Last month, I shared a summary of my efforts to prove my worth in the first season of ranked competition for the Pokémon Trading Card Game Pocket mobile game. I think I'll make this a monthly habit for as long as the game occupies a significant portion of my free brainwaves. It's still a fun diversion, very much worth the minimal investment of free...and probably worth more than that, although I enjoy the added challenge of being "free to play" (F2P, as they say). I also don't have a ton of pocket money to throw at Pocket Monsters at the moment, so it suits my budget well!
To recap: In the first season of ranked play, I managed to hit the highest category (excluding those who do well enough for a numerical ranking), that of Master Ball, with a deck using Weezing, Weavile, and Darkrai. It performed pretty well against the ubiquitous and overwhelmingly hated deck known as Darktina (running Darkrai + Giratina), and I was happy to reach "the top" with something other than the format's bogeyman. My win rate was a whopping 50.1%. I was at peace with my skill level. Now, I just needed to repeat this effort in May.
In Pokémon TCG Pocket, ranked seasons start the day after the release of a new set, and the metagame was sure to be shaken up for the new month of play. Two cards in particular were set to scramble the established order of deck power: Rare Candy and Oricorio (Pom-Pom Style; images from Game8)...
Without getting too far into the weeds of trying to explain why these cards would change things so dramatically (to the extent that I'm even capable of doing so), I'll just summarize the main phenomenon each one was expected to bring about:
1. Rare Candy would allow decks running Stage 2 Pokémon to operate faster, thus keeping pace with decks that run only Basic Pokémon.
2. Oricorio would hinder decks that relied only upon what are known as ex Pokémon (which are more powerful but punish their player more when knocked out).
Darktina...the reviled monster of the April meta...runs only Basics and relies on ex 'mons, so it wasn't expected to have the same power in the new environment. As anticipated, it was much rarer to come across an opponent playing Darktina on the ranked ladder than it was by the end of the previous season, when it literally seemed like a majority of players were wielding that hated beast.
I tried all kinds of decks this month. I'm gonna guess...oh, somewhere between 10 and 20 different deck archetypes saw play under my handle. I started out okay (and luckily only dropped down a couple of levels from my finishing position last season)...but bit by bit, I got worse and worse. After 100 games, I had a 52% win rate, clearly not stellar but better than I fared in April. Before too long, I found myself at 120-145-1 (45.1%) and without much confidence that I would improve.
So...I embraced the beast. I decided to play Darktina. Here's the deck that I would eventually settle on (you can see by its name that I wasn't exactly proud of the choice):
And I'll be damned if I didn't go on a 40-20 run to hit Master Ball. After floundering around for 266 games with a losing record, it just took me 60 games to hit my goal. I don't know how my skill increased so much, so quickly... ;)
This exercise convinced me that Darktina was still the best deck in the format...and I'm not sure it was really all that close. (I expressed this on Reddit, and...wouldn't you know...it wasn't met with resounding agreement. It's pretty interesting how attached players can get to their favorite decks...!) It still fared well against decks running Rare Candy because those decks depend upon having the right combination of cards to "go off." If they hesitate, Darktina is ready to pounce. And it fared surprisingly well against the little yellow birdie by chipping away damage with Darkrai and carefully employing trainer cards that force one's opponent to switch out their active Pokémon. I think I probably won some games I could easily have lost if my opponents had just decided to not play other 'mons to the board, forcing me to deal with an Oricorio that I couldn't damage through attacks.
Another brand new season started today, and I think I'm gonna have to go for the hat trick and shoot for Master Ball a third time. One day, it'll actually be enough, and I will have proven to myself that I have what it takes to be mediocre and persistent enough to regularly earn the little Master Ball icon. One day.
Now, if you've taken the time to look through this post...even to just skim it...I really appreciate it! And I have a question: What about this type of post would make it more interesting and worthwhile to you? Normally, I don't really worry about this very much, because I just enjoy posting my nerd thoughts, and I know that there's a set of folks who are likely to read them because they share some interests with me. However...this isn't the sort of subject matter that generates much interest among those who frequent RPG blogs, so if I can do something to make it better fit the blog's very loose "theme" (which I already stretch regularly with Geeky SKAturdays), I should maybe give it a shot...!
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With that said, I shall now turn this into a more normal Monstrous Matters post by statting out a monster. Specifically, I'm taking a look at Darkrai, since it's appeared in both of my final ladder decks so far...
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| From Game8 |
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