My third season of competition in Pokémon Trading Card Game Pocket

(Hopefully, that title is unambiguous enough that no one will be tricked into clicking into this post without knowing exactly what they're getting into...)

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...

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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This month's post about compensating for lifelong underachievement by fighting with elemental creatures on digital cards

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...

From Game8

Darkrai is honestly a pretty cool 'mon.  It's considered Mythical but may or may not actually be a unique being.  And it causes nightmares.  It might even feed on dreams, which is a trope I'm pretty sure I've encountered before, but it still seems badass.  And to add a sympathetic angle, it seems that the nightmare generation might actually just be a defense tactic rather than something done to intentionally bring pain to others.  (If you're interested, you can read more about Darkrai at Bulbapedia...!)

Darkrai

HD 4 (14 HP), AC 12

Type: Darkness

Weakness: Grass

Ability: Nightmare Aura - All creatures near Darkrai (including other active Elemental Beasts) must make a WIS save each round or take 1d6-1 damage.

Attack: Dark Prism +4 (2d6+2 darkness damage)

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Affirmation of the Week: I do not have to succeed at this mobile game in order to prove myself to anyone

Eh...except myself, maybe.

So...I quickly became a big fan of the Pokémon Trading Card Game Pocket mobile game that came out last fall.  As I've mentioned before on this blog, the Pokémon TCG is what really turned me into a gamer in the first place (despite my advanced age).  From there I discovered MTG, then D&D, then other RPGs, including the OSR community.  I write more about gaming than anything else on here, but if I had never discovered the Pokémon TCG (thanks to the kids I worked with at an after-school arts program), this blog would probably be primarily about comics, or music, or biopunk, or...I dunno, dogs or something.

The Pocket version is a great distillation of the physical card game into a quick and casual competition that works very well on a phone.  A few aspects of the game have been tweaked for simplicity (the elimination of Energy cards probably being the most impactful), but it's largely the IRL game, shrunk down.  Games are fast (around 5 minutes on average), and most of them feel like a little self-contained puzzle to be solved.  The app also keeps free packs flowing to you, so even without spending a dime, you get the constant "thrill" of opening up boosters, searching for rare cards and variants.  In case you can't tell, I dig Pokémon Trading Card Game Pocket quite a bit, and it has definitely taken its place as the next in a line of mobile games that have been my go-to downtime entertainment.

And then, on March 28, ranked play debuted, and PTCGP become a much more serious matter.  In the months leading up to start of the ranked ladder, there was really no in-game measure of your success other than a running log of how many games you've won.  And that's cool, and it fits the overall casual feel of the app, but I had really been longing for something like this to give some weight to the games, like I used to have when playing Hearthstone and Auto Chess and Chess Rush.  Plus...and this is a side effect of the new mode that has played out somewhat like I anticipated...I wanted a reason for players to quit disconnecting as soon as they felt like they were going to lose a game (leaving me to wait for the fairly extended timer to count down before I could move on, unless I just conceded), which actually happens way more than I would have thought in unranked play.

Of course I wanted to see how I fared on the ranked ladder.  The point system is set up where you technically don't even need a winning record to advance, especially at lower levels where you earn bonuses for win streaks.  It became pretty clear once I got into the weeds of it, though...especially as I read others' takes on the math involved in the climb...that reaching Master Ball (the top rank, not counting placing in the upper echelon of those who reach Master Ball) would be a grind.  This wasn't unexpected...but it was really going to be a grind...hundreds of games even if you perform pretty well, and hundreds upon hundreds if you happen to be a solidly average TCG player like me (borne out by decades of experience in competitive formats).

Now, keep in mind...I really don't have especially onerous responsibilities in life.  I don't have kids, for example...ones with fewer than four legs, at least.  BUT...I do have fairly normal adult responsibilities, along with that persistent little daemon in the back of my mind telling me that I'm too old and ostensibly responsible to spend this much time trying to earn a little digital emblem that doesn't even necessarily mean I played the game with a winning record.  It'll definitely make you question if the time spent is worth the reward, especially when you know the reward doesn't even indicate that you're actually good at the task involved.  (Honestly, it's sort of a microcosm of getting a PhD...)

In the wee hours of this past Saturday, however, I got that final win necessary to put those all-important letters (MB) after my name on official documents.  I reached the mountaintop...or, at least, the plateau where you can rest while the real go-getters are up there aiming for the peak.  I probably used around 15 different decks in total to get there, including (but not limited to...and if you don't play the game, this is just going to seem like a bunch of gibberish): Gyarados/Manaphy (with Dewgong because I don't have an Origin Form Palkia...played this one pretty significantly, actually); Gyarados/Greninja/Druddigon; Rampardos/Hitmonlee; Rampardos/Lucario/Sudowoodo (both Ramp decks got played a fair amount); at least two different versions of Circle Circuit Pikachu; Arceus/Exeggutor; Arceus/Skarmony; Pachirisu/Zebstrika; Giratina/Darkrai (the bogeyman of the format, so my deck is named "Sellout"); Giratina/Mewtwo; Giratina/Greninja/Druddigon; and one or more decks using Wigglytuff, since the Jigglypuff line is my favorite group of 'mons.

Wigglytuff was actually kind of crucial, as a Wiggly/Weezing/Darkrai deck helped me rebound from a slump that sent me crashing down out of the Ultra Ball rank.  I basically replaced Wigglytuff with Weavile to end up using the following deck (with tiny tweaks here and there) for a majority of the rest of my grind.  I know it isn't the best, but I was able to play it A LOT without getting tired of it.

I'm pretty happy that I had Weezing in there, as it isn't a common 'mon in competitive decks these days, although I'll fully admit that the deck may be stronger overall with something else in those slots.  As mentioned above, though, I was fine playing this deck for a lot of games.

How many games, exactly?

Well, since most of the people who will read this are friends that I don't expect to judge me for it, I'll give the real answer...

674.  I went 338-333-3.  At somewhere around five minutes a game (thankfully, often less than that in ranked mode, as players are ready to move on to the next game in the grind as quickly as possible)...well, I'm good enough at multiplicaton to know that I don't want to think about that math at all.  Perhaps it's good enough to give the total amount of time as: pretty much every minute that could be spared from real life, and some that probably shouldn't have been, for the 15+ days I was caught up in the grind.  My overall winning percentage as calculated by the game (so ties count the same as losses) was 50.1%.  And if you take away the "gimme" wins when you're matched up against bots at the early levels, I may not have even had a winning record.  But y'know what?  I'll take it!

(And then...just so the world could have a little extra fun with me, I guess, I accidentally clicked back into a ranked game -- intending to just rest on my current points and not risk falling out of the Master Ball rank -- with a silly Golduck/Wigglytuff deck that was not exactly prepared for competitive play.  So I did drop back out, thankfully winning my way back in with a two-win streak -- after losing my first "serious attempt" to recoup the lost points.  So...you can add an extra four games to that total because I'm kind of an idiot.)

So where does this all leave me?  Well, I intended to just care about it this one time, to prove to myself that I was capable and get the emblem for the first ranked season, and then go back to the casual enjoyment of the game that most players had been experiencing since it launched.  But...apparently, having hit Master Ball, I may start next season already just a few ranks away from hitting it again (although still where most of the grind is found).  And in playing casual games now, I do have to admit that I kind of miss having something riding on the outcome of my games.  I'm honestly not a very competitive person in general...but I think I might be drawn back in...

And so, I'm telling myself this over and over: I do not have to succeed at this mobile game in order to prove myself to anyone.  But man, is this game good at what it's designed to do.  It hasn't managed to get any cash from me (yet), so I guess it's failed at its primary function (although it has raked in oodles of money from players around the world)...but as far as making me feel like there's always time for one more game, it's about as good as it gets.  You might even say The Very Best.

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Alright, time to tie this all in with the stuff I normally like to post here on Monstrous Matters.  I also happened to recently catch a Koffing in Pokémon GO, so to celebrate my little TCG achievement, I evolved Louise into a Weezing and decided I'd stat her out for OSR games, as I've done at times in the past.  First of all, here she is with Tulip:

And here's the PTCGP card she'll be based on:

For this as a final result...

Weezing

HD 3 (11 HP), AC 11

Type: Darkness

Weakness: Fighting

Ability: Gas Leak - All creatures near Weezing (including other active Elemental Beasts) must save vs. poison (CON) each round or become poisoned by its noxious gas.  Until healed, the poisoned creature takes 1 damage at the end of every round.

Attack: Tackle +5 (1d6 darkness damage)

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