Evaluating the Necessity of Cards in your Deck

- by Sean Comerford

After reading countless deck submissions on Pokémon CCG Strategy sites like
the PoJo and the PokéGym, I have concluded that probably the most common
mistake that causes these decks to be unsuccessful is the fact that the
deckbuilders don't use enough of the good cards in the deck and instead use
less useful cards.  For example, I have seen people submit stall decks with
Clefairy Dolls in place of extra Pokémon Centers, which would obviously be
more helpful in a deck of that nature. I have also seen people use 1-2 Jynx,
which is one of the best Pokémon of the Psychic breed, and use 3 Gastlys and
2 Haunters in the same deck, which are much worse.

The point I am trying to make is that during the deckbuilding process, the
power of each card that is being considered for the deck must be evaluated,
and you must ask yourself, "is this card really going to help my deck?"

One of the best ways to do this is to play many, many, matches with your
deck, and after each game, make a mental note of what cards seem to work
well and what cards don't seem to work well.  Again, with the
Jynx/Gastly/Haunter example: suppose you played 10 matches, and during the
matches, you took a tally of how many enemy Pokémon you had Knocked Out with
Jynxes and with your Haunters (since Gastly can't even do damage!) You would
probably end up with a much larger figure for Jynx, and a figure close to 0
for Haunter, since Haunter actually has a 25% chance of keeping the enemy
asleep to use Dream Eater after using Hypnosis on the previous turn.  The
mathematical figure for this is determined by multiplying the 50% (1/2)
chances to keep the Pokémon asleep at the beginning of your opponent's turn
and then the beginning of your own turn.

By using this deck testing process, you can successfully weed out the
Pokémon and other cards which really don't help your deck and replace them
with more copies of the ones that do.  This weeding produces more consistent
decks. For an example of how this works, I have provided the decklist for
the "Blackout" theme deck:

12 Water Energy
3 Staryu
4 Squirtle
2 Wartortle

16 Fighting Energy
4 Machop
2 Machoke
3 Sandshrew
3 Onix
1 Hitmonchan

2 Farfech'd

4 Energy Removal
1 Super Energy Removal
1 Gust of Wind
1 PlusPower
1 Professor Oak

Since the theme of this deck is supposed to be Energy Removal, let's
concentrate on that theme.  To do this, we will replace Pokémon that really
don't help the theme and replace them with some that do.  Onix and Sandshrew
really don't support the theme at all, and each of them is only capable of
10 damage, so we will remove them.  We will also remove the PlusPower, since
only one isn't really capable of much.  Using these 7 slots, we can add in 4
Dratinis and 3 Dragonairs.  They are good for a few reasons: They are
resistant to Psychic, which the Machops, Machokes, and Hitmonchan are weak
to; and Dragonair is supportive of the Energy Removal theme.  Also, since we
removed 6 Fighting Pokémon and added 7 Colorless, we want to add 4 Double
Colorless energies in place of 4 Fighting Energies.  Since Hitmonchan is one
of the most efficient Fighting Pokémon, and Machoke is horribly inefficient
(3 retreat cost, overcosted attacks), we will remove 2 Machokes and replace
them with 2 more Hitmonchans.  The Water Pokémon mix is perfect for the
addition of another energy removing line: the Poliwrath line.  Although this
is not one of the best lines, it supports the theme.  The Squirtles can be
replaced with the Poliwags, the Staryus can be replaced with Poliwhirls, and
the Wartortles can be replaced with Poliwraths.  This produces a good, clean
4-3-2 ratio in the evolution line, which allows for maximum efficiency.
Since we have a large amount of Pokémon already, we can replace the
Farfech'd with the ultimate drawing control card - Bill.  I would like to
make 4 Bills available, so I will remove 1 Dratini and 1 Dragonair (since we
have so many different Pokémon already) and replace them with 2 more Bills.
 To further the Energy Removal theme, the Gust of Wind will be removed (even
though it is a good card, only one is just not going to be helpful enough)
and add another Super Energy Removal.  We will also adjust the energy mix by
adding 3 Water Energy and removing 3 Fighting Energy since the Poliwrath
line is more energy consuming than Machops and Hitmonchans. After the
revisions, the deck looks like this:

15 Water Energy
4 Poliwag
3 Poliwhirl
2 Poiliwrath

9 Fighting Energy
4 Machop
3 Hitmonchan

4 Double Colorless Energy
3 Dratini
2 Dragonair

4 Energy Removal
2 Super Energy Removal
4 Bill
1 Professor Oak

These revisions produced a tighter, more focused deck by removing cards that
were not valuable to the deck theme and cards that were inefficient.  Even
with the revisions, however, the deck is not perfect.  To help increase the
deck's power, you would play more matches (preferably against varied
decktypes) and trim the deck down even more by adding cards which work
against a multitude of decks rather than only certain decks.

I hope through this article you have seen the importance of evaluating a
card's necessity in your deck, and that you use this technique to perfect
your own decks and make them more focused.

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

Comments are welcome at: tazzydevil@worldnet.att.net