Articles

Growing as a Player - Part 1 (originally published May 2020 via Patreon)

This is my first article or blog about my growth as a player, and I am mainly doing this because many of my patrons have requested it! Please let me know what you’d like me to go into more detail on in the future and any related questions you might have. This is just a taste of my Pokémon career, but it involves some pivotal points and practice methods. Here we go!

Introduction

I have been playing the Pokemon TCG off and on for a very long time with varying levels of dedication over the years, and along the way I have noticed specific points in my growth as a player. Today I want to talk about the period of time where I feel that I went from an average player that would do well at a City Championships or get a decent placement at a Regional Championship to a player that began winning money, getting world’s invites, and Day 2’ing events.

Previous to the Transition

The last time that I came back to the game from a break was the summer of 2016 around when Steam Siege was released - I have been in the competitive scene without breaks since then. Prior to this I was in and out of Pokemon every 4-6 months for many years with little time and money to actually dedicate to it since I had other priorities, and while I wanted to do the best I could I accepted that I was playing Pokemon TCG as something fun to do and it probably did not matter to me as much as the other things in my life. That changed in fall 2016 when Philadelphia Regionals came around and I had a drive to compete at a higher level again. I had been working on an anti-meta deck involving M Sceptile-EX and M Manectric-EX - to my surprise Dylan Bryan shared a Some1spc article on a similar creation which I took some inspiration from. I had spent hours and days leading up to the event trying to perfect my deck. My performance at this regional was not great and I ended up dropping from the tournament at a record of 3-2-3 or so, but this event ended up being instrumental in my growth as a player. I had built a deck I knew could have performed better but my gameplay was sloppy and unrefined, I can specifically remember some of the misplays I made during the event.

One of the main issues that held me back was that I spent a lot of time and energy trying to perfect an anti-meta deck and I spent very little time actually practicing with the deck and testing it’s matchups. Like I said, Pokémon TCG was not my main priority yet and I likely didn’t have the free time to perfect a rogue creation AND master it, so I believe I would have been better off net-decking a tier 1 archetype and spending my time practicing and testing with the deck.

There are a couple of lessons to learn here: #1 is to have realistic expectations. Although I wanted to do the very best that I could, I didn’t go in expecting to win the whole event with the scattered preparation I had done. It is great to be optimistic, but having 1st place as your only goal can lead to burnout and frustration and that is something I’d like to help you avoid. If I was going into these events with less preparation and less dedication than many of the competitive players and expecting to win everytime even though I was out of practice, I might have become frustrated with the game and not be where I am today writing this article. #2 is to evaluate where you are as a player and what you have the time, skills, and means to do. Sometimes net-decking a proven list and learning how to play it from articles, other players, and personal practice and testing is a great option.

The Start of a Growth Period

In Winter ‘16-Spring ‘17 I began playing a lot of Yveltal/Garbodor for local-level events. I realized that although the deck was fairly simple, it was played by high-caliber players like Frank Diaz and Jimmy Pendarvis because of its high skill ceiling. I set out to master this deck and learn its matchups for 2017 Roanoke Regionals - this would be the tournament that got my name on Limitlesstcg.com for the first time.

What was unique about my preparation for this tournament was that I practiced every day for weeks. I hand-wrote matchup spreadsheets, I made predictions of what the meta share would look like, I took notes of possible techs and how important that would be. I watched Frank Diaz (a local) play the deck and I played him in the mirror match in top cut of a league cup where I was lucky enough to lose and learn why I lost the mirror match. I believe I spread out my time wisely when preparing for this tournament. I picked a deck that was established in the meta, did not make drastic changes, practiced it to get good at the deck itself, and practiced all of the tier 1 and tier 2 matchups. Something special for me about this tournament was that I was confident and knowledgeable going into every matchup. I knew what I had to do, so there was less anxiety and less uncertainty which allowed me to focus on my gameplay. Practicing the popular matchups and knowing the path to victory in each matchup is very helpful.

I ended up with a 6-2-1 record and bubbled Day 2, but placed in the Top 64 which rewarded $250 at the time. It felt great for all of my hard work to culminate into success.

I didn’t spend my time trying to break the format, I had more realistic goals. I set out to perfect my play with a tier 1 archetype and learn the popular matchups inside and out. I did this through practice with others and even sometimes piloting both decks at the same time against myself. It is good to practice with players who are better than you, but at the very least try to practice with someone else who has similar goals. If you are practicing with people who don’t want to point out misplays, discuss plays during the game, take plays back, then I feel that you are both hindering your potential growth. It is fine to take the game casually and have fun, but if you want to grow and succeed you need to surround yourself with people who also want to grow and succeed. If you are newer to the game or you do not have friends in the game who are successful already, a quick route to good advice and good practice is getting a coach. Another way is starting with a friend or group of friends and learning together along the way which can definitely take a bit longer but can work for the whole group if everyone puts the time in.

Focus

I think the simplest way to say how I passed this point in my growth as a player is that I became focused. I had been playing for so long and the potential was there, but I had not been focused enough to make something of it. With a game of luck, skill, and deck building there are many factors that come together for a player to be successful. Something that is overlooked in my opinion is the time it takes to make a decision. Coming from a chess background, this is something I have valued since the clock is your resource in a tournament game of chess. In Pokémon whether it be physical cards or PTCGO, there is an undefined amount of time per turn before a penalty or warning is given (in PTCGO you just lose your entire turn if the timer runs out). Being able to make gameplay decisions within 15 seconds is a skill that comes with practice and repetition. A lot of times I will hear players say “I knew what the right play was but I didn’t do it” or “I got nervous and I had to do something so I just played this card down” - I believe this is a result of players not practicing timed matches. For multiple days leading up to NAIC 2018 I practiced 5 best of 3 50 minute matches a day. This was a bit more intense than practice that most people have the time or drive to do, but I placed top 128 at this NAIC and earned my worlds invite so I would say every bit of practice paid off.

Something I have learned from my martial arts background is that you should practice in more than one environment so that you are not uncomfortable when it comes time to compete or perform in front of others. To put this into TCG terms, if you always play at your computer desk on ptcgo or you always play at your kitchen table with your best friend with no timer and all of the elbow room in the world, then when you get to a tournament and the venue is loud, the person across from you is trying to hold meaningless conversation, and your elbows are being pushed into your ribs due to the lack of seating space, this could definitely cause a hindrance to your focus. In my more intense practice regimens leading up to an important tournament like naic or worlds, I would either invite groups of friends over or go somewhere to play with a group of people so that we could switch opponents every few games, have conversation between games, and not be isolated to just two people to help create a different kind of environment. This is something that might not be available to everyone before every tournament and that’s fine, I’m just giving you a look into what I have done in the past to prepare for large tournaments.