Discussion Anyone Else Notice How Corrupt the Metagame is Right Now?

Doomdesirer

Doomdesirer

Stardoom warrior
Member
So here is a little insight for everyone. The metagame right now, looking at all of the decks commonly used right now, has me upset. Here are the major decks and reprints that I personally upset about, and many others probably are.

Seismitoad EX
Seriously Pokemon, this was a bad move. Trevenant from XY was okay, b/c of the energy cost for it's attack and low HP, but Seismitoad EX is too powerful. It's attack can be set up in one turn way too easily. It is much beefier than Trevenant, and kills most decks, such as Night March, any mega deck, and removes one of the most valuable assets from a player's deck, and that is the ability to use Items to get a player set up. Against Seismitoad-EX, you get one turn. If you cannot get something set up in one turn, half of most decks are half useless. When I found out this card was getting reprinted, I cried. I haven't Been in many tournaments because of this card, and now I have to wait another 2 years till this piece of garbage is gone.

Shaymin EX
The monopoly of the Tcg. This card, if you are lucky enough to pull it, right now goes for 50-60 bucks. Many decks run this, and this card is pretty powerful, replacing the old supporter Bianca in a heartbeat. Yeah, this card's ability is the same as an old supporter. I personally think this card corrupted the metagame by having the same eff as a SUPPORTER.

Hoopa-EX
Ah yes. This card searches out 3 more EXes and allows them to go into your hand. I look at this card and Pokemon Fan Club and am like "Lord Arceus save us from this corrupt card." 8 Exes from one card. This plus Normal Mega Rayquay is ridiculous. "Let's see, I have an active M-Rayquaza, I play Fan club, get 2 hoopas, play them, get my 3 shaymins, 2 more Rayquas, and another M-Rayqua." That is pretty ridiculous, putting 7 exes in play in one move, boosting Emerald Slash to 210 damage in one move, permitting you have a sky field in play.

Battle Compressor
This card sends 3 cards from ur deck to the graveyard. In Standard, that means Night march fodder, supporter recovery for later in the game, and deck thinning for cards you need, as well as getting water/fighting megas/stage 2s in the grave for archie/maxie. In expanded, this means getting ace-specs in the grave for junk hunt, and getting plasma cards in the grave for shadow triad.

Night march
30 hp pokemon dealing 480 damage, nuff said.

That is all for now, any other cards you guys have in mind, let me know!
 
What? How do you hit 480 w/ NM? Weakness? Poor assumption.

Amazon, and TCGplayer, and Ebay sells shaymin for around 25-30 USD.

Toad is getting a slight counter in the form of Marowak. Also, Toad is not incredibly popular right now in either format.

Why would you get play Fan club for double hoopa? You never need 8 exs, even in M Ray. Most M Ray decks do not run fan club because 4 ultra ball is simply better.

TL;DR I don't believe most of what you have said is true.
 
Against Seismitoad, you get 1 turn.

Against Trevenant, if they flip correctly, you don't even get a turn.

You can have amazing matchups against the rest of the meta, but turn 1 item lock just cripples loads of decks. I think that's the real reason the metagame is broken at the moment - you don't even get a chance to play like you do against Toad.
 
I only play right now on TCGONE, and this is what I face. These decks, alongside houndoom-ex mill decks and M-Mewtwo X decks are really all I see.
 
I do have to admit that they only came out with counters for these Poke'mon in the last several months. But, honestly, I've said this before, if you a really interested in changing a games mechanic, I think players need to overwhelming petition Poke'mon to change it. I think then, and only then, will they sit down care about it.

Other than that, the creators of TCG enjoy grinding, halting games that weirdly like to watch trainers complete
devastation on first move. Counter to that argument, I don't know if this is a creator issue, or just Pokemon Trainer issue. We as a group appear to figure out how to break the system pretty good.

As for the PTCGO comment, somebody told me it is suppose to be random encounters, but I swear the game always seems to pair me up with counter intuitive decks. Like if I build a fire deck, my first couple of games will be against water decks. Or, for instance, I build an energy disruption deck, I get paired with Xernias. It never fails, but when I build deck, for the first several games, I'm paired up with real hate decks, or vice versa.
 
I'm fine with almost everything you listed and here's why:

Shaymin EX: Yes, this goes in almost every deck. Yes, this costs upward of $50. This game however, is cheap enough that I'm ok with this one card being the majority of my deck building expenses. Once you have Shaymin and the staple supporters (happy this game puts staples at uncommon) every other deck you build after that costs less than $50. This is nothing compared to other games (I'm happy to play a game that treats reprints seriously to keep costs down). You also only need 1 Shaymin, 2 at most depending on the deck. 3 Shaymins are for Colourless Rayquaza. I also like the consistency this card brings at the cost of forcing you to run an easily killed EX. A fair trade as many games have been won or lost due to a last minute Lysandre.

Hoopa EX: Not sure what's to complain about this one. EX decks are at a low right now and your opponent still has to provide the resources for the things he/she searches. It's also eats up bench space with something that will never attack and has a big retreat cost. Searching for Shaymin is strong but puts yet another liable EX on the bench. Once again, the only deck that really benefits from having freeloaders on the bench is Ray and that's a very fair deck.

Battle Compressor: I like that this card enables many diverse deck strategies (most recently Serperior). I'm a guy who thinks a healthy meta is one that promotes many deck strategies which this card does in spades. The only deck this card enables in standard which might be a problem is...

Night March: I'll admit, I'm no fan of this deck. It has its bad matchups though (damage spread is plentiful) but I won't miss this deck once it rotates.

Seismitoad EX: Ok, I'm fine with item lock being a legitimate strategy. It may be annoying but it allows for unique, anti-meta builds (again, diverse meta = good). I'm not ok with the amount of item lock there currently is in standard however. Seismitoad isn't common anymore but we still have Trevenaunt and Vileplume. Between these 3 there is a good chance that when I click the "find game" button, I will not be playing an actual game. I could see 2 of these leave and still have room for an item lock strategy in the meta.
 
I'm fine with that. I just always draw multiple copies of items, energy, pokemon. Turn 1 making it horrible to start with no supporters or ball searches.
 
Seismitoad EX counter: Jirachi XY67, Maroweak FAC, Barbaracle FAC, Vespiquen (in proper set up), Primal Groudon EX (laugh at those hammer and then OHKO), the new Serperoir maybe.

Shaymin EX issue: recently the Greninja/ Octillery deck perform quite great in states, with zero Shaymin EX. Also 25-30bucks isn't sky high when you compare with other TCG like Magic, those cards could be 5-10 fold of this.

Hoopa EX: You need an ultra ball or pokemon fan club for it and like you said you need a skyfiled so that you can place that much benchers and seems only M Rayquaza and Raichu are the only pokemon benefit from this otherwise Hoopa EX and the Shaymin EX it brings are just burden throughout the game.

Battle compressor: It's a good item card, which can fit in many decks outside NM. Would you consider Sycamore and ultra ball corrupt too?

PS: a joltik with 11 other night marchers in discard and muscle band can hit a M Rayquaza EX for480! next after your Joltik get sky return KOed, i hope you have a buddy-buddy rescue on hand
 
The only card I see being too powerful is Trevenant BREAK because of item lock Trevenant from XY. Trevenant was balanced because it's attack required 2 attachments (even with Valley), but it's BREAK gives it a ridiculous spread attack that would have been powerful even without item lock. It's also immune to Mr Mime (by placing damage counters), Wobbuffet (psychic), Silent Lab (not basic), and Garbodor (item lock prevents tools from being played). The best counter is Rough Seas, but even that's not foul proof.
 
Its pretty much been like this since Mewtwo EX and Big Basics in general. As far as balance goes, I don't consider locks that can be gotten on turn one as balanced, no matter how little HP the Pokemon has or how expensive its attacks are. If this is their answer to make the game 'balanced', then someone needs to lose their job.
 
Wow, would be nice to know where to get those $25-30 Shaymins everyone is talking about.

I checked TCGplayer, lowest price one is $43.99 USD.

Ebay, mostly between $40-60CAD with most being in the high part of that range, and tack on shipping as well. I saw one for $32 but the shipping is $23 on top of that, so really $56.

Amazon.ca doesn't have any of the Set up Shaymin EX, just the expanded one. Amazon.com which doesn't ship to Canada has one for $48 USD.
 
It's fair to complain about Night March, because statistically it is far too widely played, and win's far too much. But there's no point in complaining about any EX because EX's are not doing well in the current format (partially because of NM). Basic decks like NM, Trev, Greninja, Vespiqueen, YZG are more plentiful than EX decks. See the state's winners.

http://www.pokemon.com/us/play-pokemon/state-province-championships-2016/decks/week-one/

I think a fair complainy is the general theme of NM, and anti-NM (e.g. Item Lock with Trev/Vileplume/Seismitoad) making the meta too vanilla. Personally my favorite deck is Greninja and YZG because they're something different than either of those.
 
I don't think Night March would have been nearly as bad without Fighting Fury Belt. The low HP kept it balanced making it a lot easier to deal with, but the belt puts them out of range of things that would have destroyed them in the past (delta plus pokemon)
 
pokedan24 said:
I don't think Night March would have been nearly as bad without Fighting Fury Belt. The low HP kept it balanced making it a lot easier to deal with, but the belt puts them out of range of things that would have destroyed them in the past (delta plus pokemon)
Click to expand...

You have to remember, though, that Fighting Fury Belt also puts a lot of EX Pokemon out of Night March's OHKO range, but then again, most decks aren't running Fighting Fury Belt like that. Maybe if there were more Pokemon that can strike the bench liberally like Landorus-EX or Xerneas-EX (they do enough bench damage to OHKO regular Joltiks), I would be more lenient on NM, but there isn't, so there goes that idea.

If anything, I have more problems with Pokemon like Vileplume and XY Base's Trevenant. Literally any Pokemon that can administer Item Lock before the opponent can even take their first turn is going to cause problems with the flow of the game. It's a similar situation to what was happening with Shiftry, except rather than claiming victory immediately, it brings the pace of the game to a screeching halt by essentially locking away a third of the opponent's entire deck (possibly even half of it considering how many decks use item cards like Vs. Seeker, Acro Bike, Trainers' Mail, Battle Compressor, etc.). You would either need Pokemon-based draw support like Gallade/Ancient Trait Swampert or have good luck with drawing supporters just to get by.
 
I think the phrase you're looking for when describing the Meta, and how, kind of lame it is..

Is Gold-Fishing..

If you don't know what this is...it basically equates to solitaire...As if you're playing hands out by yourself, as opposed to playing another opponent.
Too much item lock...to much drawing upwards of half your deck in one turn..
Too few cases of being able to outplay your opponent by making real decisions.
 
Hopefully XY Trevenant and Seismitoad rotate (no reprints I hope) so that will take care of 2/3 of the item lock.
 
socery said:
What? How do you hit 480 w/ NM? Weakness? Poor assumption.

Amazon, and TCGplayer, and Ebay sells shaymin for around 25-30 USD.

Toad is getting a slight counter in the form of Marowak. Also, Toad is not incredibly popular right now in either format.

Why would you get play Fan club for double hoopa? You never need 8 exs, even in M Ray. Most M Ray decks do not run fan club because 4 ultra ball is simply better.

TL;DR I don't believe most of what you have said is true.
Click to expand...
Lol they are like $45 even on TCGPlayer they are def not 25-30 bucks :)
 
Sorry that's just what they were last time I checked.

I'd also like to bring in a a few different points. First off, how many of you do play competitively? Like serious, drive for hours on end for regionals going hard for your invite? If that's most of you, skip this. But if you aren't playing hard, you honstly don't need shaymins if you aren't playing with all of your time and money. Which leads me to my next point. There ARE competitive decks which do decently against the toad which @Doomdesirer is annoyed about- gallade octillery, wailord, and m mewtwo Y (played it, VERY playable with 1 shay and a good list).
 
socery said:
Sorry that's just what they were last time I checked.
Click to expand...

Okay. Good lesson for all of us to learn; this is an online discussion and while there are times when someone could post and not take a moment to double check the oft changing TCG prices, most of the time that shouldn't apply. The same would hold true if someone had overstated the price early on because they hadn't checked recently and it had dropped, though in both cases it helps to know what the price has been for the last few weeks or (better still) months as just because the price plummeted/spiked for a time, it still doesn't mean everyone was aware of or even able to afford to buy at that time.

socery said:
I'd also like to bring in a a few different points. First off, how many of you do play competitively? Like serious, drive for hours on end for regionals going hard for your invite? If that's most of you, skip this. But if you aren't playing hard, you honstly don't need shaymins if you aren't playing with all of your time and money.
Click to expand...

Truth mixed with error is still error; while you bring up what might be a good general point, the specifics of this case means for most of us casual players it still won't hold true. Why? Shaymin-EX (ROS) is integral to many decks and while it is rare, it is not so rare that no one in your local area will lack it. Sometimes you will be fortunate and you and your friends will agree to your own personal ban list, but barring gross incompetence or Shaymin-EX being their only "good" card(s), you're going to notice when you constantly try to build decks and they keep coming up short. If you're at even a Pokémon League with semi-serious players, you're going to need something approaching a tournament caliber deck unless you want to be "that guy" who just plays the younger kids/other budget players or "that guy" who everyone knows is the easier win.

Also, even if you aren't playing with all your time and money, even if you just want to win local tournaments, you probably need some Shaymin-EX.

socery said:
There ARE competitive decks which do decently against the toad which @Doomdesirer is annoyed about- gallade octillery, wailord, and m mewtwo Y (played it, VERY playable with 1 shay and a good list).
Click to expand...

A common misconception is that the game is balanced and enjoyable so long as there is a means to counter a strategy or defeat a deck. While this is true for some people, it most definitely is not universal. Everyone enjoys different Pokémon and often different tactics. With over 700 Pokémon to represent in the TCG, no one should expect to be able to use any and all of them to build a top tier deck, but by that same note the designers ought to seek to maximize how many of them are indeed tournament viable so as to service the most customers.

Pokémon-EX get a horrible rap; I am hesitant to wade into certain discussions because I know (from reading the comments) before I can get to real issues I'll have to spend time explaining "Pokémon-EX are not 'broken'!" because as a mechanic they are not. Even before Night March (or periods where a different non-Pokémon-EX attacker was strong), the mechanic was balanced. Many of the cards were reasonably balanced. People just would fixate on the top card, which was either overpowered or part of an overpowered deck/strategy because of something else that was broken.

I've more or less accepted the current status quo, so Night March doesn't bother me much. Probably because I'm often running it. XD If I did not enjoy that deck, then I'd be pretty annoyed by how difficult it was to find a deck I did enjoy. Maybe it was just because I was playing in less-than-competitive circumstances at the time, and/or how it just wasn't that easy to come across good deck lists and explanations of how to use them back then, but I used to be able to enjoy the game even while I was losing, and on a regular basis. It was more fun to win, of course, but I learned I also wanted to win "well". I originally loved leaving an opponent helpless, but someone asked me how I felt when I faced such decks and I realized, it was quite unpleasant and frustrating... which gets us to the current metagame.

Decks tend to be successful only if the steamroll the opponent, so that even though the other player can use his or her cards Pokémon will be KOed so quickly that setup either doesn't matter or is impossible, or with lock/control decks that leave large parts of your deck unable to be played, or quickly removed from the field so that you can enjoy them for one turn and no more, which combines to leave you doing little to nothing turn after turn until you finally lose. I'm not sure if "Hackneyed Dramatic Battle" matches are any better at this point either. Remember how in say Dragon Ball Z or Yu-Gi-Oh (the animé, not the CCGs) there will often be a point where attack after attack, technique after technique, play after play is "Well I do this!" "Well I counter it. Then I do this!" "Well I counter that, followed by doing this instead!" and so on until there have been enough episodes the (often obvious winner) is declared. Really it tends to be a facet of either of the other two builds; when dealing with steamrollers it is throwing your decks at each other, and when dealing with lock/control decks it is like punctuated equilibrium; a whole lot of nothing most turns until someone gets the perfect hand/field combination and unleashes it on the opponent to win.
 
The meta game is really pretty diverse at the moment, there are about six decks that could have a chance at my nationals (UK) next weekend, four real contenders, two outside shots. I would imagine we will see 4-6 deck types in top 8 cut. That is a diverse metagame. There have been plenty of times in this and over TCGs where only two or one deck was viable. 3-4 is considered healthy by most.

As for Shaymin, to start in yu-gi-oh or MTG standard formats you are looking at more than $300 for a tier 1 or 2 deck. For pokemon you can buy 4 sycamore, 2 N, 4 Battle compressors, 4 VS seekers, 4 Trainer's mail, 4 Ultraball, 1 hex, 2 lysander, 1 xerosic and most importantly 3 Shaymin EX for under $200. This core will allow you to build any other deck in the meta for less than $70.

Whereas if you were to spend $270-$300 for MTG or Yu-gi-oh or (especially) Vanguard then you would be locked into that deck choice and have to spend another $300 if you wanted to change. Where as in pokemon you have the most expensive core of the "best" deck being the same core as in all other decks.

And if you want to play greninja which is probably one of the best two decks in format at the moment (UK meta) then you don't need the $150 for shaymin. You can probably do that deck for about $100-120 from scratch. Maybe less.

All trading card games have strong or slightly OP stuff, and t1 lock decks have and will always be the most broken thing available in any tcg. T1 locks shouldn't exist. Vile plume and Trevenant are too good for a game with no way to counter your opponents moves (like traps in yugioh or counter spells in mtg).

But overall pokemon is the cheapest and most accessible, and also the most diverse TCG around at the moment.

If you want to play competitively just man up and buy three shaymin. After that it's a very cheap hobby.
 
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