TPCi Launching 'Top Deck Academy' TCG Series!

Woah pokemon is really trying hard to make the game a lot more enjoyable for newbies as of recent with things such as the ADPZ battle decks (and all the others), trainer toolkit, buffing the theme decks to have V pokemon and now this and that's nothing less then a good thing of course. I probably will tune into the streams myself cause I do think I do have a lot to learn about the game still.
 
Jokes aside, this is the issue with the deafening silence when it comes to TPCi. All communication, however sparse, is done in the form of these official and overproduced posts. It's clear that they cannot answer anything about the actual development of the game, since they're playing second-fiddle to the Japanese market. That's why it seems like they're ignoring issues that are apparent to absolutely everyone.
 
Episode 1: How to actually find and purchase Pokemon cards at retail stores.

I mean, this is great and all, but I can't find hardly any product to buy, and what I do find is marked up way too much. Really stinks for my daughter who is trying to get into the game. Seems like Pokemon has a real problem with their target customer demographic being unable to get into the game. Scalpers sure are happy though!
 
Right now, the state of the game is pandering to new players. We saw this with big basics, then we saw it again with tag teams, and most recently, vmaxes. These new cards speed up the game which reduces importance of nuance and techs, and prioritize consistency and hitting heads on crushing hammer. I don't think this is a very good idea to help new players join in and to keep the attention of old players, where it is essentially failing at both. The lack of a ranked ladder on PTCGO and the vide variety of skill in the game makes it really hard for a new player to judge where they are skill-wise.

A recent example that I found recently was with my brother's friend. My brother's friend recently got into the game and he thinks he is "really good," as he keeps beating the bots on the "competitive ladder." We all know that these bots are incredibly bad at the game, but PTCGO insists on pretending that they are 'good'. The friend even went so far as to say that he could probably beat my brother, which is definitely no happening unless he got really lucky. My brother won a regionals, and when asked, the friend says that he played a theme deck with some GX pokemon in it. Dumbing down the game leads to this confusion of newer players who think they are good but really aren't, and it makes the current competitive community feel overlooked, as if they don't exist.

Additionally, the advent of these big 3 prize pokemon also help dumb down the game, such as Eternatus Vmax. With etern, all you need to do is get an eternatus into play, bench pokemon, and attach energy. You have basically no other attacking options to you, the only move you can use is dead end or whatever its called. There is no chance to make unique and interesting plays, and it has 1 glaring weakness: crushing hammer. Every eternatus player hates this card, and for good measure. It's luck based, and it is super OP when games take 3 turns to play. you basically delete a turn from your opponent, and they can't do anything about it because there is no other option you can choose. If you attach to anything other than eternatus, you are just wasting your time. This makes both new players and old players upset at the game and here is why. If you are new, and you just invested 100 of your hard earned dollars into an eternatus deck, you expect to have fun and win games, right? It's hard to have fun when your opponent can just lock you out of the game by playing a card with a coin flip. It is inherently unfun to lose to something involving coin flips, no matter what skill level you are. You never play against some random kid playing a bunch of hammers and lose and think, "hmm. i got absolutely outskilled that game. I think my main mistake was letting him flip heads on hammers. Maybe if i try making him flip tails instead, i will do better." Nobody thinks like that, because there is nothing you can do about it. Its really kinda sad that TPCI thinks that the game needs to be dumbed down as well.

In a way, having a more difficult game is better for new players. If they have to learn matchups and how to sequence and other stuff, well guess what! they are learning. If you think they will get bored of the game if its too hard, then how will they not get bored of a game that's too easy? if 2 kids at the playground are both new to the game and all of a sudden one of them brings along ADPZ, its not going to be fun for either player because the same exact thing happens every single game, and there is nothing that the other player can do about it. If the game is more complicated, then tech cards would matter more and there could actually be something that you could do about your opponent, then the game would be more fun and more fair for both sides, where you have to play the tech and then play around the tech and play around the counter for the tech etc. If the game is harder, then the kid could actually notice themselves improving, while if the game is easy then they just have to sit down for 30 minutes with a broken deck and then win a whole bunch of tournaments for basically free.


an excellent opportunity to dive into the nuances of strategy and deck building.

yeah, such as whether to run more hammers or more tag team vmax dedennes.
 
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Who are “prominent members within the Pokemon TCG community”, it’ll be nice to see who and if they are “prominent” or just some random guy
 
This is cool. I do hope it's actually good though and not like the occasional articles on pokemon.com which tend to overstate the viability of certain cards/decks.
 
I don't really have much to say about this besides that it's interesting as an idea. I do hope it gives some useful hints or something though, or at least helps newcomers get out of some of the beginner traps that they can often fall into with deckbuilding. That'd at least be the optimal outcome of this-actual advice to encourage players to be creative while still having strategy... Despite the rather messy centralized meta that often discourages that, from what I can tell. (I dunno, I'm just a collector who half-pays attention to the game, haha.)

Right now, the state of the game is pandering to new players. We saw this with big basics, then we saw it again with tag teams, and most recently, vmaxes. These new cards speed up the game which reduces importance of nuance and techs, and prioritize consistency and hitting heads on crushing hammer. I don't think this is a very good idea to help new players join in and to keep the attention of old players, where it is essentially failing at both. The lack of a ranked ladder on PTCGO and the vide variety of skill in the game makes it really hard for a new player to judge where they are skill-wise. A recent example that I found recently was with my brother's friend. My brother's friend recently got into the game and he thinks he is "really good," as he keeps beating the bots on the "competitive ladder." We all know that these bots are incredibly bad at the game, but PTCGO insists on pretending that they are 'good'. The friend even went so far as to say that he could probably beat my brother, which is definitely no happening unless he got really lucky. My brother won a regionals, and when asked, the friend says that he played a theme deck with some GX pokemon in it. Dumbing down the game leads to this confusion of newer players who think they are good but really aren't, and it makes the current competitive community feel overlooked, as if they don't exist. The advent of these big 3 prize pokemon also help dumb down the game, such as Eternatus Vmax. With etern, all you need to do is get an eternatus into play, bench pokemon, and attach energy. You have basically no other attacking options to you, the only move you can use is dead end or whatever its called. There is no chance to make unique and interesting plays, and it has 1 glaring weakness: crushing hammer. Every eternatus player hates this card, and for good measure. It's luck based, and it is super OP when games take 3 turns to play. you basically delete a turn from your opponent, and they can't do anything about it because there is no other option you can choose. If you attach to anything other than eternatus, you are just wasting your time. This makes both new players and old players upset at the game and here is why. If you are new, and you just invested 100 of your hard earned dollars into an eternatus deck, you expect to have fun and win games, right? It's hard to have fun when your opponent can just lock you out of the game by playing a card with a coin flip. It is inherently unfun to lose to something involving coin flips, no matter what skill level you are. You never play against some random kid playing a bunch of hammers and lose and think, "hmm. i got absolutely outskilled that game. I think my main mistake was letting him flip heads on hammers. Maybe if i try making him flip tails instead, i will do better." Nobody thinks like that, because there is nothing you can do about it. Its really kinda sad that TPCI thinks that the game needs to be dumbed down as well. In a way, having a more difficult game is better for new players. If they have to learn matchups and how to sequence and other stuff, well guess what! they are learning. If you think they will get bored of the game if its too hard, then how will they not get bored of a game that's too easy? if 2 kids at the playground are both new to the game and all of a sudden one of them brings along ADPZ, its not going to be fun for either player because the same exact thing happens every single game, and there is nothing that the other player can do about it. If the game is more complicated, then tech cards would matter more and there could actually be something that you could do about your opponent, then the game would be more fun and more fair for both sides, where you have to play the tech and then play around the tech and play around the counter for the tech etc. If the game is harder, then the kid could actually notice themselves improving, while if the game is easy then they just have to sit down for 30 minutes with a broken deck and then win a whole bunch of tournaments for basically free.




yeah, such as whether to run more hammers or more tag team vmax dedennes.

I'm sure you've got some great points here and I don't want to be rude or anything, but can you please separate this into paragraphs?? It's rather hard to read in this form- You've got an entire wall of text here and a lot of points are going to be missed if the reader's got to go through this entire thing without any form of spacing.
 
I'm sure you've got some great points here and I don't want to be rude or anything, but can you please separate this into paragraphs?? It's rather hard to read in this form- You've got an entire wall of text here and a lot of points are going to be missed if the reader's got to go through this entire thing without any form of spacing.
enjoy your paragraphs
 
> Trying to help new players and calling your program TOP DECK academy.

There you go. That's how you win.
 
TPCi : "Let's make Top Deck Academy!"

PokeBeach's TCG podcast : (cries in the corner) "Nobody listens to me..."
 
Episode 1: Buy Some Cards.
Episode 2: Whoops! Can’t Find Them?
Episode 3: Coming 2022.
 
Step 1: Scrap the whole idea
Step 2: Bring out the Hypothetical Evolution Format
Step 3: Stop making this the worst card game out there
 
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