Article Pokemon Getto Da Ze! - Playing Pokemon in Japan!

Nice article, was a fun read. To my knowledge there aren't a whole lot of people providing this kind of coverage on popular American Pokemon sites so it was good insight to have. The Japanese tournament format for those tournaments seems really complicated (Though you did a good job explaining it)! I wonder what's up with all the Shiftrys and if anyone will have a breakout performance at US Nats with it haha.
 
Great article, I should be moving to Japan myself towards the end of next year and I've been looking around for info on the Japanese OP structure and your article answered most of my questions.
 
I love this article! It's not really a question about the tournament or your deck as such, but what's it like collecting from scratch in Japan?
 
Scorched Feathers said:
I love this article! It's not really a question about the tournament or your deck as such, but what's it like collecting from scratch in Japan?
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In my opinion, a lot easier than collecting from scratch in the US, mostly due to the difference in packs/boxes and the pull rates of rare cards. A pack is ~$1.50 for 5 cards, and a box is 20 packs for ~$30. There are only three basic rarities (Rare Holo, Uncommon, and Common; as opposed to the West's separate rarities of Rare and Holo), and not every pack has a rare in it. However, on average in my experience, boxes contain about 10 holos and 3-4 EXes. Also, some cards that are Rare in the US are only Uncommon here (like, for example, Bandit Ring's Vileplume). So it's in general a lot easier to get the good cards from a set, and consequently holos and regular art EXes aren't as expensive to buy as singles.

Another factor is the fact that Japanese "theme decks" are totally different and usually contain actually good cards. Generally, Japan's preconstructed decks are released alongside a set and contain cards not included in that set, some of which might be quite good (for example, Dialga EX, Aegislash EX, and Bronzong came in a deck alongside Phantom Gate; the Dragon-type Rayquaza came in one alongside of Emerald Break). They also contain useful staple cards like 4 Professor Sycamore, 4 Ultra Ball, and 2 Double Colorless Energy.

On the flip side, though, pull rates on full arts and secret rares are a LOT lower here, so they tend to be more expensive singles than their English counterparts. So if you care about full sets or blinged-out decks, it can get even pricier here than in the states. But as far as just making a deck goes, I think it's easier here.
 
Yadoking said:
In my opinion, a lot easier than collecting from scratch in the US, mostly due to the difference in packs/boxes and the pull rates of rare cards. A pack is ~$1.50 for 5 cards, and a box is 20 packs for ~$30. There are only three basic rarities (Rare Holo, Uncommon, and Common; as opposed to the West's separate rarities of Rare and Holo), and not every pack has a rare in it. However, on average in my experience, boxes contain about 10 holos and 3-4 EXes. Also, some cards that are Rare in the US are only Uncommon here (like, for example, Bandit Ring's Vileplume). So it's in general a lot easier to get the good cards from a set, and consequently holos and regular art EXes aren't as expensive to buy as singles.

Another factor is the fact that Japanese "theme decks" are totally different and usually contain actually good cards. Generally, Japan's preconstructed decks are released alongside a set and contain cards not included in that set, some of which might be quite good (for example, Dialga EX, Aegislash EX, and Bronzong came in a deck alongside Phantom Gate; the Dragon-type Rayquaza came in one alongside of Emerald Break). They also contain useful staple cards like 4 Professor Sycamore, 4 Ultra Ball, and 2 Double Colorless Energy.

On the flip side, though, pull rates on full arts and secret rares are a LOT lower here, so they tend to be more expensive singles than their English counterparts. So if you care about full sets or blinged-out decks, it can get even pricier here than in the states. But as far as just making a deck goes, I think it's easier here.
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That's really interesting! I'm interested in collecting some cards in Japanese but I don't know many outlets for packs other thank boxes and I have no clue where I would order singles from, but the overall cost is indeed much lower. Thanks for telling me about it!
 
This was a super cool article! It's very awesome to see the differences between Japan's structure and how it works out west. I hope you'll continue to share more with us in the future. :) I'm not even a player anymore really, but I do enjoy reading about the different experiences.
 
It was also at this point that I realized I’d been doing the Japanese shuffle improperly, which almost certainly led to my inability to pull off Archeops. Japanese players, with absolutely zero exceptions as far as I have seen, ten-pile their decks, then stack those piles on top of each other, then riffle shuffle the result several times. When done properly, this is a far better method of randomization than any of the popular Western shuffles. I was messing this up, however, by doing mini riffle shuffles with sets of two of the piles first – which effectively placed pairs of the same cards right back next to each other. Whoops. Well, it was a lesson I could take into the side events, at any rate, and one I encourage all of you to try out if your current shuffling method is giving you a bunch of dead opening hands!
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That isn't what most mean by the Japanese shuffle. Pile shuffling is pile shuffling; the Japanese shuffle is a a variation of the Hindu shuffle (or simply a term for it, depending on whom you ask). This is the first time I've seen it used to describe pile shuffling. Obviously I could be wrong, but I'd hope I'd have caught that before now: even limiting it to the period in which I was both playing TCGs and participating in online TCG communities plus aware of other games where the Hindu shuffle is more common (Yu-Gi-Oh, at least in the fiction), that is still over a decade. XD

I really want to highlight something that worries me:

I was messing this up, however, by doing mini riffle shuffles with sets of two of the piles first – which effectively placed pairs of the same cards right back next to each other.
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You should have the risk of placing a pair of cards together. If your shuffling technique eliminates or significantly reduces this risk you're cheating. To properly "pile shuffle", you still have to riffle shuffle afterwards, and preferably before as well. The goal of pile shuffling should be to achieve the same sufficient randomization that normally requires (I think - numbers are off the top of my head) seven to eight thorough riffle shuffles, but with less risk of accidentally damaging your cards and less need for fine motor skill. Possibly less time if you're really good at piles but really bad at riffle suffles.

So the only reason you might be "doing it wrong" is that the final (I'd say one to three) riffle shuffles are already going to do additional randomization so the mini-riffles are just unneeded.

Also... the good/bad news is that while I'd skipped this article originally, it is being discussed elsewhere because of your comments on shuffling.
 
Otaku said:
That isn't what most mean by the Japanese shuffle. Pile shuffling is pile shuffling; the Japanese shuffle is a a variation of the Hindu shuffle (or simply a term for it, depending on whom you ask). This is the first time I've seen it used to describe pile shuffling. Obviously I could be wrong, but I'd hope I'd have caught that before now: even limiting it to the period in which I was both playing TCGs and participating in online TCG communities plus aware of other games where the Hindu shuffle is more common (Yu-Gi-Oh, at least in the fiction), that is still over a decade. XD

I really want to highlight something that worries me:



You should have the risk of placing a pair of cards together. If your shuffling technique eliminates or significantly reduces this risk you're cheating. To properly "pile shuffle", you still have to riffle shuffle afterwards, and preferably before as well. The goal of pile shuffling should be to achieve the same sufficient randomization that normally requires (I think - numbers are off the top of my head) seven to eight thorough riffle shuffles, but with less risk of accidentally damaging your cards and less need for fine motor skill. Possibly less time if you're really good at piles but really bad at riffle suffles.

So the only reason you might be "doing it wrong" is that the final (I'd say one to three) riffle shuffles are already going to do additional randomization so the mini-riffles are just unneeded.

Also... the good/bad news is that while I'd skipped this article originally, it is being discussed elsewhere because of your comments on shuffling.
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Firstly - if there's an actual term called the "Japanese shuffle," I wasn't aware. I simply meant the shuffling technique used by every single Japanese player I've seen.

Secondly - I completely agree that a properly randomized shuffle should create a risk of placing the same cards next to each other. What I'm saying is that what I was doing wasn't creating a risk, it was creating a guarantee. And it wasn't just creating it for one pair of cards, it was for every two cards in the order the deck had been in before shuffling. My mistake was not simply that I added additional riffling, it was that I specifically riffled pairs of piles in the exact order I laid them down in - e.g. the first pile with the second, the third pile with the fourth - so that the first card I laid down wound up next to the second card I laid down, the third card wound up next to the fourth; and then the second card on the first pile wound up next to the second card on the second pile, etc, etc. I always riffle shuffled the entire deck 2-3 times after, but there was still a fair amount of clumping caused by these mini-riffles.

I'm finding it somewhat difficult to explain what I'm talking about without a visual aid, so hopefully that makes sense? Is there some way I could re-phrase it in the original article to make it more clear what I mean?
 
Yadoking said:
Firstly - if there's an actual term called the "Japanese shuffle," I wasn't aware. I simply meant the shuffling technique used by every single Japanese player I've seen.

Secondly - I completely agree that a properly randomized shuffle should create a risk of placing the same cards next to each other. What I'm saying is that what I was doing wasn't creating a risk, it was creating a guarantee. And it wasn't just creating it for one pair of cards, it was for every two cards in the order the deck had been in before shuffling. My mistake was not simply that I added additional riffling, it was that I specifically riffled pairs of piles in the exact order I laid them down in - e.g. the first pile with the second, the third pile with the fourth - so that the first card I laid down wound up next to the second card I laid down, the third card wound up next to the fourth; and then the second card on the first pile wound up next to the second card on the second pile, etc, etc. I always riffle shuffled the entire deck 2-3 times after, but there was still a fair amount of clumping caused by these mini-riffles.

I'm finding it somewhat difficult to explain what I'm talking about without a visual aid, so hopefully that makes sense? Is there some way I could re-phrase it in the original article to make it more clear what I mean?
Click to expand...

I think a link to a video of the correct shuffling technique might help. Great article.
 
yeah, "pile shuffling" doesn't shuffle your deck. its mostly employed (at least in the MTG community) as a method of counting your deck to make sure that it actually has 60 cards, or as a means to exploit less-informed players into believing that your deck is shuffled when it actually isn't. Its 100% possible to order your deck in very favourable ways using pile shuffling, given that you know the order of the cards in your deck prior to making it into piles. Obviously you added that you and the other players also riffle following pile shuffles, which is required to actually have any sort of randomization of your deck
 
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