This post is about my third season of competition in Pokémon Trading Card Game Pocket (once more for emphasis), the mobile simplification of the IRL TCG that's been hugely popular since it came out last October. I previously wrote about my journeys through the first two competitive seasons: For the season designated A2b, my summary is here, and the season A3 recap can be found here. As long as I'm trying to climb the ladder, I'm going to post about it here on Monstrous Matters for the few who might stumble upon it and take some interest. There is definitely a chance that this will be the last entry for a little while; after hitting the Master Ball rank a third time, I now have enough emblems to fill in all three slots we're allotted to show off on our account...
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| Charizard's replacement with another Master Ball logo will definitely prove my dedication to the game! |
...and honestly, it probably wouldn't be bad for me to force myself to just not worry about being "successful" in this quest for a little while. As I've hinted at previously, I'm not really sure why I'm so driven to get to that that top level (especially since it isn't really the top level, as that would be those who place highly enough to earn numerical rankings)...and it probably occupies more of my mental space than it should when I'm in the midst of the grind. BUT...the new season (that started last Friday, after the new set dropped on Thursday) has already tempted me to get in a handful of games. A generous handful of games. It's my worst start yet, so the smart move at this point would be to let it rest this month. I guess that means I'm probably in it for the long haul...
SO...season A3a! Going into last month's matches, it didn't seem as clear where the biggest forces shaping the new format would come from. There weren't any individual cards that were going to so obviously boost or burden popular strategies as the two high-impact entries from the last set (all individual card images are from Game8).
The focus of season A3a's new set ("Extradimensional Crisis") is the group of Pokémon known Ultra Beasts. These visitors from beyond our concepts of time and space are actually kind of cool; I've always thought they had some Lovecraftian implications surrounding their appearance. And for some reason, I've always dug the appearance of the Ultra Beast known as Buzzwole...
Sure enough, a couple of strategies focused on the synergy of Ultra Beasts and their related cards were probably the biggest additions to the metagame. Darkness decks based on poison and Guzzlord as a finisher saw some success, and Grass decks running Buzzwole ex were pretty much at the top of the meta at one point. And they all made use of Celesteela to cheat on the cost of moving Pokémon into and out of the active spot every turn.
As with the first two seasons, I jumped around with the decks I played, giving up way too soon on some that were generally strong but happened to hand me some bad luck for a few games straight. And as with both of the earlier seasons, somewhere around the time it looked like I was doomed to endlessly spin my wheels on the treadmill of the ranked ladder (yes, I do realize that just one of those...spinning wheels or a treadmill...would do the trick...), I somehow "locked in" with a specific deck and was able to hit Master Ball.
The key for me was finally embracing the hard-hitting Stage 1 Pokémon Silvally, especially in combination with the even harder-hitting Stage 2 dinosaur Rampardos...
To make sure I'm in "full disclosure" mode here: I did not have a good record for the season overall (166-174-4). But looking back over the portions of the run that I kept track of...which may have included all of the games I played pairing Silvally with a Fossil Pokémon...the results were pretty solid for those pairings (58.5% win rate with Aerodactyl and 66.0% with Rampardos). I probably would have been smart to stick it out a little longer through some of the runs of bad luck I had with them (Rampardos especially) so that I didn't have to "rediscover" the deck in order to hit my goal.
But, I mean...there's always next season. For good or ill, it's always around the corner...
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And now, of course, it's time to give RPG stats to a 'mon based on its TCG card. Silvally and its pre-evolution Type: Null (yeah that's its name) are honestly pretty cool creations. I don't know a ton about their lore, but as synthetic creatures designed with the express goal of battling the Ultra Beasts, they seem to be used as vehicles to explore some potentially interesting themes like trust and free will. At some point I'll have to take a little time to learn more about them and their crazy Frankensteinian anatomy. For now, I'll just whip up a simple take on Type: Null...
Type: Null
HD 2 (8 HP), AC 12
Type: Colorless
Weakness: Fighting
Attack: Quick Blow +4 (1d6 damage)
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