Coin Flipping and its Effects on Pokémon Gameplay

   by Sean Comerford

One of the most apparent things that I noticed about the mechanics of the
Pokémon TCG when I first learned how to play was the fact that many of the
cards rely on coin flipping for their abilities to work.  The most immediate
thing that comes to mind when thinking about coin flipping is "luck." Coin
flipping relies on luck, since there is an equal 50% chance to get a heads
or to get a tails when flipping a coin.  Since there is such a nice, round
figure for the chance to either get a heads or a tails, it is very easy to
make averages on how well your coin flipping cards will work, and whether
the energy costs for the coin flipping attacks are really efficient or not.

For example: take Kangaskhan's Comet Punch attack.  For those of you who
don't know what Kangaskhan does, it is a Colorless Pokémon with 90 HP, a
Weakness to Fighting, a Resistance to Psychic, and a Retreat Cost of 3.  Its
attacks are Fetch, which allows you to draw a card for one colorless energy,
and Comet Punch, which requires 4 colorless energy to flip 4 coins for 20x
the number of heads in damage.  Kangaskhan is an immediately recognizable
"good card" - High HP, a great card drawing engine with Fetch, and an attack
with the potential to do heavy damage.  The key word here is potential -
Kangaskhan is very rarely going to do a heavy amount of damage.  In fact,
there is only a 12.5% chance that Kangaskhan will do his maximum of 80
damage.  This is computed by multiplying the number of coin flips Comet
Punch requires by the chance to do 20 damage for each coin flip (4 x 50%).
What you must do to determine if Kangaskhan's attack is actually energy
efficient or not is determine the amount of damage that is attainable 50% of
the time.  Therefore, 40 damage would be Kangaskhan's average damage through
Comet Punch.  If there were 4 coin flips, 1/2 of them would logically flip
heads, making the average damage 40.  The same goes for any Pokémon that
bases its attack damage on coin flips.  Now, since Comet Punch costs 4
energy and does 40 damage on average, it cannot be classified as a very
efficient attack (it doesn't do more damage than its cost.)  You can easily
find Pokémon that can do equal or even more damage for the same cost.
Hitmonchan can do equal damage for only 1FF, and Kadabra can do 50 damage
for 1PP!  40 damage for 4 is not a bad amount of damage, it is only that it
does not use the energy efficiently.  Attacks that do less damage than their
cost without a good side effect (such as Snorlax's Body Slam, which can only
paralyze) should be avoided.  On the other hand, attacks such as Dragonair's
Hyper Beam may do an amount of damage significantly less then their energy
cost, but they have great side effects to make up for it (such as destroying
an energy card.)

How determining a coin flip attack's efficiency helps is that it increases
the overall efficiency of your deck.  You want to be able to do the maximum
damage, most or all the time, to increase the deck's potency.

Coin flipping in Pokémon doesn't always determine an attack's damage; it
also can add bonuses or setbacks to certain attacks.  These coin flips are
less influential on gameplay than damage determining coin flips, and are
usually just nice bonuses to the attacks. Electabuzz is one of my favorite
Pokémon for various reasons.  It has high HP, which is immediately obvious,
but also its attacks are assisted by coin flips, but not reliant on coin
flips.  Thundershock is an attack that is not terribly efficient at 10
damage for L, but it also adds the possibility for Paralyzation, which can
stop your Pokémon from taking damage for a turn, stop the enemy from
retreating, and/or disable a Pokémon Power.  Thunderpunch is one of the most
efficient attacks in the game.  1L for 30 damage is immediately seen as
efficient (it does more damage than its cost), but it also has to
possibility to do an extra 10 damage - and when this extra 10 damage
succeeds, it is incredibly efficient since its damage is double its cost.
The fact that Electabuzz may suffer 10 damage in the process is virtually
negligible unless he already had sustained 60 damage or if it sets up a next
turn KO for your opponent.

For an efficiency comparison to Electabuzz, let's examine the Basic Set's
Pikachu.  It is almost identical to Electabuzz, but in every aspect
Electabuzz has some advantage over Pikachu (except for Pikachu's one less
retreat cost.)  For example, Pikachu's Gnaw does only cost one colorless
rather than Thundershock, but still - I would much rather get an added
Paralyzation effect.  In fact, I think Pikachu needs the Paralyzation more
than Electabuzz to survive longer because of its lower HP.  Pikachu's Jolt
attack is identical to Thunderpunch, except that you only have a chance of
taking an extra 10 damage or not, rather than taking 10 damage or adding 10
damage.  The Jungle's Pikachu is much better.  It has 10 more HP than the
original and has a 2 energy attack that deals 20 damage to the defender and
an additional 10 to a benched Pokémon.  It does a guaranteed 30 as Jolt
does, but it spreads the damage around to the bench as well and doesn't hurt
Pikachu.

I'm going to go a little off topic here to explain which of the status
effects (Paralyze, Poison, Sleep, and Confuse) are the most efficient, since
their efficiency lies in coin flipping most of the time.

If I were to rank the status effects possible in Pokémon, I would rank
Poison as the most effective status effect.  I chose this because it deals
damage at the end of every turn, is a permanent effect, usually accompanies
a small amount of damage, and sometimes is guaranteed to work (Ex. Gloom's
Poisonpowder).  Nidoking has the best of these Poison attacks because it
does 20 damage, is guaranteed to poison, and doubles the normal poison
damage per turn.  Paralyzation is probably the second most effective status
effect because it is only reliant on one coin flip and totally stops the
enemy from doing anything during the next turn unless a Scoop Up or Switch
is in your opponent's hand.  The only downside of Paralyzation is that it is
not permanent, which probably makes it tied for second place with Confusion.
Confusion is a permanent effect, sometimes requires a coin flip to be
successful, and always requires a coin flip to see if it takes effect.  Its
permanency is what makes it just as effective as Paralyzation.  Sleep is the
worst of the effects because even if the sleep is a sure thing, it requires
a coin flip to see if it remains at the beginning of EVERY turn, resulting
in only a 25% chance that the Pokémon will stay asleep.  With Pokémon such
as Clefairy, whose sleep effect requires a coin flip in the first place, the
chance of using Sing and then having the enemy remain asleep for your next
turn is only 12.5%!

In the best example of coin flipping making a card inefficient, I give you
Jungle's sole Trainer Card: Pokéball.  Pokéball is a good card if you flip
heads, but totally useless if you don't.  Steer clear of cards like this
when building your decks!  Any card that has the potential to be 100% wasted
space should not take up ONE slot in your deck.  As far as I know, this is
the only card that is guaranteed useless if you flip a coin and receive a
tails.  Even if for some reason you keep flipping tails all the time when
using Comet Punch on Kangaskhan, it is still a useful card through Fetch and
its high HP.  However, Pokéball has the potential to be totally useless.  If
you need a basic Pokémon so badly, cards like Pokémon Trader or Computer
Search are better choices.  Even though they force you to lose cards in your
hand (2:1 for Trader and 3:1 for Computer Search), they are reliable, which
is more important than having a 50% chance to get a 1:1 card advantage ratio
when flipping heads on Pokéball.

In summation, coin flipping can be used to your advantage or to your
disadvantage in Pokémon.  Coin flipping effects can be useful to your deck,
but you need to keep the amount of coin flipping cards to a reasonable
number to make sure that your deck's success doesn't rely entirely on luck
during a game.  This is especially important on the tournament scene, since
your opposition will most likely be using tuned, quick, decks that are
designed to take advantage of the opponent as fast as possible.
Unfortunately, my friend Chris learned this the "hard way" - I believe he
told me that at a tournament he went to, he lost a match and missed out on
the finals because he flipped two consecutive tails for Nidorino's Double
Kick.  I hope that the advice I provided in this article helps you optimize
your deck's coin flipping cards so that your deck is more efficient overall.

- Sean Comerford

Death|EPT on mIRC EFnet (#pokeleague)
Visit my self-proclaimed "cheesy" website at http://home.att.net/~tazzydevil
Comments welcome at: tazzydevil@worldnet.att.net