Discussion The Discard Pile in 2016

[Sabaku]

With the new set "Fates Collide" now in stores and ready to be legalized for play in a few weeks, it felt right to talk about this now. Has anyone else noticed how easy it is to abuse the Discard Pile as of late? Not because of Night March using Puzzle of Time or anything like that, but in general.

From Phantom Forces to BREAKpoint, we've gotten Vs. Seekers that can retrieve any supporters from the Discard Pile, a Battle Compressor that lets players send any cards from their deck to the Discard Pile to combo with Night March, Flareon/Bees, and Vs. Seeker, 2 new supporters in Archie and Maxie that can let you place any Fighting or Water type on the bench from your Discard Pile, and the returning Fisherman, which can be used to provide energy for decks using BREAKthrough's Magnezone, Deluge Blastoise, or Greninja BREAK if someone's not already using Mega Manectric to stream energy. With Safeguard Carbink and Carbink BREAK now out with Fates Collide, we now have what is essentially a Stage 1 that can be searched with Korrina, stream 2 of any energy to any available Fighting types (including itself), and is immune to EXs and the effects of Silent Lab.

Does anyone here think that having cards in the Discard Pile has become more of a benefit than a hindrance as of lately? Do any of you think that it's become a necessity to be able to manipulate the Discard Pile to such an extent in order to win events now?

 

[Draaka]

Lately they have taken to the idea (which is common among most TCG's) that you can make interesting mechanics by using the discard pile as a resource instead of just a place to put cards that are irrelevant to the game.

Most TCG's have one faction or theme or colour or tribe that abuses this, but pokemon have opened it to anyone, that's the beauty of trainer cards not being locked to any one colour or tribe. Same with utility colourless pokemon.

It's a common aspect of TCG design. If the graveyard has more interactivity's than just being a pile of stuff that will be put back in the deck box at the end of the game then it makes the game have another layer of strategy.

To use your example, before there were cards that allowed you to accelerate extra energy from your hand. But with the discard pile being more than a pile of irrelevant cards now it opens up other design options and strategies, such as acceleration from the discard pile.

As long as it's a relevant part of the game then, like card advantage, energy acceleration or any number of other game aspects it will be an important thing to be able to manipulate to the best of your ability, and sometimes whoever can manipulate that aspect best will win more games.


TLDR Yeah discard piles being relevant to the game is a thing, yeah if you can manipulate it better than your opponent you win but that's true of any part of the game. Also why is it a bad thing? Cause you expect it to be irrelevant because of what it is?

 

[Sabaku]

On the contrary, I think it's cool that more deck archetypes have the freedom to take advantage of their Discard Pile. My main beef with it, however, is how easy it is to take advantage of said discard pile unabated. Sure, you have Toad, Trees, and Plumes w/ Bees that can keep decks from using the tools they need to take advantage of the Discard Pile, but who really has time to watch people dead draw all game while they slowly chip away at their HP? I can't even begin to count how many matches I've won and lost or seen won or lost because of that hype first turn Maxie/Archie into Gallade/Archeops/Blastoise or a late-game Vs. Seeker into Lysandre or AZ.

I personally don't have anything against how easy it is to take advantage of the Discard Pile, but I can't help but feel that there should be more checks to that sort of behavior that don't involve using an archetype revolving around completely locking down roughly half of an opponent's deck. At times, it makes me wonder how things would develop if the game brought the Lost Zone back. Imagine if there were a Supporter that lets you put 1 or 2 card from your opponent's Discard Pile into the Lost Zone

 

[ajbroski]

Imagine if there were a Supporter that lets you put 1 or 2 card from your opponent's Discard Pile into the Lost Zone

I was hoping ever since BreakThrough that we would see a card similar to buddy-buddy rescue. What I designed in my head was a card called 'Master Rod' and item card that allows you to select a card from yours and your opponents discard and shuffle them back into their respective decks. If only...

 

[poke4trade]

I believe it just kills the supporter game and promotes special energy. You need less of them to run in every deck. In turn, this promotes faster games because you can replace those cards with item or pokemon draw cards. This encourages less mulligans at start of game -- plus items speeds the game up at start. Just based on the cards, and their mechanics, I think pokemons desire is to speed games up is evident. I think their watching the regional and are calculating time limits on games because there is $$ attached to those venues.

I think if they killed anyone of those cards, it could fluctuate time limits. They want to keep rounds around the 10-15 minutes. Though a game can go longer they want a 3 round game done at the 45 minute mark.

If they decided to rid themselves of those cards, they would probably invent a card that sped up deck draw by searching out specific needs of the trainer, making decking out relevant, but worth the risky play. But ya, just logistically speaking the cards are there to speed the games up so players can make time at tournaments. Without these cards, we would have some long games.