✎ Tate Whitesell (@twhitesell42)
Recently, Kevin Clemente posted a tweet with a seemingly simple, yet surprisingly difficult, puzzle. As the Blacephalon player, faced with this board state, what do you do?
After looking at it for about a minute, I was pretty confident in the play I would make in Kevin's shoes: simply attach an Energy to my Active Zacian V and KO the Defending Blacephalon. Michael Catron, somewhat reassuringly, agreed, using basically the same logic I had. Scrolling through the thread, however, I saw several differing opinions on the optimal play in this scenario, some of which made sense to me, and some of which seemed completely wrong. The more I thought about it, the more I realized this very specific in-game scenario actually posed a very interesting question on how you approach the Pokémon TCG. I found at least four different lines of play all suggested by players who I believe are very good and whose opinions I value highly, which was surprising because there is quite often a "correct play"--or at most two solid plays--in situations like this, and top players will usually identify that play and agree on it--but not in this case.
My own Twitter poll yielded these results:
As promised, I wanted to write about Kevin's scenario, both to show the logic behind my own approach, and to elaborate on some of the other approaches shared by top players and what their logic might be. I think the fact that multiple high-level players disagree on the best line of play here illustrates just how complex of a game PTCG is, and I think the discussion I present here, even if you disagree with my conclusion, is valuable information on the journey to becoming a better player.
Approach #1 (Tate Whitesell): KO Active
Other players who agreed with me on this approach include Michael Catron (as I mentioned), my teammate Kenny Wisdom, and actually Kevin Clemente himself, although in the actual game, Kevin had taken Approach #2 (see below) but later decided that Approach #1 would have been correct.
I have played a pretty large sample of games against Blacephalon with a variety of decks, and a strategy that I often adhere to is to chase the Energy on board. Obviously there are scenarios where you would not do this, such as a) you have a limited amount of time to take all your Prizes and need to prioritize two-Prize Pokémon, or b) you feel KOing a support Pokémon (Jirachi or Oricorio-GX) will provide more disruption than chasing the Energy.
However, in Kevin's scenario, I feel that the most disruptive route you can take is simply KOing the Active Blacephalon and removing those Energy from the board. You know that the opponent's topdeck is Welder but you do not know the remainder of their hand. Thus, by KOing any Pokémon besides the Blacephalon, you give your opponent a chance to have two attackers fully set up with Energy on their next turn. This means that any disruption (Reset Stamp or Marnie) you play on the following turn would not be as successful, because the opponent would not need to find the Welder and Energy necessary to set up an additional attacker.
Also critical to my analysis of this turn was the observation that Heat Factory is in play. Kevin's deck plays Chaotic Swell, but there is no guaranteed way to find it on this turn. Thus it is very likely that Heat Factory "sticks" in play through the opponent's next turn, and that means, again, that any disruption card you play here will be much less effective. If you are unable to disrupt Heat Factory on a particular turn, I don't think it's worth it to burn a valuable Reset Stamp or Marnie on that turn, because the probability that the opponent will draw out of it is quite high.
If you KO the Blacephalon without making any other actions, your opponent has a guaranteed Stellar Wish plus Welder, but they need to find another Blacephalon plus six Energy to take the KO on your Zacian V. It is likely that they find this, of course, but the point is that you force them to expend resources that they would not have to if you had left the Blacephalon alive (for example, if you went for Boss's Orders on the opposing Zacian V). Thus, I think this is the correct route.
If you play Boss's Orders and KO any of the opponent's other Pokémon, the opponent still has a Blacephalon with Energy ready to attack, plus the opportunity to develop a second attacker with Energy. Thus, even if you KO with Tapu Fini on your next turn in combination with a Reset Stamp, the opponent would still have an attacker ready to go to respond to the Tapu Fini, regardless of what they draw off Reset Stamp.
If you play Reset Stamp and then KO the Active, your opponent has Stellar Wish plus Heat Factory to draw out of the disruption, and you no longer have your Reset Stamp for the following turn, when it could be more effective (you would stamp to a lower hand size and you could find Chaotic Swell to bump Heat Factory).
In the words of Catron: "playing anything other than the Boss for [Supporter] is fairly bad because you need the Stamp [later] and playing Marnie lets them get a "better" hand in theory... the Prize lost by not killing Zacian can be made up for with combo but you're already in an odd position so I think forcing them into having more in the oncoming turns is better."
"After hearing many opinions," Kevin agreed with myself, Kenny, and Catron that KOing the Blacephalon is correct because "that at least forces [the opponent] to have a response every turn since I'm already behind."
Approach #2 (Luke Morsa): Boss's Orders on Zacian V
My teammate Luke Morsa and friend/"Stats Chat" member Bart Musser went for a different line of play, which was actually the line used by Kevin in the actual game (which he later decided was wrong). This line involves attaching Energy to your Zacian V and playing Boss's Orders to take the KO on the opponent's Zacian V.
The logic behind this play is to prioritize finding a faster route to your win condition (take six Prizes), over disrupting the opponent's board. By taking two Prizes on the Zacian V, you can win in two turns by pulling off the combo twice after KOing two single-Prizers, or once if you KO one single-Prizer and one two-Prizer.
With Approach #1, you need to take one more turn to win the game, but that gets balanced out by the increased disruption you place on your opponent's board (by removing the Energy in play). Approach #2 basically turns the game into an arms race where you try to win faster and simply hope the Blacephalon player whiffs a crucial piece at some point--but you are also allowing them to maintain a crucial piece by leaving the Blacephalon with Energy in play alive, which is why I think the logic behind this route is flawed.
Even assuming something does go wrong somewhere for the Blacephalon player, it is by no means a guarantee that you actually will win in two turns. The most likely scenario is that you would need to execute the combo twice. There's no guarantee of that happening. The other scenario would be to KO a one-Prizer, likely another Blacephalon, and KO a two-Prizer (Oricorio-GX or Dedenne-GX), and execute the combo on one of those KOs. This requires two things to happen:
Approach #3 (Jay Lesage): Boss's Orders on Jirachi
Jay is a very good player, but I don't see any way that this line of play is correct. It is worth analyzing how Jay got here, though, because there is logic behind this idea. Jay states that the Jirachi "will add so much value going forward." KOing the
Approach #4 (Henry Brand): Stamp, Marnie, KO Active
Other approaches
Recently, Kevin Clemente posted a tweet with a seemingly simple, yet surprisingly difficult, puzzle. As the Blacephalon player, faced with this board state, what do you do?
Alright big brains of PTCG Twitter, this play is bothering me and I want opinions.— Kevin Clemente (@Mellow_Magikarp) August 2, 2020
Combo Z vs Blowns. My discard is a Hoopa, their's is essentially some fire with Welder as the top deck.
What's your play? #PlayPokemon pic.twitter.com/VN7tDPYxlp
After looking at it for about a minute, I was pretty confident in the play I would make in Kevin's shoes: simply attach an Energy to my Active Zacian V and KO the Defending Blacephalon. Michael Catron, somewhat reassuringly, agreed, using basically the same logic I had. Scrolling through the thread, however, I saw several differing opinions on the optimal play in this scenario, some of which made sense to me, and some of which seemed completely wrong. The more I thought about it, the more I realized this very specific in-game scenario actually posed a very interesting question on how you approach the Pokémon TCG. I found at least four different lines of play all suggested by players who I believe are very good and whose opinions I value highly, which was surprising because there is quite often a "correct play"--or at most two solid plays--in situations like this, and top players will usually identify that play and agree on it--but not in this case.
My own Twitter poll yielded these results:
wyd here— tate (@twhitesell42) August 4, 2020
As promised, I wanted to write about Kevin's scenario, both to show the logic behind my own approach, and to elaborate on some of the other approaches shared by top players and what their logic might be. I think the fact that multiple high-level players disagree on the best line of play here illustrates just how complex of a game PTCG is, and I think the discussion I present here, even if you disagree with my conclusion, is valuable information on the journey to becoming a better player.
Approach #1 (Tate Whitesell): KO Active
Other players who agreed with me on this approach include Michael Catron (as I mentioned), my teammate Kenny Wisdom, and actually Kevin Clemente himself, although in the actual game, Kevin had taken Approach #2 (see below) but later decided that Approach #1 would have been correct.
I have played a pretty large sample of games against Blacephalon with a variety of decks, and a strategy that I often adhere to is to chase the Energy on board. Obviously there are scenarios where you would not do this, such as a) you have a limited amount of time to take all your Prizes and need to prioritize two-Prize Pokémon, or b) you feel KOing a support Pokémon (Jirachi or Oricorio-GX) will provide more disruption than chasing the Energy.
However, in Kevin's scenario, I feel that the most disruptive route you can take is simply KOing the Active Blacephalon and removing those Energy from the board. You know that the opponent's topdeck is Welder but you do not know the remainder of their hand. Thus, by KOing any Pokémon besides the Blacephalon, you give your opponent a chance to have two attackers fully set up with Energy on their next turn. This means that any disruption (Reset Stamp or Marnie) you play on the following turn would not be as successful, because the opponent would not need to find the Welder and Energy necessary to set up an additional attacker.
Also critical to my analysis of this turn was the observation that Heat Factory is in play. Kevin's deck plays Chaotic Swell, but there is no guaranteed way to find it on this turn. Thus it is very likely that Heat Factory "sticks" in play through the opponent's next turn, and that means, again, that any disruption card you play here will be much less effective. If you are unable to disrupt Heat Factory on a particular turn, I don't think it's worth it to burn a valuable Reset Stamp or Marnie on that turn, because the probability that the opponent will draw out of it is quite high.
If you KO the Blacephalon without making any other actions, your opponent has a guaranteed Stellar Wish plus Welder, but they need to find another Blacephalon plus six Energy to take the KO on your Zacian V. It is likely that they find this, of course, but the point is that you force them to expend resources that they would not have to if you had left the Blacephalon alive (for example, if you went for Boss's Orders on the opposing Zacian V). Thus, I think this is the correct route.
If you play Boss's Orders and KO any of the opponent's other Pokémon, the opponent still has a Blacephalon with Energy ready to attack, plus the opportunity to develop a second attacker with Energy. Thus, even if you KO with Tapu Fini on your next turn in combination with a Reset Stamp, the opponent would still have an attacker ready to go to respond to the Tapu Fini, regardless of what they draw off Reset Stamp.
If you play Reset Stamp and then KO the Active, your opponent has Stellar Wish plus Heat Factory to draw out of the disruption, and you no longer have your Reset Stamp for the following turn, when it could be more effective (you would stamp to a lower hand size and you could find Chaotic Swell to bump Heat Factory).
In the words of Catron: "playing anything other than the Boss for [Supporter] is fairly bad because you need the Stamp [later] and playing Marnie lets them get a "better" hand in theory... the Prize lost by not killing Zacian can be made up for with combo but you're already in an odd position so I think forcing them into having more in the oncoming turns is better."
"After hearing many opinions," Kevin agreed with myself, Kenny, and Catron that KOing the Blacephalon is correct because "that at least forces [the opponent] to have a response every turn since I'm already behind."
Approach #2 (Luke Morsa): Boss's Orders on Zacian V
My teammate Luke Morsa and friend/"Stats Chat" member Bart Musser went for a different line of play, which was actually the line used by Kevin in the actual game (which he later decided was wrong). This line involves attaching Energy to your Zacian V and playing Boss's Orders to take the KO on the opponent's Zacian V.
The logic behind this play is to prioritize finding a faster route to your win condition (take six Prizes), over disrupting the opponent's board. By taking two Prizes on the Zacian V, you can win in two turns by pulling off the combo twice after KOing two single-Prizers, or once if you KO one single-Prizer and one two-Prizer.
With Approach #1, you need to take one more turn to win the game, but that gets balanced out by the increased disruption you place on your opponent's board (by removing the Energy in play). Approach #2 basically turns the game into an arms race where you try to win faster and simply hope the Blacephalon player whiffs a crucial piece at some point--but you are also allowing them to maintain a crucial piece by leaving the Blacephalon with Energy in play alive, which is why I think the logic behind this route is flawed.
Even assuming something does go wrong somewhere for the Blacephalon player, it is by no means a guarantee that you actually will win in two turns. The most likely scenario is that you would need to execute the combo twice. There's no guarantee of that happening. The other scenario would be to KO a one-Prizer, likely another Blacephalon, and KO a two-Prizer (Oricorio-GX or Dedenne-GX), and execute the combo on one of those KOs. This requires two things to happen:
- The opponent actually plays down one of those two-Prizers. This is actually less likely to happen because of the fact that you did not KO the Blacephalon! They already have an attacker with Energy, so they do not need to dig nearly as hard for the return KO on your Zacian V. With Heat Factory and Stellar Wish, they likely will not need to Bench Oricorio-GX or Dedenne-GX.
- You have a gust effect to use on that two-Prizer. Looking at your hand, the most likely course of action after your Zacian V dies is to attach to Tapu Fini, play Stamp, then play Research. That means you lose the Great Catcher, which is one fewer out to gusting up that two-Prizer. And if you need to play a draw Supporter to dig for pieces for the combo, you cannot play Boss's Orders. Thus, the likely scenario is that you will end up needing to execute the combo twice on two one-Prizers--but as I said, the odds that you can draw that before you lose the game are not high.
Approach #3 (Jay Lesage): Boss's Orders on Jirachi
Jay is a very good player, but I don't see any way that this line of play is correct. It is worth analyzing how Jay got here, though, because there is logic behind this idea. Jay states that the Jirachi "will add so much value going forward." KOing the
Approach #4 (Henry Brand): Stamp, Marnie, KO Active
Other approaches
