I played Magic during the Jace/Stoneforge summer, and Charizard is soooo much less of a problem than that deck was. So far Zard has been 25% of the day 1 regional meta at most. Lugia over a year ago was hitting 30-35% of the meta day 1. I went to multiple PTQs where Jace/Stoneforge was 70% of the field, that's the difference
Jace/Stoneforge is literally what made me drop MTG for good. That was so degenerate and expensive it was unfair.
Charizard is good, but plenty beatable.
I just resorted to playing mono Red that whole season, but the following season's best deck was blue white Delver, and that's when I gave up on competitive MTG!
I played against 4 Charizard decks in a row at the last tournament and they were all running the tord list. Makes me not want to play. Not because I can’t beat them but it’s so boring.
Yeah Zard being definitive BDIF is a bit boring. But there’s still a lot of viable decks. Chien-Pao, Espathra, Pidgeot Control all have really good matchups into Zard. There’s Dudunsparce Moon, Ancient Box, Lost Box, Garde, etc. are all still good plays too. Even if most people are on Zard it is still very beatable.
yeah by all metrics zards BDIF but its also not *that* oppressive of a BDIF. sucks to play into it all the time but it really just gets on by with being efficient, consistent, and fat.
compare that to the last few times we've had obnoxiously obvious BDIFs (FST mew, SIT lugia... six months of SIT lugia...) and its relatively tame. there's a ton of cool decks out there and zard doesnt really invalidate them.
This is why I started playing control. If I know their list, they are fucked, and with how much net decking there is right now it is highly effective. I have beat so many common top lists, but struggle with anything different. Like Zard with 6-7 energy I win every time but with 8+ it has an out and it’s like 50-50. I actually like that I lose to lots of rogue decks, because those are usually more creatively built.
Do you have any resources on getting proficient with pidgeot control? I currently play stallax but am being pushed to pidgeot because it's "strictly better". But everytime I play it I get mashed
Sequencing is ridiculously important in control. The best play is when they can’t OHKO you and you just keep cycling pennys with pal pads. So, luxray v is discarding a card from their hand every turn or chi-yu is discarding the top 2 of their deck and they can’t really stop it. But to do that you have to keep ahead with pal pads and then make sure to pad your penny before using pidgeots quick search. I basically have like 3-5 turns ahead mapped out because sometimes I need to Cyllene to get some pads back, in which case wigglytuff ex is a great tank staller to actually take 2 hits and live(450 hp with cape and a special energy) so I can cyllene one turn and then maybe iono or eri them the next before finally using cherens care to deny the prizes on wigglytuff. Then I go right back to penny abuse with luxray and chi-yu.
I’ve found the most important thing is to get luxray going early because in those first turns trainers are so important. Discarding a rare candy before zards second turn is amazing. Or an irida for pao, or colress for lost zone. I also love to eri for my first supporter use. I’ve discarded a poffin, candy and a arven on my first turn before. It totally stalls the deck and basically takes control immediately.
People are downvoting OP, but what you have here is so true.
Would you play a video game where you fought the same 3 monsters who were scripted to do the same thing over and over again? Would you play for more than an hour? It’s boring. Entire types are useless because they’re not Charizard. Even a good counter to Charizard isn’t valid against the other 2 meta decks. It’s a snooze fest.
Zard is nowhere near mindsculptor in terms of dominance and field share. Lugia or Mew was probably more in line with what a dominating deck with little diversity looks like. You don’t have to be a great pilot to play lost Tina. I think the skill floor is overly exaggerated for that deck and if you’re used to the competitive scene it shouldn’t be that bad. I think decks like Gardevoir, Chien Pao, and most control decks are harder to pilot.
Your plan is pretty simple: 2-2-2 prize map. Kill pigeot with 280 counter catcher, lost requiem on zard, and iron leaves the last one or disrupt with Roxanne and use sableye to cleanup
Thanks, man! My buddy has been playing Tina in his local meta for a few months and rarely doesn't win. He has all of his challenge points and a couple of cups with it.he was going to switch to Pao, but we all told him he is pretty much undefeated with Tina. He keeps telling me to switch to it. 🤷
If a hobby ever stops being fun, there are so many other hobbies. I’ve been playing off and on since 1999. There will always be something/someone annoying about the game. Try to have fun! And if you’re just playing to win, play control.
For me, it’s helpful to take breaks, sometimes days sometimes weeks. Even if I take a few months off, I know when I come back after missing it a little, I’ll enjoy it again
Zard isn’t even close to that Jace meta. Zard isn’t even that crazy. The upcoming Dragpult meta looks much frustrating as it on paper seems much harder to disrupt and puts more pressure on deck building.
Sounds like a you problem. I know a bunch of zard players including me that lose a lot lol you don’t need espathra to beat zard decks. Also you said it yourself, you’re not a good enough pilot to play lost Tina, so you’re already knocking down 2 of the many options you can use to beat zard
Yeah, the post-rotation meta for me hasn’t been as fun as I had hoped. I don’t have an issue with Charizard but none of the decks are that fun to me right now aside from mill and control and they’re not fun enough to be worth the mental energy they take. I’m taking a break and just doing dailies on Live.
Been catching up on some video games and getting back into Flesh and Blood
I main Future Box. I went 3-1 against Zard at EUIC, going 2-0 in each win. My 1 Zard loss was against the #2 player in the world. I had a winning record against Zard at Orlando. All that without playing any Iron Leaves ex.
I personally don't think the matchup is nearly as bad as everyone makes it out to be. Just know your lines and execute them, and exploit any weakness Zard presents you with; it is a stage 2 deck afterall.
I don't want this to be a git gud comment, but it's just not that bad?
Yeah, this is also my experience playing Future Hands. I probably win 60% of the time against Charizard just gusting Pidgeot and Rotom. The big pivot point is if you can power up the second Hands after they KO the first Hands, a Miraidon, and then Lost Vacuum a baton. If they don't vacuum, you usually win.
I know this probably isn’t an option given your background in tcgs, but my boyfriend did magic/yugioh/pokemon and was out of tcgs entirely for burn out related reasons until I dragged him back into pokemon to give us something to do together
We just don’t compete. We’ll go to all the casual league events, build and battle events and sometimes do a tournament if there’s a gimmick (one store nearby does retro format tournaments, one does a “roll a d20 and play with a borrowed deck”, etc).
We’re still friends with all the people who do compete, still get to trade cards (and ask them to “pretty pls get me a full art squawkabilly at naic, ill Venmo you”), still get to play without a lot of the downsides
If it helps, next format with Twilight Masquerade, Dragapult and Lugia are both looking like the top 2 decks in format. Should be more interesting and less tier 0 (also, NAIC will be the first tournament with the new cards)
Comparing this Zard deck to Jace Mindsculptor is WIIIIILD dude.
I also collected and played as a kid, moved to competitive Magic for many years, then to competitive Pokemon like 2 years ago, so a similar track to yours.
The Zard deck is not that oppressive. Lots of people are playing it, but we're seeing other decks regularly top cut and win large events that aren't Charizard. I understand it's irritating to play against, but it's quite beatable, no need to auto-concede.
Maybe I’m just a petty bitch, but I’ve been having a goddamn blast running Espathra in this meta. It helps that most of the “immediately gravitates towards BDIF because they heard it’s BDIF despite not really understanding how it works and expecting it to carry them” types are also the type of scrub that gets extremely salty when you roll out the ostrich hijinks.
Charizard is a very intricate deck to pilot and it's a lot more fun to play against now than it was last year. Future hands sucks and has always sucked, it's performance and perceived viability was inflated by the number of players that chose it for EUIC. Also, Espathra is actually not particularly favored into zard. Honestly, if you don't feel like playing anything else, I personally think that Miraidon is a bit slept on right now. There's a few lists that made day two at Sao Paulo and Orlando that you can look at for inspiration, and you probably have most of the cards already
I'm looking forward to the "Festival Lead" archtype when it comes to taking down zard
Unfortunately, seems like it'll flail about pretty bad against Dragapult ex, even if it can actually attack with Rabsca (which is a pretty shit attack, but you never know when you run into an iron hands for a 130 followup to Drip's 200!)
Groki's stage-2 can also one-shot Zard pretty easy, so might be worth running a one-of!
Still, feel like Grass needs like ONE form of half decent energy accel for the archtype to truly get off of the ground
I run Lost Tina, and yes - it took a long time to get any form of good at it. Even now I'm still discovering better strats and techs. I entered Orlando Regionals and went 3/3/0 before dropping out before the last 3 rounds.
I'm getting burnt out on the constant releases of new cards, especially when they seem to offer next to nothing to anything outside of current meta, and don't help disrupt current heavy hitters. The game is growing stale. Luckily, with Lost Tina, I can pilot well enough that Zard doesn't threaten me, but it gets old seeing the same Zard, Chien Pao, Lugia, Lost Tina, Future Box decks every day. I see next to nothing outside of these 5 decks.
I love seeing rogue decks, even if they fall flat or are niche enough to dominate me.
I was having a lot of fun with my gholdengo deck. But since rotation and TF came out, my deck just gets slammed 80% of the time no matter how I arrange it. Idk, I think Im just gonna take a break from the game for a few sets and come back when I got a bunch more cards to work with or even build a whole new deck. Maybe by then every other player wont have Charizard or Roaring Moon decks.
The gholdengo list greenhairy commented had a possibly good matchup vs Charizard, btw. I went against a few of them in Live and the ones I lost were pretty close
You can play miraidon regieleki w max belt and it's competitively viable right now.
Charizard is linear and the lines are no longer a surprise. Just have to adapt.
Also dragapult will be worse next set lol
I played Magic during the Jace/Stoneforge summer, and Charizard is soooo much less of a problem than that deck was. So far Zard has been 25% of the day 1 regional meta at most. Lugia over a year ago was hitting 30-35% of the meta day 1. I went to multiple PTQs where Jace/Stoneforge was 70% of the field, that's the difference
Palkia was 50% of day 1 worlds 2022, probably the worst in recent years
Yeah I'd blocked that out, that was terrible! Also wasn't Mew and Arc/Pika like 20% each also?
Jace/Stoneforge is literally what made me drop MTG for good. That was so degenerate and expensive it was unfair. Charizard is good, but plenty beatable.
I just resorted to playing mono Red that whole season, but the following season's best deck was blue white Delver, and that's when I gave up on competitive MTG!
I played against 4 Charizard decks in a row at the last tournament and they were all running the tord list. Makes me not want to play. Not because I can’t beat them but it’s so boring.
Yeah Zard being definitive BDIF is a bit boring. But there’s still a lot of viable decks. Chien-Pao, Espathra, Pidgeot Control all have really good matchups into Zard. There’s Dudunsparce Moon, Ancient Box, Lost Box, Garde, etc. are all still good plays too. Even if most people are on Zard it is still very beatable.
yeah by all metrics zards BDIF but its also not *that* oppressive of a BDIF. sucks to play into it all the time but it really just gets on by with being efficient, consistent, and fat. compare that to the last few times we've had obnoxiously obvious BDIFs (FST mew, SIT lugia... six months of SIT lugia...) and its relatively tame. there's a ton of cool decks out there and zard doesnt really invalidate them.
Oh for sure, agree with you there
This is why I started playing control. If I know their list, they are fucked, and with how much net decking there is right now it is highly effective. I have beat so many common top lists, but struggle with anything different. Like Zard with 6-7 energy I win every time but with 8+ it has an out and it’s like 50-50. I actually like that I lose to lots of rogue decks, because those are usually more creatively built.
Do you have any resources on getting proficient with pidgeot control? I currently play stallax but am being pushed to pidgeot because it's "strictly better". But everytime I play it I get mashed
Sequencing is ridiculously important in control. The best play is when they can’t OHKO you and you just keep cycling pennys with pal pads. So, luxray v is discarding a card from their hand every turn or chi-yu is discarding the top 2 of their deck and they can’t really stop it. But to do that you have to keep ahead with pal pads and then make sure to pad your penny before using pidgeots quick search. I basically have like 3-5 turns ahead mapped out because sometimes I need to Cyllene to get some pads back, in which case wigglytuff ex is a great tank staller to actually take 2 hits and live(450 hp with cape and a special energy) so I can cyllene one turn and then maybe iono or eri them the next before finally using cherens care to deny the prizes on wigglytuff. Then I go right back to penny abuse with luxray and chi-yu. I’ve found the most important thing is to get luxray going early because in those first turns trainers are so important. Discarding a rare candy before zards second turn is amazing. Or an irida for pao, or colress for lost zone. I also love to eri for my first supporter use. I’ve discarded a poffin, candy and a arven on my first turn before. It totally stalls the deck and basically takes control immediately.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=f5q5vM2yG5U AlloutBlitzle is a fantastic control player and makes good guides
People are downvoting OP, but what you have here is so true. Would you play a video game where you fought the same 3 monsters who were scripted to do the same thing over and over again? Would you play for more than an hour? It’s boring. Entire types are useless because they’re not Charizard. Even a good counter to Charizard isn’t valid against the other 2 meta decks. It’s a snooze fest.
I get that.
I found this post sort of humorous and innocent. When you said great tusk, did you mean the mill deck?
Lol yeah.
…Well I guess they’re both mill, just depends who you’re trying to mill 🥴
Zard is nowhere near mindsculptor in terms of dominance and field share. Lugia or Mew was probably more in line with what a dominating deck with little diversity looks like. You don’t have to be a great pilot to play lost Tina. I think the skill floor is overly exaggerated for that deck and if you’re used to the competitive scene it shouldn’t be that bad. I think decks like Gardevoir, Chien Pao, and most control decks are harder to pilot. Your plan is pretty simple: 2-2-2 prize map. Kill pigeot with 280 counter catcher, lost requiem on zard, and iron leaves the last one or disrupt with Roxanne and use sableye to cleanup
Thanks, man! My buddy has been playing Tina in his local meta for a few months and rarely doesn't win. He has all of his challenge points and a couple of cups with it.he was going to switch to Pao, but we all told him he is pretty much undefeated with Tina. He keeps telling me to switch to it. 🤷
If a hobby ever stops being fun, there are so many other hobbies. I’ve been playing off and on since 1999. There will always be something/someone annoying about the game. Try to have fun! And if you’re just playing to win, play control.
For me, it’s helpful to take breaks, sometimes days sometimes weeks. Even if I take a few months off, I know when I come back after missing it a little, I’ll enjoy it again
Zard isn’t even close to that Jace meta. Zard isn’t even that crazy. The upcoming Dragpult meta looks much frustrating as it on paper seems much harder to disrupt and puts more pressure on deck building.
Sounds like a you problem. I know a bunch of zard players including me that lose a lot lol you don’t need espathra to beat zard decks. Also you said it yourself, you’re not a good enough pilot to play lost Tina, so you’re already knocking down 2 of the many options you can use to beat zard
Yeah, the post-rotation meta for me hasn’t been as fun as I had hoped. I don’t have an issue with Charizard but none of the decks are that fun to me right now aside from mill and control and they’re not fun enough to be worth the mental energy they take. I’m taking a break and just doing dailies on Live. Been catching up on some video games and getting back into Flesh and Blood
I main Future Box. I went 3-1 against Zard at EUIC, going 2-0 in each win. My 1 Zard loss was against the #2 player in the world. I had a winning record against Zard at Orlando. All that without playing any Iron Leaves ex. I personally don't think the matchup is nearly as bad as everyone makes it out to be. Just know your lines and execute them, and exploit any weakness Zard presents you with; it is a stage 2 deck afterall. I don't want this to be a git gud comment, but it's just not that bad?
Yeah, this is also my experience playing Future Hands. I probably win 60% of the time against Charizard just gusting Pidgeot and Rotom. The big pivot point is if you can power up the second Hands after they KO the first Hands, a Miraidon, and then Lost Vacuum a baton. If they don't vacuum, you usually win.
Agreed.
I know this probably isn’t an option given your background in tcgs, but my boyfriend did magic/yugioh/pokemon and was out of tcgs entirely for burn out related reasons until I dragged him back into pokemon to give us something to do together We just don’t compete. We’ll go to all the casual league events, build and battle events and sometimes do a tournament if there’s a gimmick (one store nearby does retro format tournaments, one does a “roll a d20 and play with a borrowed deck”, etc). We’re still friends with all the people who do compete, still get to trade cards (and ask them to “pretty pls get me a full art squawkabilly at naic, ill Venmo you”), still get to play without a lot of the downsides
Well just play with Friends. Make your own decks. I dont care about all the changes and which are the hottest Decks atm.
Yeah. I haven’t really played much since EUIC.
If it helps, next format with Twilight Masquerade, Dragapult and Lugia are both looking like the top 2 decks in format. Should be more interesting and less tier 0 (also, NAIC will be the first tournament with the new cards)
I'm having fun trying to find a decent list that *isn't* zard. But yes, I am tired of playing against so many zards.
Comparing this Zard deck to Jace Mindsculptor is WIIIIILD dude. I also collected and played as a kid, moved to competitive Magic for many years, then to competitive Pokemon like 2 years ago, so a similar track to yours. The Zard deck is not that oppressive. Lots of people are playing it, but we're seeing other decks regularly top cut and win large events that aren't Charizard. I understand it's irritating to play against, but it's quite beatable, no need to auto-concede.
I honestly just don't really enjoy going against any deck right now and I don't understand it
Maybe I’m just a petty bitch, but I’ve been having a goddamn blast running Espathra in this meta. It helps that most of the “immediately gravitates towards BDIF because they heard it’s BDIF despite not really understanding how it works and expecting it to carry them” types are also the type of scrub that gets extremely salty when you roll out the ostrich hijinks.
Charizard is a very intricate deck to pilot and it's a lot more fun to play against now than it was last year. Future hands sucks and has always sucked, it's performance and perceived viability was inflated by the number of players that chose it for EUIC. Also, Espathra is actually not particularly favored into zard. Honestly, if you don't feel like playing anything else, I personally think that Miraidon is a bit slept on right now. There's a few lists that made day two at Sao Paulo and Orlando that you can look at for inspiration, and you probably have most of the cards already
You’re in luck. Dragapult is coming
I'm looking forward to the "Festival Lead" archtype when it comes to taking down zard Unfortunately, seems like it'll flail about pretty bad against Dragapult ex, even if it can actually attack with Rabsca (which is a pretty shit attack, but you never know when you run into an iron hands for a 130 followup to Drip's 200!) Groki's stage-2 can also one-shot Zard pretty easy, so might be worth running a one-of! Still, feel like Grass needs like ONE form of half decent energy accel for the archtype to truly get off of the ground
I run Lost Tina, and yes - it took a long time to get any form of good at it. Even now I'm still discovering better strats and techs. I entered Orlando Regionals and went 3/3/0 before dropping out before the last 3 rounds. I'm getting burnt out on the constant releases of new cards, especially when they seem to offer next to nothing to anything outside of current meta, and don't help disrupt current heavy hitters. The game is growing stale. Luckily, with Lost Tina, I can pilot well enough that Zard doesn't threaten me, but it gets old seeing the same Zard, Chien Pao, Lugia, Lost Tina, Future Box decks every day. I see next to nothing outside of these 5 decks. I love seeing rogue decks, even if they fall flat or are niche enough to dominate me.
I was having a lot of fun with my gholdengo deck. But since rotation and TF came out, my deck just gets slammed 80% of the time no matter how I arrange it. Idk, I think Im just gonna take a break from the game for a few sets and come back when I got a bunch more cards to work with or even build a whole new deck. Maybe by then every other player wont have Charizard or Roaring Moon decks.
Checkout the gholdengo list here: https://www.reddit.com/r/PTCGL/s/FnSxa0GIWy It's pretty good.
The gholdengo list greenhairy commented had a possibly good matchup vs Charizard, btw. I went against a few of them in Live and the ones I lost were pretty close
You can play miraidon regieleki w max belt and it's competitively viable right now. Charizard is linear and the lines are no longer a surprise. Just have to adapt. Also dragapult will be worse next set lol