Endmaker

cross-posted from: https://ani.social/post/31704835

Source: The Classroom of the Black Cat and a Witch - episode 5

I got a bit more serious this ranked season, tracking my matches as I play.

I don't usually do this. In previous seasons, there's always handful of top-tier decks, which means that you know what to expect when queuing up for a game in ranked mode.

This season is different. In the competitive scene, there are easily 20 meta-viable archetypes right now, each with a decent chance of winning tournaments. The deck with the highest meta share is Hydreigon at less than 8%, a far cry from its peak of ~17% in B2 / Fantastical Parade. All of them have winrates that hover around 50%, so there is clearly no one dominant deck.

So I thought to track my games and see if there are any trends, any way to counter the meta (spoiler: not really).

I started at the bottom of ultra ball 4, at 690 points. I'm currently sitting at 823 point having just entered master ball. It took me 36 matches for this climb, with a win rate of 55.6% (20 / 36).

I swap my deck every 3 games, which means that I cycled through 12 decks:

Here's the full data:

no.,my deck,opp deck,outcome
1,zoroark,sceptile,W
2,zoroark,sleep altaria,L
3,zoroark,hydreigon,L
4,altaria greninja,sleep vaporeon,W
5,altaria greninja,poison sceptile,L
6,altaria greninja,vaporeon milotic,W
7,sceptile,altaria greninja,W
8,sceptile,blaziken,L
9,sceptile,oricorio magnezone,W
10,hydreigon,rampardos goomy,W
11,hydreigon,hydreigon,L
12,hydreigon,suicune baxcaliber,L
13,sleep lucario,altaria greninja,W
14,sleep lucario,hydreigon,L
15,sleep lucario,charizard,W
16,lucario hitmontop,(dc),W
17,lucario hitmontop,venusaur celebi,W
18,lucario hitmontop,lucario hitmonchan,L
19,altaria gourgeist,sleep lucario,W
20,altaria gourgeist,gardevoir,W
21,altaria gourgeist,poison hydreigon,W
22,oricorio magnezone,sceptile,L
23,oricorio magnezone,sleep lucario,L
24,oricorio magnezone,zoroark,L
25,manetric zeraora,blaziken,W
26,manetric zeraora,lucario hitmontop,L
27,manetric zeraora,oricorio magnezone,L
28,flygon goomy,blaziken,L
29,flygon goomy,leafeon,L
30,flygon goomy,lucario hitmontop,W
31,suicune baxcaliber,charizard,W
32,suicune baxcaliber,hydreigon,L
33,suicune baxcaliber,sceptile goomy,W
34,blaziken,sceptile,W
35,blaziken,lucario hitmontop,W
36,blaziken,blaziken,W

Note that the extremely small sample sizes mean that individual deck's win rate is meaningless here.

All in all, I played against 21 unique archetypes:

The most repeats I faced off against were Hydreigon and Blaziken at 4 times each. Right below them would be Sceptile and Lucario-Hitmontop, tied at 3 encounters.

With such variety in my games, I believe this has to be the most diverse meta in Pocket. (I only joined towards the tail end of WoSS, but I heard that previous meta had been completely dominated with Darktina.)

Unfortunately, such diversity means that it is harder to counter opposing decks without making your deck weaker into all the other decks.

However, IMO it is still possible to make some micro adjustments. For me, the main one I made was to include one copy of Chingling in some of the decks that don't typically run Chingling e.g. Magnezone, Blaziken.

A sizable fraction of my opponents were running rare-candy stage-2 decks. Naturally, Chingling shuts those down. Another significant chunk ran variants of Lucario, which meant taking weakness damage from Chingling who is Psychic type.

Most importantly, it decreases your odds of a bad start when going first, something that some of these decks struggle with. For example, a typical Blaziken runs 2 Torchics and 2 Castforms, which means starting with Torchic half the time. Adding Chingling would mean having a bad start 40% of the time when going first.

In a nutshell, the ranked meta in Pocket have never been more diverse, which does make for less stale gameplay IMO. There are still some annoyances like Lucky Ice Pop and Sleep Scam, but I'd say it's a fair trade.

If there's one main downside to this diversity, it is that battling just got harder for the average collector / casual battlers. Gone are the days where you can pilot just that one top-tier deck while keeping only 2 or 3 key match-ups in mind.

But enough about the meta. What decks are you running?

Just completed my eeveelution binder thanks to a successful wonderpick 🥳🎉

This also means an updated display board for Penny's team:

I added some guy for a trade, and used the chance to like their showcased binder as usual.

I then tapped into their binder on a whim and saw the most number of crown rares ever. To be specific, the entire 30-card binder is filled with crown rares!

With such a crazy binder, of course I've got to check out the rest of their profile, and now I'm sharing it here.

For comparison, I did spend a bit to catch up (I started this game fairly late) and even then I'm at 11,103 cards.

~80k cards sure is something.

With the release of the Treecko line, all 3 Hoenn starter lines are now available in Pokemon TCG Pocket. Unfortunately, they don't have an equal presence.

The meta of the early season has Mega Blaziken as the top dog. One of its few counters is Hydreigon, which is in turn countered by Mega Sceptile. (You can guess Mega Sceptile's counter.)

There is a rock-paper-scissors dynamic here and Mega Swampert is not in it.

Edit: early-season meta shifts fast. Mega Blaziken may be fraudulent after all.

My previous longest streak was 7 wins with Orizone. Unfortunately, I ran into its hardest counter for the 8th match: Silvally-Rampardos.

I then messed around with Suicune and Mega Venusaur for a bit, but these 2 decks got countered easily (i.e. lost after 1-2 games).

Thankfully, the ever trusty Dark Greninja pulled through.

Here is the deck for reference; nothing new here:

Which are your chase cards?

cross-posted from: https://ani.social/post/30745621