I need to get better!

Bawksie

(:
Member
Yeah title says it.

Basically I'll put it easy. I suck kinda at this game. Well I'm decent.

I've been playig this game for at least 10 years and competitivly for about 4-5. In the whole time I've never won and I've only topped maybe 4 times if that. maybe less.

I'm thinking maybe because I run rogue? Maybe I don't play meta because I don't have a lot of the top deck cards. Maybe I need to start spending money to get these decks?

I really want to start doing good maybe even win like a br. I can't even top though.

Advice?
 

Fusion

Hero For Hire!
Member
Netdeck, or gaze your current metagame and metagame against it. There's no shame in netdecking though. Half of the game is deckbuilding, the other half is knowing your deck and how to play it.
My personal suggestion:
Try something control. Use some kind of hand advantage deck. Know what your opponent has, and how he can play it. It will help you understand your opponent's motives better. Once you're reading the people you'll do better.
 

crm103top08

Aspiring Trainer
Member
Battle Roads IS the place to test rogue. Although they don't always work. If you can make decent rogues work, then you should do just fine with meta decks. If you're record at battle roads is usually something like 4-2 or 3-3, then you aren't playing with very good people, unless they have bad days. Use meta decks, and your record should look more like 5-1 or 4-2, therefore, you play better players, and get better yourself.

On a separate note, did you want to buy those cards from my thread still?
 

ESP

Swag.
Advanced Member
Member
As bad as it is to say, it is probably because you run rogue. To get the good cards of the metagame, I check out tournament reports to see winning decks. I go to a prerelease and get about 10-15 packs (including the 8 from the prerelease) for nearly every set. I also trade cards at tournaments, league, and here on these forums. Combine all of those, and you can easily get better at the game for like $25-50 every 3 months (seriously, that's about all I spend.)
 

AmishEskimoNinja

Hating durant since 11/16/11
Member
mr.619 said:
Yeah title says it.

Basically I'll put it easy. I suck kinda at this game. Well I'm decent.

I've been playig this game for at least 10 years and competitivly for about 4-5. In the whole time I've never won and I've only topped maybe 4 times if that. maybe less.

I'm thinking maybe because I run rogue? Maybe I don't play meta because I don't have a lot of the top deck cards. Maybe I need to start spending money to get these decks?

I really want to start doing good maybe even win like a br. I can't even top though.

Advice?

I think I am in EXACTLY the same boat as you. I love deckbuilding, so I hate running someone else's build. I usually don't top cut, but I can usually attribute it to a really bad misplay or two. I don't think there is anything wrong with rogue, but you need to test it out a lot to make sure it works. And I think the best way to do that is RedShark. You can play a bunch of competative players every week.

I'm a firm believer that pokemon is a 1/3 your cards, 1/3 your skill and 1/3 your luck. Playing a meta deck won't help you if you don't understand it inside and out. But if you build a rogue deck yourself, you know every intricacy of it and its strategy. That goes a long way.

Can you tell us some of the rogue decks you've been playing lately?
 

Summer

Aspiring Trainer
Member
Same thing happened with me until a few months ago. I ran older decks that weren't too popular anymore, and then made a rogue deck that worked out pretty good and got me 2nd at a battle roads, my first top cuts ever. I switched to another deck after months of not doing as well, this new deck was in the current meta, and I did pretty decent with it at battle roads. Decent to me may not be the same as decent would be to you, but it got my a 1st, 2nd, and 4th. Then again, I ran that deck at Nationals and did awful.

My advice to you would be, if you want to do good in tournaments, take a deck out of the current meta and change it up to your likings. Learn how the other decks in the meta run, build them on RedShark, and test it against the meta deck that you changed up a little. It will give you a feel for what other people could most likely be playing, and you could tech in counters against them.
 

Rubyiris

Aspiring Trainer
Member
The only way to get better is to play good decks and play against good people. Anything else is going to limit your growth.
 

goldenthumb

PokéBeach Champion
Member
First off....there is nothing wrong with running a rogue deck. Every deck at one point was a rogue deck. But in order to do good it takes hard work. Look up the top decks in the meta and test them out yourself to see how they run, know what hurts them, and how they gain advantages. It doesnt help to know what deck your playing if you dont know how to play against it. Also do a lot of play testing! See how your new deck does against the top decks. You will get a lot of ideas for techs and other strategies. Of course, you will notice some cards that you will need, but dont have, so you may have to trade or buy them. Minimize your errors!!! This one is probably the most important!! I cant even count the times that an early, mid, or even late game error cost me matches. Play your games perfect and you will feel better about your loss rather than losing one that you could have won.
 

PokeKid Brandon

PM for free stupid...
Member
Play games. I try to play as many games as possible with as many decks as i can.

As much as these people say "your not doing good cause you play rouge" most losses can be atributed to misplays or bad matchups. Although there is a reason that meta decks are meta. They simply are better then most rouge decks. Thats not to say that rouge decks arn't good. Just try and figure out your metagame. Play some games with multiple decks that cover differnet parts of the metagame. Then chose a deck that you feel will do best against hte metagame.
 

CyndaquilMaster

Co-leader of the Storms
Member
Play lots of games. Go on Red Shark or at your league and you'll know the deck better. I recommend RS, mainly because it will be with people out of your area so people won't know what you're playing. The more you play the less chance there is of you making a mistake. Also play against a lot of different decks, you should know how to play a lot of top tier decks. In the case of a 2 type deck like Flychamp, you must know, do I go for Machamp? Flygon? Get a quick Nidoqueen and Flygon and use Machamp later if I can get to it. If you know this it will be easier. If you're playng rouge, make a decklist of what you want to build. Edit after seeing what works and doesn't work. Soon you'll have a good rouge to work with. I did this with Turtwig and won cities with it.
 
The best thing to do would probably be: Make your own creative deck with cards that you own, or proxy. Just browse though your binder or whatever and see which cards could work together, then incorporate them into a deck. If you find scans of cards that seem like they could work, you could proxy them or go buy them at your local card shop. After you've made the deck, go to your league/RedShark and playtest it against other decks. Find out what it's good against and what it isn't, make fixes accordingly, then try to figure out how the other deck works and how you should play against it. But don't try it against all the BDIF's first, just be gradual.

Hope I help,
~A+G
 

Rikko145

I put the "laughter" in "slaughter&
Member
mr.619 said:
Yeah title says it.

Basically I'll put it easy. I suck kinda at this game. Well I'm decent.

I've been playig this game for at least 10 years and competitivly for about 4-5. In the whole time I've never won and I've only topped maybe 4 times if that. maybe less.

I'm thinking maybe because I run rogue? Maybe I don't play meta because I don't have a lot of the top deck cards. Maybe I need to start spending money to get these decks?

I really want to start doing good maybe even win like a br. I can't even top though.

Advice?

My suggestion is to run something easy, yet metagame. (Try DialgaChomp. Using that Deafen Lock early game helps give newer players an advantage.) But, don't just netdeck. Make it your own style, with the Energy lines as you see fit, and the techs however you like. Maybe you want to run ToxiTank? Or Drifblim FB? Or Honchkrow G, ERL, Weavile G, etc, etc.
 

Cinema

Gyarados Bait
Member
Rikko145 said:
My suggestion is to run something easy, yet metagame. (Try DialgaChomp. Using that Deafen Lock early game helps give newer players an advantage.) But, don't just netdeck. Make it your own style, with the Energy lines as you see fit, and the techs however you like. Maybe you want to run ToxiTank? Or Drifblim FB? Or Honchkrow G, ERL, Weavile G, etc, etc.

Dude... DialgaChomp is one of the hardest decks to play, and is definitely THE hardest SP deck to play.
 

Rikko145

I put the "laughter" in "slaughter&
Member
minimidget94 said:
Dude... DialgaChomp is one of the hardest decks to play, and is definitely THE hardest SP deck to play.

That may be true, but he didn't say he was a noob. He said he wants to be good. To be good, you have to think. DialgaChomp makes you think and rewards that with a huge advantage.
 

PokeKid Brandon

PM for free stupid...
Member
I would agree with the above statement. It's hard to play so definatly play alot of games before going to a tourney. (50+) I usually try for 50+ for any decks before I take it to a tourney. It's time consuming but it really helps espically when you play wiht multiple decks and try to decide for a big tournmant.
 

CFOURCOLTSFAN

Aspiring Trainer
Member
Okay, i'll be honest I'M NOT an amazing player.
But i have found that once i started playing "Meta" decks i did improve(not to mention i couldn't afford claydols/uxies this in before LP time), So that did help, i went from playing Glaceon/Darkrai lock decks, then 'semi" meta decks w/out claydol, to playing SPs, and well i did get better and i now understand the game better too. So playing rogue sometimes hurts because of "Murphy's" law, i seemed to always run into the bad matchups i had and never the good ones.
Also playing against friends and getting help from top masters makes you better too.
 
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