxing out Cynthia. To be fair, I shouldn't have claimed I was universally running every deck of mine with four of the card. I'm not, and that was careless of me. It is quite possible, as I haven't played as many Standard Format games lately, that I'm even behind the curve, and I'll find she's really just a one-of or two-of for decks that I currently believe need three or four copies of her. My point, however, was that it is that we have already begun moving away from a metagame dictated almost entirely by N and Professor Sycamore usage... and that I've experienced many formats from before either of those cards were printed. Cynthia wasn't even the first step for this; Pokémon-based draw, even excluding Shaymin-EX (ROS), has again become a common thing for decks.
Now let us move onto N. You are free to disagree with me, but please actually disagree with me, not with something I didn't say. There is a difference between acknowledging wins through chance/luck/variance/etc. as well as cards that may increase the overall amount of it involved, and between claiming tournaments are won through sheer luck. The latter is a strawman argument, and not what I said.
There is more than one skill required for the Pokémon TCG. As such, the question is not whether a card increases how much skill the game requires, but which skills become more important and which skills become less important because of a particular card, whether the change is a net increase or decrease, and whether the change is beneficial to the experience of those playing the game.
There is some overlap with the skills N rewards; thinning the deck, hands that are easy to play out (even if for suboptimal returns), and some sort of in-play effect that can restart your resource flow should you be on the receiving end of a poor draw from N. As I tried to explain, N in still involves luck; unless you've been able to thin your deck to the point that nothing is a bad draw for you, whether you N has you draw one card, six cards, or something in between you may still be put into a worse position due to the luck of the draw. Likewise, unless circumstances are fairly specific, there is a chance that you will actually give your opponent a better hand when you use N.
That such a thing rarely happens to you does not mean that it only ever happens to others because they aren't as good as you. If it only ever happens to a player once, it still happens too often. Losing due to a desperate N is no fun even when you are just playing casually among friends; imagine only ever having it happen once, but it is at the World Championships.
Context matters... and that applies to your claims that feel very much like a more politely worded version of "git gud". Preparing for N makes you vulnerable to other strategies; maybe you truly are very skilled in this area, or maybe you should seek more skilled opponent's and/or a greater variety of decks (or deck builds).I really ought to have finished this comment at least 15 minutes ago, so I'm going to rush to my last point of contention.
Given how you've defined the terms, this is a pretty meaningless distinction; how often does something fall squarely between one and the other in the Pokémon TCG? In this case, you can prepare to receive an opponent's N but doing so comes at the cost of taking a different approach. When that opportunity cost is irrelevant... count yourself lucky.
As I pointed out earlier unless the success rate is 100% you're still counting on luck. It may be less luck than with another approach, but it is still luck. Any draw card can fail to get you what you need unless it claims your entire deck... and unless you before your next draw phase or can return a card to your deck, doing that will cost you the game as well.So, to summarize, my previous comment was meant to remind that decks are already shifting more towards Cynthia, just one example of the many replacements for what we'll be losing that are already here and proving competitive. My other point was that I believe N creates a net reduction in skill; deck thinning (and a few others) become more important, preparing your hand for future turns (and a few others) becomes less, but in either case you a shuffle-and-draw effect that hits both players and has become one of the primary draw cards naturally increases the reliance on lucky draws. Skillful players maximize their odds of drawing well and/or minimize the opponent's odds of drawing well but in the end, lucky breaks can and do happen, whether both players are of equal skill or one clearly outclasses the other.
I agree...many players thin decks, build decks, need techs etc to counter N...N Requires much thought about when to use it. Yes N is part luck with what is drawn but no different than Cynthia.
As for red card I have put peeping red card into a few online decks. Severely can disrupt opponents turn 1 (if going second) since some players will Bridgette and thindown to 3 cards with a supporter. Therefore take a peek and if nothing useful then leave their hand...if they have useful cards they shuffle and redraw 3 (or whatever their hand count is).
@Otaku
I do disagree with you on the point that N creates a reduction in skill because I think that is exactly what Cynthia does and N doesn't. Also sorry if my post felt like a polite "git gud" statement, that' not what I was aiming for.
The reason I believe that Cynthia is a card that creates a reduction in skill is because one can play that card without any reprecussions (more or less) at any point of the game if one needs more/different cards than what they currently had in their hand because they don't have to take into consideration that if they use it early game (or at any point in the game where they give their opponent more than 2-3 new cards) they might actually give their opponent a better hand than what they have had before, whereas with N that is always a possibiliy if you use it too early. (And I have to bring up Garchomp-Lucario again in which deck Cynthia in addition to giving you a fresh hand also lets you hit for 200 which is imo ridiculous and to me it feels more like a design flaw exploit than an actual mechanic.) I do agree that Pokemon requires more than one skill, and one of them is being able to make decisions in though situations. Cynthia completely eradicates this because re-shuffling for six will almost always be a good decision (especially if you aren't given any other options...) and it lacks the dynamic between N-Sycamore/Juniper where you had to make a decision - do I use N now even though I might risk giving my opponent a better hand or save it for later for distruption, or should I Sycamore instead and discard some key cards from my hand - some of which I might not even be able to retrieve later - in hopes of drawing into a hand that's actually better and that could give me the chance to pull ahead of my opponent if they chose to play it too safe. There is of course also Sophocles who might turn out to be a somewhat usable draw supporter after rotation.
I do believe that Standard still needs to change but Cynthia and Judge alone will not be the change the format needs imo because that seems like oversimplification to me. And if Zoroark-GX remains one of the main Pokemon draw supporters then Judge will be more or less meanigless as hand distruption. Maybe there will be very little drawing involved (mostly just re-shuffling with Cynthia and Judge) and it will be a battle between the new Zygarde-GX/Bonnie/Lusamine and Zoroark-GX/Golisopod/Acerola/Trade spam, or just Magical Ribbon into Gardevoir-GX+Rare Candy and sweep idk. (Or trade spam into them-take your pick.)
But I guess all this shouldn't concern me all that much as I am mainly an online player and just wanted to voice my opinion on the matter. I just think that PTCG is inherently a good game but a lot of the positive aspects somehow always get buried under the questionable balancing/marketing choices that TPCI decide to make.
I do disagree with you on the point that N creates a reduction in skill because I think that is exactly what Cynthia does and N doesn't. Also sorry if my post felt like a polite "git gud" statement, that' not what I was aiming for.
The reason I believe that Cynthia is a card that creates a reduction in skill is because one can play that card without any reprecussions (more or less) at any point of the game if one needs more/different cards than what they currently had in their hand because they don't have to take into consideration that if they use it early game (or at any point in the game where they give their opponent more than 2-3 new cards) they might actually give their opponent a better hand than what they have had before, whereas with N that is always a possibiliy if you use it too early. (And I have to bring up Garchomp-Lucario again in which deck Cynthia in addition to giving you a fresh hand also lets you hit for 200 which is imo ridiculous and to me it feels more like a design flaw exploit than an actual mechanic.) I do agree that Pokemon requires more than one skill, and one of them is being able to make decisions in though situations. Cynthia completely eradicates this because re-shuffling for six will almost always be a good decision (especially if you aren't given any other options...) and it lacks the dynamic between N-Sycamore/Juniper where you had to make a decision - do I use N now even though I might risk giving my opponent a better hand or save it for later for distruption, or should I Sycamore instead and discard some key cards from my hand - some of which I might not even be able to retrieve later - in hopes of drawing into a hand that's actually better and that could give me the chance to pull ahead of my opponent if they chose to play it too safe. There is of course also Sophocles who might turn out to be a somewhat usable draw supporter after rotation.
I do believe that Standard still needs to change but Cynthia and Judge alone will not be the change the format needs imo because that seems like oversimplification to me. And if Zoroark-GX remains one of the main Pokemon draw supporters then Judge will be more or less meanigless as hand distruption. Maybe there will be very little drawing involved (mostly just re-shuffling with Cynthia and Judge) and it will be a battle between the new Zygarde-GX/Bonnie/Lusamine and Zoroark-GX/Golisopod/Acerola/Trade spam, or just Magical Ribbon into Gardevoir-GX+Rare Candy and sweep idk. (Or trade spam into them-take your pick.)
But I guess all this shouldn't concern me all that much as I am mainly an online player and just wanted to voice my opinion on the matter. I just think that PTCG is inherently a good game but a lot of the positive aspects somehow always get buried under the questionable balancing/marketing choices that TPCI decide to make.
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I haven't been using Mallow seems like my deck always get shuffled after I do so, but that might changed after N is rotated out or at least won't happen as much.
Looker is pretty much Hau, but from the bottom of your deck. Play both and you could be pulling from the bottom and the top of your deck. I have tried to pair it with the Oranguru from Ultra Prism, but I haven't had any luck in doing so.
Thanks, Rindon; there was at least one aspect I knew I wasn't making clear. First, I keep bringing up the luck of the draw not because it is a major downside of N that somehow wouldn't apply to Cynthia; I am brining it up specifically because of the arguments made by @Wowowiwo which, at least as I understand them, seem to somehow imply there is less luck in the game than there actually is. I'd better be careful, however; the other issue this created was my comments being misunderstood as claiming all winning is down to who has the better luck: it isn't - most winning is down to skill, but luck is always a factor.
Next is something I'd taken for granted because - to me - it goes without saying. Not because I'm awesome, but because I'm an old fart and experienced very different past formats of the Pokémon TCG. You see, shuffling your hand into your deck is actually a cost. It seems like a no-brainer right now because we are playing in a format tailored to running through your hand fast. With Professor Sycamore it is because you're going to discard it anyway, and with N it is because deck thinning (both to counter an opponent's N and to filter through your own deck, the latter also applies to Cynthia). I've brought up building up your hand several times, because for years, that was a an almost universally needed skill in Pokémon... while thinning your deck wasn't.
The other angle I'm forgetting to address, and I have to be careful because if I get sloppy, it will contradict (my words, not the true points). I think it works best by comparing and contrasting N with Judge. Both cards are simultaneous draw and disruption effects; you do not get that with either Cynthia or Professor Sycamore, and this is really easy to take for granted. Notice how I haven't been sweating N, or even Items like Red Card or Peeking Red Card. Even Judge isn't an issue, because it hits both players evenly and in a predictable manner; it can still set up for some good combos, but it isn't the nearly universal, must-run Supporter that N has proven to be.
This entire time I am not arguing that N is a bad card, but that it is too good. While you technically don't know how many cards either player will draw until shortly before you use N, you can safely assume that it will be a "shuffle and draw six" card for the first turn of either player. Unless both players have very aggressive decks, it will probably be a "Shuffle and draw 5" the next turn, maybe even still a "Shuffle and draw six." card. If both player's progress at a more or less even pace, N will most likely shift from good draw/poor disruption to okay draw/okay disruption to poor draw/good disruption. If progress is uneven, and in your opponent's favor, N will mostly shift from good draw/poor disruption to good draw/okay disruption to good (or okay) draw/good disruption. If progress is uneven but otherwise in your favor, N will most likely shift from good draw/poor disruption to okay draw/poor disruption to poor draw/poor disruption. This is incredible for a single Supporter. Yes, it can backfire (again, I've brought this up to counter claims that N somehow involves little or even no luck); this is still a deal that was supposed to technically be balanced by how it varies throughout the game...
...but it didn't really balance things out. Players just learned to adapt to N, because it was our only really great draw card that didn't get bogged down by conditions or costs in the early game. You want to open with Professor Sycamore... if you don't have anything you can't afford to discard. You want to open with N if your deck has a lot it can't afford to discard, or if your opponent has something going on that even a shuffle-and-draw-six is more likely to help you and hurt them than vice versa.
Please see what I just said; it was in response to your own comment as much as it was to Rindon's. I will add that I accept your apology, and am glad you didn't find my own previous post too harsh; realizing how one sounds can be very difficult.
I will add that I think the Pokémon TCG is good at its core but suffers very much from the designers repeating mistakes. My post is already quite lengthy, so I'll just say that it all boils down to pacing, and making sure that everyone can enjoy the game regardless of which Pokémon are their favorites.
