Then I suggest
not criticizing people who state their own opinion in a similar way, in a similar amount of detail.
Well, Pokemon doesn't have a side deck. That mechanic doesn't exist but players are expected to put cards in their deck to prepare for a bad match up, which is a complete failure of game design. To me tech and side deck are the same thing - cards used to make a matchup better except they exist in the main deck.
Whereas I consider the need for a side deck to be a failure of game design. I've stated why; you
should be able to deal with all matchups with what is in your deck. If you can't, and you've built your deck well, you play your deck well, etc. then that means the designers haven't balanced things out. That is my
opinion, but I do try to explain the thoughts as well as the feelings behind it so that when folks disagree with me, they can go "Ah... so that is why it is that way for Otaku."
This is fine. It's why its called counter play. Imagine if you played Call of Duty and you could only pick one class the entire match. You are stuck with that role and aren't able to change and adapt. The reason Pokemon needs it is because if you get a bad match in a best of three, you are stuck. Do you remember that one game at a regional or worlds where the player didn't even play the second game on stream? He did that because there was no way he could win and he didn't want to waste his time knowing the outcome. Weakness is the one mechanic that justify the addition of a side deck so you can at least play the game.
I've never played Call of Duty. I've never even watched someone really play Call of Duty. I'm not sure if I've even watched theory videos or the like on Call of Duty. From what I can gather from the rest of this, Pokémon doesn't need a Side Deck, it just needs to fix its broken mechanics like x2 Weakness (something I believe we've discussed before). So, arguing that we need a Side Board because you might get stuck in an impossible to win situation doesn't work for me; I'd rather argue that the game just needs to be designed better.
Neither is likely to happen, which might make them seem even, but getting Side Boards is possible... at which point we get to how I think Side Boards will do the
exact opposite of what you expect it to do, for the very reasons you want them. Pokémon is
not properly balanced to accommodate Side Boards.
I say honest as "players wont show up with jank" decks. Those really odd decks that shouldn't work if a check existed. Those decks that I listed. A handful of such decks exist like that and if a side deck existed, players wouldn't have shown up with those decks because of how easy they would be to stop.
I wouldn't refer to those as "jank" decks. I also pointed out how Side Boards might not eliminate any of them, and could even strengthen them. Even if you were correct about those exact examples, I'm not seeing how Side Boards don't produce other gimmick decks (which is how I would describe them).
I felt my statement did explain it...
You made a claim, then you followed by making other claims that would support it... if I agreed with them. If we were already mostly in agreement, that might work, but I thought I made it clear we were definitely not in agreement on this issue.
Night March would have won one, maybe two tournaments before people considered it a threat and sided for it. I don't know what your experience is with side decks but I've played three games competitively and that is how they worked. A unknown deck would win and people would side for it and that deck wouldn't win anymore of have an easy time doing so because of the counter play. Such a thing doesn't exist in Pokemon and it should. We shouldn't have to wait sets before a proper answer is made but the players can figure out what to do about the deck.
The
original counter for Night March released
alongside Night March. Side Boards don't change the release dates for later counters. So even using examples that don't involve Card Bans, it in no way proves the need for Side Boards.
My experience with Side Boards/Decks is from Yu-Gi-Oh, where they mostly
failed to do what you say they'll do, at least while I played. That doesn't prove they'll fail in Pokémon
but it does mean you've got to present a better case for why it will work than "I say it will work." or "It will work because [insert reason], and [insert reason] will happen for reasons I'm not giving." I've seen it fail. The reasons it failed are because so many cards in Yu-Gi-Oh were good in many or most decks. While Side Decks created additional room to counter these decks, those decks, in turn, had room to counter the counters, either directly, or by including what would sabotage
other decks. This led to much
less deck diversity, and an increased homogenization of decks, so long as you disregard the
specifics of what went in the Main Deck and what went in the Side Deck. Now, if the game has changed since then, okay. While I was never a highly successful Yu-Gi-Oh player, there were times when I would have been considered "competitive", even if only at the local level.
As for your "Side Board counters new deck" scenario, that
does happen in Pokémon but
without Side Boards. People just adjust their 60 card decks; at the competitive level, most decks aren't truly 60 cards in that there will be a core strategy that takes up most of the room, but the rest will be used for counters to various situations. That is why I said it is like Pokémon already has Side Boards, to some degree. If you
really want to push for them, consider
also pushing for a lower Main Deck size as well.
The game shouldn't care about evolving basics doing work. That doesn't matter. For years in Yi-Gi-Oh, four star Monster cards were the meta, despite being a "evolving basic". The game will do things and players will adapt. The thing is such a concept shouldn't be allowed to easily exist and decks should be more or less complete and not meme decks.
The game should care about satisfying the demand for a Pokémon-theme TCG; why else does it exist? As not everyone likes the same Pokémon, it behooves those who design and market the game to make as many Pokémon viable as they are able, provided the rest of the game remains enjoyable. That way, they maximize the number of people who can enjoy the game.
As for your argument about players adapting to the game, by that reasoning, this game doesn't have a Side Board and never has, so after nearly 20 years, shouldn't you have adapted to this by now?
If the emoticon isn't enough, I would not make this as a serious argument.
You presented this argument, and I am now showing you why it is flawed; it can justify anything which means it really justifies nothing.
Let me be clear. None of these things are a bad thing at all. My argument is a proper side deck mechanic would kill off concepts because of the additional card pool that could counter it. It would be too high risk to play given all the energy hate in the game. The side deck would balance out these concepts. if said deck won, it would have a target on its head and wont do as well next time because of the player adapting.
Your word selection makes it seem very much like you considered several of these things "bad", hence using words like "honest". Disregarding that,
why change how things are done if the things you claim will be changed aren't bad? You aren't really presenting an argument, either, but making assertions. You
say they will be different, but you don't explain how and sometimes demonstrate a dubious understanding of how or why these decks worked in the first place. Most of the "Energy hate" like Enhanced Hammer means very little to decks that run on four Double Colorless Energy. Why? Either they are decks - like Seismitoad-EX - that can protect against some of that Energy hate, they are decks that
expect their Double Colorless Energy to hit the discard pile anyway because it is fueling glass cannons, and/or they have a means of recycling their Double Colorless Energy cards.
What a Side Board, by making it easier for every deck to run heavy Enhanced Hammer (or other, similar cards)
might do is punish any deck that tries to utilize Special Energy cards without expecting them to hit the discard pile during the opponent's next turn. Even that isn't certain, because your Side Board slots
still need to be optimized; you'll
still run out of room for all the counters you'll want (maybe even need) because now you need to pack counters for what might be in your opponent's Side Board in addition to whatever is in his or her Main Deck. If everyone starts Siding four copies of Enhanced Hammer to deal with Deck X, and it works, then Deck X declines in popularity and potency, and suddenly you might need the slots occupied by Enhanced Hammer for something that counters Deck Y... but if enough people do that, then Deck X becomes viable again. Oh, and in either case, Deck Z is screwed over because of Enhanced Hammer, even though Deck Z was your favorite, and not super competitive. Oops.
I'm not sure how you are defining "TecH". Forcing a player to make their deck inconsistent for the same of, well I don't know, is a failure of game design. Why does TecH need to exist over a proper side deck mechanic? It is never a good idea to force a player to have to run something they don't need for a matchup they may never see. That is what the side deck is for. Skill means nothing if you start your one-of Giratina promo for Greninja and never even saw the deck that day. All it does is risk you losing for no real reason at all for the sake of being different than other games.
"TecH" is kind of hard to define, mostly because the person who originally defined it didn't feel like lecturing others, but some folks did, and so the meaning became garbled. XP It was derived from using probability to determine optimal deck builds with regards to reliability.
However, what was discovered was that sometimes violating what the formulae suggested would actually lead to an increase in wins. It was discovered that, while reliability was important, sometimes a particular element was so common in the metagame, that it was better to lose a little bit of reliability to counter it; the matches you'd lose due to decreased reliability were less than the amount you won by having a counter to a problem situation.
With that out of the way, forcing a player to fine tune their consistency (in terms of the main strategy) versus their capacity to handle diverse situations isn't unique to Pokémon. Not every TCG has a Side Board. It is a skill that this game cultivates, and even if not intentional, that the game's mechanics seem to favor... unlike Side Boards which appear very unbalancing with how Pokémon actually works as a game. The notion that you should always need all cards in your deck every matchup makes no sense to me; to combat this wouldn't require adding a Side Board, it would require removing player choice, not just in terms of building decks but in actually playing the game. Only then can you ensure every card you see is a needed card that match. Side Boards don't solve this problem. You aren't actually eliminating the problem you want to eliminate. You side in that Giratina to counter your opponent but
surprise! Your opponent sided in four Silent Lab or a 2-2 Alolan Muk line or actually uses his or her full Side Board to gut the BREAK Evolution line you sided Giratina in to counter. You still open with Giratina, which is a bad open even against something like Greninja BREAK, and even with Side Boards, Giratina was a wasted card.
You know what
else would solve that bad opening situation with Giratina?
Multiple other possible rule or card design changes that don't introduce so many new headaches. In fact, it might be as simple as the game's designers
stop making such counters necessary in the first place. No,
really: I get tired of the Superman-Kryptonite approach to game balance.
Okay, I spent way, waaay longer typing that than I ought to have. If you made it through all of that... congrats. Unfortunately, if I failed to convince you, I think it is clear you've also failed to convince me. We can agree to disagree, or you can keep going at it, but I'm thinking it is time for me to take at least a short break from this. Maybe just a few hours, maybe a few weeks, I dunno.
