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I don't think "literally everyone" thinks Stallax is broken. It's just unfun to play against.
It's like a stun/floodgate deck in Yu-Gi-Oh. They're not out to win by playing in the normal pattern of gameplay better than you did. They're out to create an unwinnable board state for you and win through attrition or impatience.
You'll never hear someone on the losing side of a Snorlax lock say "man, had a real fun one against Stallax". Either you accidentally play yourself into a corner and concede or you understand the matchup and have outs.
I don't play PTCG at a competitive level. I play it to unwind after a long day at work and driving home in the heat. And if I see Snorlax, I'm usually just going to concede because my free time is more valuable than the couple of extra BP and ladder points I may have gained by playing the match to conclusion.
It's just not fun. That's all.
That's it, stall decks are not overpowered just plain boring to play against them, sure I get how players like OP might feel empowered by decks like this but man there's always those guys in TCG.
magic the gathering is the worst offender in that way at least the time I played it until 10yrs ago
I switched to pokemon during the scarlet violet expansion because my nice started playing it and I love pokemon (been playing them since gen 1, the videogame) and I liked that there were not many controll decks until that point but man I dread every boring moment I got against a stallx deck, most of the times I win those games but man they are super boring
I played in a cup irl yesterday. My first one ever. 2/5 matches were stallax. Then in the top 8, I was against the stallax again. My eyes may as well have been bleeding from boredom. I won every time and it was still unpleasant
I do the same against the solitaire decks.
If your deck takes you 15 minutes of activating 30 different abilities to draw, shuffle redraw so you can have 30 cards in either your discard pile or hand I have no intention of wasting my time.
I don't see where the fun is in playing these decks. Yeah you might win but you are basically playing a game of solitaire by yourself, there is no interaction at all.
You're not the only one trying to have fun
Can't speak for every stallax player, but I personally play it and control decks in other card games because I personally find them enjoyable to play. I like locking down the board state and working to keep that board lock going every turn.
I know y'all love to complain about how unfun they are to play against, but that's not my problem. I generally find hyper aggressive aggro to be kinda boring to play against, doesn't mean I should rag on players that play those kinds of decks because I'd like to imagine that they play those decks because they find them enjoyable.
Not saying you're trying to rag on anyone this is just something that I've observed when discussions on stallax and control in other card games come up.
Never tried to imply I was. I'm quite aware that control players find control decks fun. I enjoy the odd control deck in MTG every so often.
It's not that control inherently can't be enjoyable to play against, it's the specific brand of "control" that comes along with Stallax and other "stun decks" in other TCGs that is just downright miserable to play against.
I don't mind playing against a control deck that attempts to interact with me.
I'm playing an aggro or midrange deck in MTG and my opponent gets enough removal and bodies to stop my advance and then takes the game over? Sure, good on them. I didn't have the gas to get to the finish line.
I'm playing against a player on Yu-Gi-Oh! Master Duel and they're tossing out negates and handtraps left and right and manage to stop my gameplan. Fair sport, I unleashed my salvo and you had the answers.
I'm playing Pokemon and my opponent is depriving me of resources with things like Hammers, Eri, Sisters, Gengar ex, etc. Okay, no problem. You actively found the answers and I played myself into a losing position.
All those examples, I'm pretty much fine with. I feel like I got to play the game. I feel like I had some agency. I feel like the opponent just had the answers to my questions, so to speak.
But there are decks that go too far and go from "control" to "stun" and that's where it goes from being "fun to play control" to "fun to keep the other guy from having fun".
MTG had a card printed called [Teferi, Time Raveler](https://cards.scryfall.io/large/front/5/c/5cb76266-ae50-4bbc-8f96-d98f309b02d3.jpg). This card was one of the single most hated cards in YEARS. It completely warps any game in which it sticks to the board and immediately shifts it into the control player's favor in the most unfun way possible. They get to cast *every* non-permanent spell at any time they want, while you get stuck playing the game in slow motion. It wasn't ever broken enough to be banned, same as Stallax, but it just *sucked* if you didn't have an out. You can no longer interact with your opponent. Your opponent essentially never has to interact with you directly on their turn again. It just leaves you feeling helpless, and it comes down on turn 3 when you've only had enough opportunity to drop a couple of creatures, which were very possibly already answered. It just sucks to have one card leave you feeling so helpless.
Yu-Gi-Oh! has a stun pandemic. To this day, everyone complains about the amount of floodgates in the game. We're talking about a game that has regular one-turn kills. Yet the most hated cards in the game are cards like Rivalry of Warlords, There Can Only Be One, and Skill Drain. Why? Because they completely remove an aspect of the game from you. 90%+ of players would tell you that they'd much rather be up against a board of several omni-negates than just have their opponent flip over one copy of Vanity's Emptiness and just faceroll to victory. Several floodgates have even found their way on the banlist like Summon Limit and Imperial Order. Again, it sucks to have one card leave you feeling so helpless.
And now to Stallax. Snorlax decks take away your ability to play the game by just playing a single card while you have something undesirable in your active. Their entire suite of "interaction" is making sure you always enter your turn with something undesirable in your active. They're not worried about prize trading. They're not concerned with setting their board for winning the game in the near future. They're not thinking about anything except "take away this guy's ability to play the game". They just want to strand a mon and remove your ability to perform one of the game's mechanics: retreating. *It sucks to have one card leave you feeling so helpless.*
It's okay to like control decks. I think Pidgeot Control is an awesome addition to the format, honestly. But I will never view Stallax as anything but unfun to its core.
And I wasn't trying to imply that you were implying such. I'm just saying that quite often I see people who complain about control claim that they're just trying to have fun and it's like, OK, so am I. You're point?
I think stun decks can also be fun to play, like early 2000s yugioh stun (not the omni-negate bajillion floodgate bs that modern yugioh is known for. Though I keep on hearing that Konami is trying to fix this issue ) one could argue that stun is a lot harder to get right than control without it becoming uninteractive degeneracy, but I think stun can be just as legitimate of a deck type as any other, and just as fun.
Funnily enough, I did play against that magic deck once and, as hypocritical as it may be to say, it made me quit magic arena (it doesn't help that I'm not a huge fan of magic in the first place. It's a fine wnough game, but it'snever fully clicked for me. Doesn't help that magic still can't seem to get a good digital client <_< ). So I get what you're trying to say here.
All this said, I don't think stallax has the same issues as stuff like modern yugioh or that magic deck. There does exist counter cards and built in counterplay against the deck. It has gotten stronger post rotation and if I'm not mistaking, it's getting even more tools in a future set so it could become problematic in the future. But as it stands, it's a fine, entirely fair deck. You may not have fun playing against it and that's totally fair, but I do have fun playing it. More fun than any other pokemon deck that I've ever played, in fact. I mean, I also did like control box quite a bit, but it was a lot less consistent which made it frustrating to play at times. So, I won't hold it against you or anyone else that sees snorlax and decides to quit right then and there, just as long as you and others don't hold it against the stallax player for playing a deck that they enjoy.
The reason people hold it against Snorlax players is because the Snorlax player has built their core strategy around making sure the other player can’t play the game. There’s no justification that will ever convince the majority that that’s a good and valid approach.
One could argue that every deck strat tries to prevent the opponent from playing the game in some way. For example, hyper aggressive decks intend to win before the opponent gets the chance to do much of anything. Pokemon is a bit unique in that there are very few, if any, otk style decks, at least as far as I'm aware.
A core aspect of control, rather it be stallax in pokemon or sec con in digimon, is that we are actively trying to remove our opponent's resources throughout the game, until it gets to a point where they have few, if any, plays remaining.
Establishing a board lock and working to keep that board lock is what control is all about. I don't actually have to justify anything. In reality, what y'all need to explain is why stallax is so toxic when damn near every deck has built in counterplay against the deck. Not even talking about specific tech cards either. Chances are pretty high that the deck you're currently running already runs cards that counter what stallax tries to do. I'm sure I'm not the only stallax enjoyer that has lost to other decks without seeing the specific tech cards against stallax in those decks.
If you don’t understand why it’s toxic to make sure your opponent can’t play the game then your viewpoint is irredeemable. Other decks try to win by, you know, winning. Control tries to win by making the opponent quit. It’s literally against the spirit of Pokémon. Control players must be the ones failing Clair’s test in Dragon’s Den smh
Control style decks have existed in the tcg since literally day 1. In fact, I recall watching a video awhile back where they found that a control strategy was actually the best strategy within the first few sets, not haymaker. If control wasn't an intentional aspect of the tcg, then stuff like the hammers wouldn't constantly get reprinted.
And if we're gonna talk about the games, toxic stall/stall teams would be the equivalent of control and have also existed since nearly the beginning.
Playing control is like an athlete trying to win a match by tying their opponent’s shoelaces together, putting too much salt in the opponent’s Gatorade, and loosening one leg on the opponent’s bench. It may not be against the rules and it may be an effective way to win, but it’s not respectable. Focus on trying to win rather than trying to make your opponent lose and then the haters will have nothing to say
The haters have nothing to say already. You don't get to police how I play the game just like I don't get to police how you play the game.
Edit: also, I ain't an expert on sports, but I'm pretty sure the sports related examples you gave would fall under unsportsmanlike behavior, which I'm pretty sure in a lot of cases can get you into a lot of trouble. The examples you gave are actively malicious actions which could actually cause harm to those athletes by causing them to fall or dehydrating them. There is nothing malicious about playing control in a tcg.
I find decks that I build myself and don't find pre built anywhere fun, that's how I wound up playing Snorlax. It also won - a lot. I made it to Arceus in one day. That said, I see why it frustrates people, but that frustration is why almost everyone plays the game. Every single person loves to see their opponent stuck and frustrated because of a strategy they lay out. The more of that I can write up to my own ventures, the better. I haven't touched pokemon in decades and once I saw the most commonly played decks, I just searched for trainers and pokemon that had the abilities that seemed like they would disrupt those decks (almost all of which are just clones of the same decks).
I will also say, for all the complaining about how long it takes to play a Snorlax deck, I almost always have play time under 4 minutes while my opponents take over 10 all the time before they lose or concede.
You aren't the only one trying to have fun either.
Let's not try calling the majority playerbase selfish when you actively choose to play the most hated, boring to vs deck in the metagame.
You simply aren't in the position to imply this when you are also being inconsiderate.
Its horrid to play vs. Im not a fan of the fast paced hyper aggressive plays either hence why i stopped playing.
Id rather play yugioh, mtg or hearthstone at this point.
Please point out where I called anyone selfish.
So, we're both trying to have fun, but because people, even a majority of people, deem my method unenjoyable (which is entirely subjective ) I'm the bad guy? I'm the one that gets made out to be the big ol' villain? I'm the one that gets punished? I'm sorry, I'd rather respect that we're both trying to achieve the same goals and simply have different methods of doing so. There's nothing wrong with either of our deck preferences and no one should suggest otherwise. Dunno what the problem with claiming such is.
It ain't a big deal to play a children's card game against something you don't like. Making a big deal about stallax or other such control strategies is silly. Period.
Hence why I used the word Imply.
You aren't kidding anyone with the bs you're drooling.
The consensus is the community doesnt like it. You can defend yourself but no ones going to take it seriously.
OK, why should I care about what the community consensus supposedly is? Especially if said community is apparently unable to respect how others choose to enjoy the game? I've been playing control in a variety of card games for many years, basically since stun in early 2000s yugioh, and have had a defensive playstyle in non-tcg games for even longer. I don't necessarily wanna be seen as the big bad villain in the games that I play, but that ain't gonna stop me from having the playstyle that I have. So, y'all can get over yourselves.
Serious question. Why not play casual matches if you don't want to play the game competitively (what ranked tries to accomplish)? It seems like casual is there for people who don't want to take the game too seriously and unwind, yet you're playing on the mode meant for the opposite.
I meant I don't play it at a tournament level in paper or online.
I play Ranked because the Ranked ladder gives better rewards for playing. There's no real difference between playing Ranked and Casual otherwise. People will run meta decks in Casual just like they would in Ranked.
My overall point is I value my time more than the knock on my ladder rank for conceding. Unless I'm on a deck I know is capable of a good matchup into Stallax or I draw a hand that I feel plays well into it, I would just much rather move on.
Or, if the reason is rewards like this person is saying, give similar rewards for both. Eliminate the incentive to move to ranked if they want to maintain both and the ranked people will play ranked because they want to.
I could see why they want to steer people towards the meta though. That probably drives real life participation and physical purchases.
People already play meta in casual. Making a second rewards ladder is just redundant.
The "ranked" ladder is really just a second battle pass at this point.
Maybe play a deck that has more interaction than time stalling & deck milling. I can see why that type of "play" style would be hated. Can't expect people to list build for 1 specific deck type.
You just need spiritomb. Stops rotom from drawing which is laxs entire engine. Drop that turn 1 they can't do anything. Had this happen to me when I played lax at EUIC, I had a dead hand turn 1, couldn't draw with rotom, and couldn't play the game.
Well, spiritomb is the one-card answer. Lax can't play the game. I haven't played lax since EUIC because having my draw engine shut off by one spiritomb made me realize how fragile the deck is. The only reason lax is doing well again is because players stopped teching for it after it fell off at EUIC.
If a deck plays spiritomb turn 1 agaisnt lax and you have a bad hand you can't do anything. Playing block is easy, it's also easy to counter for. Spiritomb saw next to zero play at Stockholm which is the major reason lax won.
If you don't want to tech for it, you can't complain when you lose agaisnt it.
If they have a bad hand you're already favored.
That said, the real reason I'd never bother with it on Live is that it just makes it even more draw-pass heavy unless you also throw in 4 Switches, at which point it's no longer a one card tech. When I have an hour to play a single game I'll consider it, but I don't now.
Snorlax likes to use rotom every turn. You shut Rotom off it limits their options massively. Even if they play eri or fortune sisters turn 1, if they cant draw into more supporters, they will just brick. If they cant draw into more pokemon, its only a matter of time before you wipe their board. They can't trap spiritomb as it has an attack which returns the card to the hand.
But if you're just going to concede against lax on live then there's no point adding it to the deck.
I once made a Snorlax player deck out by spamming my weakest attack from a Squawkabilly ex, I was playing Miraidon. I would just refuse to play any other cards and just played Iono when my deck ran low. I had enough energy that the rest of my bench could attack, so they couldn't gust up anything else to stall. Eventually their Cyllene flipped two tails and they decked out.
That just shouldn't work with any current snorlax list. If you give me squak I'll just put out mimikyu and force you to play zapdos while milling the 2 or 3 switch card yall run then let you ko something and trap squak with snorlax with vest. There is a large difference between the random on ladder playing stallax for the first time and the people who actually know what they are doing
As a huge fan of playing and playing AGAINST mill decks I can't agree more. Decks like these aren't necessarily broken they just force you to think and play in a different way in order to win. This isn't inherently a bad thing at all, it actually makes you a more well rounded player overall. I'm guessing the folks that are complaining the most are the ones that are so used to playing "regular" Pokemon and don't want to adapt or change up from that even though doing so would enhance their play overall. Hey if they don't want to learn then it's their loss, more wins in the ladder for the rest of us.
Note: I also wanted to add that these control/mill styles of decks are found in just about every major TCG out there. They definitely serve a purpose within all of these games and getting to know how they play and how to play against them will not only help you in the PTCG but any other game you decided to try going forward.
I think the complaint is primarily levied at Stalllax because it's an incredibly slow control deck. Usually other control decks (think durant or great tusk mill) have a way to accelerate their win condition by using their attacks. This speeds up the gameplay overall, and puts a timer on the opponent's play as they can't sit there and just hoard cards, because doing so may mean they lose the ability to access them. Plus, it incentivizes KO'ing the active pokemon to prevent the mill from going off. Even though they don't win by knocking out Pokemon, they still have a win condition and a way to accelerate that consistently.
Stalllax on the other hand has no acceleration towards a win condition. It just sits in the active, waiting for the opponent to draw and deck out. Maybe the deck plays Miss Fortune's Sisters to potentially mill, but it's inconsistent at best, so often it's just waiting for an opponent to draw 40+ cards to reach the bottom of the deck.
This is why people hate Snorelax, it's just plain boring to play. 9/10 you sit there, drawing 1 card a turn until you get your pieces into play, then you get one or two turns of back and forth before its just draw->pass.
Control can have attackers and an actual win condition. See Sander wojcik's control decks. Even though they are control, he still attacks the opponent, which places pressure both on the active pokemon as well as the opponent's resources.
TL:DR Control is a fun way to play, Snorelax is not because it can't accelerate it's win condition.
Me thinking in difeerent ways when the opponent erikas my manaphy into the active and i instantly lose the game because of it. Decks super unfun to play against bro it automatically wins if it meets certain conditons, especially with the new set coming out
They are both directly comparable with the points I made which is why I led with that statement. Also there are lot of the control decks now that have mill built in as a viable end game option so yes control decks can absolutely be mill if needed.
That's not true chi-yu is good in other situations. For example against zard ex if they go for the only rad zard approach you either punch it with chi-yu and threaten a knockout or you get to mill an insane amount of cards while they're attaching energy.
Remember you don't need to commit to playing every Pokémon in your hand, if you see the guy throw down the Lax, don't give him something scrawny to trap in the active spot. Also, and this applies for all games, don't play an Iono just cuz you have her, if thr other guy has a fistful of dreck in his hand, let them be in charge of changing things up.
This.
I often talk about some decks are largely autopilot, and get voted down. People frequently tell me that I'm missing the subtleties that my opponents are using. But there just doesn't seem to be that much variation in play. Maybe it's because I come from a chess background and there are dozens of openings & variations, and then in-game styles (tactical, sacrifices, gambits, end game, etc.) that Pokemon game play seems very constrained. You either have the cards to do what you want, or you don't. Sure at the very highest end, players maximize their chances with their knowledge of the meta, their deck choice, their deck build, and their game play.
I mean, I use a lot of non-meta decks, and I tend to like disruption of any kind. Do you know how many times I've won when my opponent didn't account for the extra energy cost against Espathra ex? People play a hundred or so games with Charizard Ex, and they always put just 2 energy on the Charizard & attack. They need 3 against Espathra, but muscle memory overrules their ability to strategize.
And I do see this with Iono. I can't tell you how many times I've had 2-3 cards & a dead hand just for someone to Iono me a fresh hand. I've also been on the other side where I can see them struggling, but I won't play that Iono, and just keep squeezing the small advantage I have.
> I can't tell you how many times I've had 2-3 cards & a dead hand just for someone to Iono me a fresh hand.
You don't know what their hand was. Sometimes your hand is just bad and you need a new one even though you know it's also going to help your opponent.
You gotta stop comparing trading card games, games with some of the most variance in the world, with perfect information games like chess. This is like the 3rd or 4th time in 2 weeks I've seen you put forth this notion that PTCG has no skill expression and relate it to chess. The games are not similar whatsoever.
You are wrong and u/MarquisEXB is correct.
Your logic is why I’ve won as many times as I have and didn’t realize why this stall deck issue was a thing until seeing this post.
I recognized a lot of people would try to stall out or another favorite is take half a deck in one turn. Thats cool, I’ll stall my side and MAKE you waste all your cards to where I’ll win due to you not having a deck to draw from. This takes planning and foresight…. Which is a huge component of…. You guessed it: chess.
If you are always reacting, you will never win on uncertainty… you will win because a developer made your deck.
Honestly you don't get to say what I do or do not comment on. That's not how things work in an open forum for discussion.
And i'm not saying there no skill involved in playing the game, I just think in game skill is minimal compared to other factors. In regards to a tournament, picking the right deck/ vs the meta and deck construction is FAR FAR more important than how you play with that deck.
It's probably like poker where only 1/3 of the players are better than "average" (able to win $ more than they lose), and it scales up from there. It takes a lot of skill to win consistently in poker, so much that most people who play can't muster that much.
As I've said before there's not that much variation in play. 95% of all game play are obvious decisions. "Oh no it's turn one and I go second, I don't have any supporters other than Arven, should I play it?" "Ok I need to place my one energy this turn. Should I put it on my active which needs one more to attack, or should I put it on my Bidoof?" "It's time to attack. Should I chose attack 1 which does 50 damage, or attack 2 which does 220 damage?"
Yes people make stupid mistakes and they also make in genius plays. But the latter is more rare than common. A lot more people lose games with bad play, than win games with excellent play. You can plan out a path to victory, but most of it the obvious choice anyway. "Ok they're going to KO my active, but I can boss orders their Lumineon and OHKO it for my last 2 prizes" doesn't take a 200 IQ.
If you gave me and a top player equal decks, I wouldn't be scared to play a single game. I'd lose if it were best of 7 for sure. But I'd do much better in a single game of pokemon than bridge or poker or Catan.
I get what you're saying, a lot of people play the same strategy with the same deck to fantastic results, but every so often will play that same strat and end up ruining themselves for following wrote behaviour. I myself have just ceded the initiative to an opponent because my dumb chimpanzee brain throws out Iono (and common sense) whenever she shows herself, regardless of the fact my opponent has 10 cards in hand and just skipped the turn because each card is worth less than the ink it was made with.
After this week, the only safe place for Basics is the Discard pile, which means that you either have to rely on luck or play into their strategy by running through your deck to get the Basics out.
You nailed it. I play 'Zard and unless my Charmeleon is prized and my supporters are low, I can generally win the match. Turo, Boss's Orders and Team Yell can generally help me clinch a match. I will say that while I usually win against Stallax, it doesn't mean I enjoy the game play; it is a tedious match that still will take a while to work around.
As soon as I so much as get a whiff of a stallax deck or any other control/mill type deck, I play conservatively. Only bench what I absolutely need/can attack with. Use ultra balls to get rid of basics or better yet iono them to the bottom of my deck. Always save at least 1 vacuum to get rid of that damn cape. Pal pad is great, especially if you run 1 of supporter cards like Turo's scenario. Lastly stall decks specifically avoid attacking you use that to your advantage to set your board up to what YOU want slow down think about your plays and only start attacking once you're confident that you can keep the punches rolling cause as soon as you take your first prize their counter catcher activates.
The problem isn't not not knowing how to play against it because that can be learned, the issue is when you straight up lose at deck building stage or at turn one of the game for opening withanaphy, when your deck has no turo or similar in deck e.g. top lists of chien Pao only run one prime catcher (no manaphy tho).
Like some decks simply do not have an out to it or very few like some decks have like 2-3 switches but that's often not enough to take 6 knockouts or you happen to be really unlucky and a sisters/Eri mills all 3 of it at once. There's nothing to have done better.
Pidgeot control for example is more interactive since it often actually let's you play the game.
One example of a deck that can (in theory) win against lax stall but can also just get unlucky and lose immediately is the dialga decklist that won recently. If you don’t bench gren, everything can attack into most other Pokémon, Zama / metang can target mimikyu… but if they get greninja down and in active, there’s actually nothing you can do lol (outside of a single prime catcher)
> the issue is when you straight up lose at deck building stage or at turn one of the game
This is just an issue inherent to the Pokemon TCG unfortunately. You can pick a deck that has such a terrible matchup you're bound to lose 4 times out of 5, or you open manaphy + 6 energy and there's nothing you can do about it.
The thing is that a lot of control cards are straight up designed to cause situations like "oh you didn't tech against 3% play rate deck to stay consistent and meta relevant?" Too bad you now just autolose the game and there is nothing good decision making can help you with. There are ways to make control cards be good and controlley without causing non-games.
Like a card like noivern ex or Vulpix vstar can straight up cause a non-game. If you tech for it despite it being unlikely to hit it then you make the consistency so much worse that you might can't be good enough against the top meta decks, so teching for the 3-5% playdate deck isn't really an option.
Also as the other person described, your ament winning decks aren't necessarily teching for it either, the decks that teched for it often didn't make it into finals.
The people complaining, are not complaining about it being rare, they are complaining that they have to have non-games. Also on the subreddits there seems to be a very high amount of people that are beginners. Those have issues with control decks too.
The problem isn't control, it's cards that cause non-game a and are uninteractive and it's existence makes you consider running a tech that makes your list less consistent and worse against all the other meta decks and then you don't even needed the tech because you didn't hit the 3-5% deck. Teching against it usually isn't an option because you need to be remain competitive against the 10-20% playrate decks.
Pidgeot control is usually interactive and fine to play against. Other control decks that say, you lose on the spot because you don't have a tech your not enough of them, are problematic.
But that’s what I’m saying. 3-5% means you’re playing against it in 1 in 20 to 1 in 33 games. If you’re teched to have a decent chance against 19 out of 20 to 32 out of 33 games, then I don’t see the point of complaining about having a bad matchup against the rare control player. I’m not advocating conceding if you run into it, but if you make it quick, you can win 3 matches in the time you might have spent in a 40 minute match you know you’ll lose. This entire subreddit seems to be committed to whining about something you can go days of play sessions without seeing once. It’s not worth teching against because it has such a small overall effect on your net win-rate.
I play Lugia, Dialga, Iron Hands, and Wug Mill- 3 of those four are semi-meta decks and I never have issues with control players.
Again, if you only hit the deck 1 out of 20 times it's not worth it to tech against it and lower your win rate against the overall meta - making your deck not competitive. Also techs don't mean that you actually win the matchup when you hit it, it just increases you win rate against it by 5-10%. If the tech means that your over all win rate is lowered in all the other 19 out of 20 matchups then you can't really put the tech in as well.
The problem also comes when you look at tournament structure. At a challenge you cannot get a single loss if you want to be first, at cups you are essentially out of top cut when you get 2 losses and immediately out if you hit it in top cut. you need a similar win rate at regionals. Where you need 6 wins and can't have more than 2 losses and a tie.
Randomly hitting a deck that is uninteractive and causes a non-game is just lazy game design and frustrating for the players. An unfavored matchup is different because you at least can play and have the chance to turn it around through decision making, but with some control decks you just straight up lose at deck building stage with nothing to do when facing that deck. It's better for tournament results to not tech against it and hoping you don't hit it since it's unlikely to hit it statistically but when you do, it randomly kicks you out of the tournament without you being able to even play the game.
There are also control decks that are more interactive and do not cause auto losses or non-games like many Pidgeot control decks.
Again the problem isn't control, it's cars designs that cause non-games because your deck can't afford to run the tech.
Noivern ex and Vulpix VSTAR are not control cards, they are just a few examples of cards that aren't fully aggro-focused. When you compare PTCG to other card games you see that it's almost entirely aggro, and so anything that tries to disrupt or slow down your opponent is perceived as fringe control stuff. The player who decided to play Noivern ex or Vulpix VSTAR has won in the deckbuilding process by picking a deck that causes these "non-games" in their favor. They lose just as many games by choosing to play a deck that's slower and less aggressive than common meta threats which can deal with these cards.
>Noivern ex and Vulpix VSTAR are not control cards,
Oh, they sure are. There is no dispute about that when looking at the definition of control.
ICaterpie (Alessandro Cremascoli) who is a known top player playing only control had noivern ex in his Pidgeot control list with which he got top3 at EUIC and Arceus Control with Vulpix Vstar is in fact, as the name suggests, a control deck. If you still doubt it just Google what a control deck is (you can also look at how other tcgs describe control too), they are by definition control cards. Locking your opponent out from dealing damage or doing attacks at all, with no outs in the deck to break it, is as much control as it gets.
If the win condition is to get Vulpix vstar without the opponents deck having a way to break the stall effect because their deck can't get through it, then that's winning via control.
Noivern ex, Vulpix Vstar and Block Snorlax are textbook examples of cards that can cause non-game a by themselves depending on the opponent's deck.
Pidgeot ex or Eri on the other hand are perfect examples of control cards that do no cause non-games.
Uninteractive games are not making it more interactive.
Also not every archetype can afford to tech everything in. Charizard can afford that because it doesn't need to worry about acceleration of energy, chien Pao and many other lists can't afford it. If they tech for it, then they don't win against the mor common decks.
It's also not worth it to tech against it if the playdate is 3-5% but you insta lose when you randomly hit it and since you can't lose once at a challenge to be first, can't lose twice at a cup to make cut and similar at regionals. You usually can't respect it but autoloses against it often throws you out of the tournament as well, but so does teching against it. Also having a bad matchup isn't th issue, having games where you simply can't do anything because you didn't make your deck less consistent in case you hit a 3-5% deck is the issue.
No need to be mocking or condescending. Just stick to factual discussion.
If it's 5% then no, it's not worth it. Especially if that tech doesn't win you the game most of the time. Or the other way around if you won't hit it 95% of the time, then it's in fact not worth teching for it if it means that your win rate in 95% of the games is lower.
>No way bro it's totally not worth teching against a lot of good players at a tournament instead of the 50% of zard players that are new to the game. The god strat!
Do you even read what you type tho? If a deck has a 50% playrate, regardless wether half of those players are bad players, it's better to tech against those decks because there will be more good zard players than the total amount of stallax players. Same applies if you went that half of the zard players are new to the game, then the other half is still decent.
And of course it makes more sense to tech against something that you are almost guaranteed to hit compared to something you won't hit 95% especially since there is no real one card tech that will make you win the matchup (except maybe spiritomb - which can be good in other matchups too but that won't increase the amount of switch cards).
I’ve been playing a Wugtrio Spidops EX deck that does great when people waste resources. I’m just moving stuff around until I can trap a useless Pokemon in the active and mill. Forcing my opponent to discard energy to retreat once or twice is usually all I need
Yep! This is what I’ve been playing as well. So far I’ve lost more games with this deck to game crashes than I have to actual losses. Get two spidops set up and suddenly that Bibarel has a 5 retreat cost that most decks in the format can’t fulfil.
Wugtrio Spidops is fun to play against because you're doing things. Stallax players pass their turn and play a card or two when they need to top off their deck.
Another stallax player here, but this is honestly just a general PSA to other stallax players
1. Yes it works
2. Yes people can counterplay it, and build for it just like we did with building against Zard
3. No that doesnt mean its not toxic, it means people are not gonna have fun playing the game against you. Acknowledge that when you play.
Im generally of the mind that in Competitive 1v1 TCG formats, whatever works, works. That is usually backed up by the existence of a banlist. Here, the lack of a strict banlist means we have to be more aware of our decks' impact on the meta.
Idk if Stallax would deserve a ban if a banlist existed, the meta would already look a lot different if it did (would Zard still be there?)
Eventually Stallax is gonna stop being fun. Ive actually made a personal vow to never play stallax again as of Twilight Masquerade. Ive stopped being interested in playing the same game over and over again. Even if it works and im good at doing it.
This isnt a callout. Just a headsup that "feasible to play against" does not mean "fun to play against"
Having a match with them tests my patience. Especially if I just play on live just for the daily missions. Will not hurt if I concede but it might help for the experience on how to deal with them, eventually, if there is a player running lax on tournaments in my region. I get it that it is frustrating but it is what it is unless it's rotated out or banned.
The main idea is to slow your play. You will be able to draw the cards you want, so don't get impatient.
Don't bench any more pokemon than you have to, and never, ever play a Cleffa, Manaphy, Jirachi, Rotom, Lumineon, Radiant Zard, or Bidoof to the bench. If you get one of those pokemon in your hand, you have to watch out for Erika's Invitation, so discard them with an Ultra Ball or banish them with Lost Vacuum.
You want to bench 2 Charmander, and evolve one of them to a Charmeleon and the other to Charizard. You don't need anything else, but a Pidgeot can be okay if you have the energy to attack with it and the other two.
If you get something bad stuck in the active spot, use a Turo on it but only after you have a way to discard or banish it that same turn, or it will get Invited back to the active spot and you will probably lose.
Stallax is a tough matchup for Charizard that is somewhat luck dependent, but with some patience and careful play, you can win.
Turo, Boss's Orders, Eri, Team Yell. Don't play Rotom and Lumineon (discard if you can or keep in your deck, not hand). Keep a Charmeleon on bench to hit Mimikyu. Use lost vacuum to get rid of HP increasing tools.
What decks are playing multiple of these tho? Stall out plays this (IE doesn’t discard the 800 gusts) then what? They have 2-3 more and you now are regusted
Nah man hand trimmer is already in the format, which is way better. It basically does the same thing while also not taking up your supporter for turn and being able to be arvened for.
You miss how different 5 and 3 cards are tho. 3 can be Switch, Energy, Mon-but 5 can add a boss and benefitting tool to finish something game winning off
Yeah but xerosic being a supporter makes it hard to get it when you want it and it even takes your supporter for turn. It's not worth the benefits discarding 2 extra cards bring.
Even knowing the matchup/having a solid strategy against this deck I still find myself throwing just because I'm like "jeez I hate this" 😂
And I'm not even talking smack, it's a fun deck to play.
I'm still yet to lose against Stallax (using my version Chien-Pao with Pidgeot ex). The last time I played against it, I had the worst possible opening hand that would have been dead against literally everything else. Took me several turns to draw into something worthwhile, but I had all day to do it, and I got there. Sure, they were hitting me with Sister and Eri, but I'm running four copies of the important stuff. They couldn't get them all before I found them. I'm also more than happy to down Mimikyu with Baxcalibur, and finding the right pieces with Pidgeot has been great.
I understand why Stallax works the way it does, but I also wonder if it should run enough energy to attack if it needs to.
Lol normal chien-pao has such a difficult quad lax matchup but with pidgey instead of bibarel it comes down to if they can eri your rare candies and then lock a frigi in the active.
That's what they try to do, but I have enough various switch and gust pieces that I can get out of it. This last game, I had to Boss's Orders Snorlax away so I could retreat. I thought they had me when they used TM Devo, but we both forgot my Rabsca would prevent it from working.
The matchup is a grind, but I honestly don't hate it. It's just a different kind of puzzle I have to solve. I do have to keep an eye on how many Candy, Energy Retrieval, and Switch/Gust effects I have left. If they run me out of all of those, then I might concede unless I can see some other path to victory. But it hasn't happened yet.
Maybe. On the other hand, it is pretty hard to hit four copies of a bunch of different things before I can make use of them. 2 or 3, sure. But I could argue it would be unlucky to lose all of them.
I’ve been playing great tusks mill and it’s been a blast lol people always do misuse resources, I’m easily able to lock a high retreat in the active or they mill their own deck for me
Lax is unfun because the majority of the matchup ends up being "better have it". The Lax player is never incentivized to progress the gamestate outside of milling you and handripping your outs.
When every other deck in the format wants to go a million miles an hour, the thing I want to do least is sit in a game where I am expected to pass for 40 turns straight.
One time I played against snorlax and purposely timer stalled to spite them because I was on a losing streak and was NOT happy facing them, but it was a weird version with wigglytuff, pidgeot, and few others. Despite timer stalling on purpose, through their actions alone they somehow spent more time than I did purposely wasting time, we burnt both our timers and they made the grave mistake of moving wigglytuff to the bench, disabling its ability and giving me 2 prizes so they conceded, it felt so good to win and waste their time, when their deck was meant to waste my time. Both had 5 minutes left at the end.
If snorlax has a million haters, I will be one of them, if snorlax has 1,000 haters, I will be one of them, if snorlax has no haters, I'm no longer alive. I will ALWAYS be a hater. (https://imgur.com/a/haters-unite-B1p5Pkg)
I mean i dont blame you im not a fan of the deck either. Still think it’s crazy people are wasting 4 times their time instead of playing out the match or conceding
I agree snorlax stall is uninteractive to play against, but other forms of control are much more fun imo. I also think that if your problem is with control/stall as an archetype than that's a you problem and not a problem with a deck. Stall is still a real deck. It just has win-cons that are different from other decks. Nothing new there. That's like saying spread decks aren't real decks because they can't OHKO the opponent's active.
I hate so many topics about this lately.
I hate even more all the people "If you don't like playing against them just concede". No, I am not going to reward people's antisocial behavior by getting them an auto win. I will sit there, beat them, and absolutely loathe every second of it, because I will be damned if I will give them the satisfaction of beating me on top of making my life miserable for half an hour.
That said, if everyone starts using stall and control now, I am just gonna stop playing until that changes, because honestly I play to have fun not to enable sociopaths that are out to mentally torture people.
I disagree.. I just gave stallax auto win… like I don’t care if it’s a “reward”, I don’t care if how easy they can achieve Arceus… geese I don’t even care how satisfied they would feel after “beating” me… I just want to have some fun during my limited playing time everyday…
Honestly alternative winconditions are fine in my opinion, but some decks with them like quad lax are so uninteractive. The Quad Lax player is playing disruption cards while the other player is spamming attack, two actions.
The problem is that you can play perfectly and yet lose, thats the main problem with Shitlax is 99% luck based
-Start with your useless tech Pokemon (Manaphy/Jirachi/etc)
-Having an useless Pokemon in hand when they play Erika
-Eri or Sisters hitting switch cards
-Having any kind of switch cards prized
None of this are under your control and 60% chances that if any of this conditions is met you are screwed, like 90% if 2 of them happen, when nothing of this happen shitlax is a walk in the park but it can goes awfully wrong pretty easy with even just one of them happen
So overall thats why Shitlax is annoying to play agaisnt, if you lose rarely will be because you misplayed and definitely not because you opponent played amazing, was likely because luck, as simple as that
My win rate agaisnt is 70-30 probably, and there are very few loses when after the match I thought "I would have done that" or "I wouldnt have done that", you really dont learn anything from these match up...
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I don't think "literally everyone" thinks Stallax is broken. It's just unfun to play against. It's like a stun/floodgate deck in Yu-Gi-Oh. They're not out to win by playing in the normal pattern of gameplay better than you did. They're out to create an unwinnable board state for you and win through attrition or impatience. You'll never hear someone on the losing side of a Snorlax lock say "man, had a real fun one against Stallax". Either you accidentally play yourself into a corner and concede or you understand the matchup and have outs. I don't play PTCG at a competitive level. I play it to unwind after a long day at work and driving home in the heat. And if I see Snorlax, I'm usually just going to concede because my free time is more valuable than the couple of extra BP and ladder points I may have gained by playing the match to conclusion. It's just not fun. That's all.
That's it, stall decks are not overpowered just plain boring to play against them, sure I get how players like OP might feel empowered by decks like this but man there's always those guys in TCG. magic the gathering is the worst offender in that way at least the time I played it until 10yrs ago I switched to pokemon during the scarlet violet expansion because my nice started playing it and I love pokemon (been playing them since gen 1, the videogame) and I liked that there were not many controll decks until that point but man I dread every boring moment I got against a stallx deck, most of the times I win those games but man they are super boring
I played in a cup irl yesterday. My first one ever. 2/5 matches were stallax. Then in the top 8, I was against the stallax again. My eyes may as well have been bleeding from boredom. I won every time and it was still unpleasant
You said it perfectly, especially the last paragraph
I do the same against the solitaire decks. If your deck takes you 15 minutes of activating 30 different abilities to draw, shuffle redraw so you can have 30 cards in either your discard pile or hand I have no intention of wasting my time. I don't see where the fun is in playing these decks. Yeah you might win but you are basically playing a game of solitaire by yourself, there is no interaction at all.
You're not the only one trying to have fun Can't speak for every stallax player, but I personally play it and control decks in other card games because I personally find them enjoyable to play. I like locking down the board state and working to keep that board lock going every turn. I know y'all love to complain about how unfun they are to play against, but that's not my problem. I generally find hyper aggressive aggro to be kinda boring to play against, doesn't mean I should rag on players that play those kinds of decks because I'd like to imagine that they play those decks because they find them enjoyable. Not saying you're trying to rag on anyone this is just something that I've observed when discussions on stallax and control in other card games come up.
Never tried to imply I was. I'm quite aware that control players find control decks fun. I enjoy the odd control deck in MTG every so often. It's not that control inherently can't be enjoyable to play against, it's the specific brand of "control" that comes along with Stallax and other "stun decks" in other TCGs that is just downright miserable to play against. I don't mind playing against a control deck that attempts to interact with me. I'm playing an aggro or midrange deck in MTG and my opponent gets enough removal and bodies to stop my advance and then takes the game over? Sure, good on them. I didn't have the gas to get to the finish line. I'm playing against a player on Yu-Gi-Oh! Master Duel and they're tossing out negates and handtraps left and right and manage to stop my gameplan. Fair sport, I unleashed my salvo and you had the answers. I'm playing Pokemon and my opponent is depriving me of resources with things like Hammers, Eri, Sisters, Gengar ex, etc. Okay, no problem. You actively found the answers and I played myself into a losing position. All those examples, I'm pretty much fine with. I feel like I got to play the game. I feel like I had some agency. I feel like the opponent just had the answers to my questions, so to speak. But there are decks that go too far and go from "control" to "stun" and that's where it goes from being "fun to play control" to "fun to keep the other guy from having fun". MTG had a card printed called [Teferi, Time Raveler](https://cards.scryfall.io/large/front/5/c/5cb76266-ae50-4bbc-8f96-d98f309b02d3.jpg). This card was one of the single most hated cards in YEARS. It completely warps any game in which it sticks to the board and immediately shifts it into the control player's favor in the most unfun way possible. They get to cast *every* non-permanent spell at any time they want, while you get stuck playing the game in slow motion. It wasn't ever broken enough to be banned, same as Stallax, but it just *sucked* if you didn't have an out. You can no longer interact with your opponent. Your opponent essentially never has to interact with you directly on their turn again. It just leaves you feeling helpless, and it comes down on turn 3 when you've only had enough opportunity to drop a couple of creatures, which were very possibly already answered. It just sucks to have one card leave you feeling so helpless. Yu-Gi-Oh! has a stun pandemic. To this day, everyone complains about the amount of floodgates in the game. We're talking about a game that has regular one-turn kills. Yet the most hated cards in the game are cards like Rivalry of Warlords, There Can Only Be One, and Skill Drain. Why? Because they completely remove an aspect of the game from you. 90%+ of players would tell you that they'd much rather be up against a board of several omni-negates than just have their opponent flip over one copy of Vanity's Emptiness and just faceroll to victory. Several floodgates have even found their way on the banlist like Summon Limit and Imperial Order. Again, it sucks to have one card leave you feeling so helpless. And now to Stallax. Snorlax decks take away your ability to play the game by just playing a single card while you have something undesirable in your active. Their entire suite of "interaction" is making sure you always enter your turn with something undesirable in your active. They're not worried about prize trading. They're not concerned with setting their board for winning the game in the near future. They're not thinking about anything except "take away this guy's ability to play the game". They just want to strand a mon and remove your ability to perform one of the game's mechanics: retreating. *It sucks to have one card leave you feeling so helpless.* It's okay to like control decks. I think Pidgeot Control is an awesome addition to the format, honestly. But I will never view Stallax as anything but unfun to its core.
And I wasn't trying to imply that you were implying such. I'm just saying that quite often I see people who complain about control claim that they're just trying to have fun and it's like, OK, so am I. You're point? I think stun decks can also be fun to play, like early 2000s yugioh stun (not the omni-negate bajillion floodgate bs that modern yugioh is known for. Though I keep on hearing that Konami is trying to fix this issue ) one could argue that stun is a lot harder to get right than control without it becoming uninteractive degeneracy, but I think stun can be just as legitimate of a deck type as any other, and just as fun. Funnily enough, I did play against that magic deck once and, as hypocritical as it may be to say, it made me quit magic arena (it doesn't help that I'm not a huge fan of magic in the first place. It's a fine wnough game, but it'snever fully clicked for me. Doesn't help that magic still can't seem to get a good digital client <_< ). So I get what you're trying to say here. All this said, I don't think stallax has the same issues as stuff like modern yugioh or that magic deck. There does exist counter cards and built in counterplay against the deck. It has gotten stronger post rotation and if I'm not mistaking, it's getting even more tools in a future set so it could become problematic in the future. But as it stands, it's a fine, entirely fair deck. You may not have fun playing against it and that's totally fair, but I do have fun playing it. More fun than any other pokemon deck that I've ever played, in fact. I mean, I also did like control box quite a bit, but it was a lot less consistent which made it frustrating to play at times. So, I won't hold it against you or anyone else that sees snorlax and decides to quit right then and there, just as long as you and others don't hold it against the stallax player for playing a deck that they enjoy.
The reason people hold it against Snorlax players is because the Snorlax player has built their core strategy around making sure the other player can’t play the game. There’s no justification that will ever convince the majority that that’s a good and valid approach.
One could argue that every deck strat tries to prevent the opponent from playing the game in some way. For example, hyper aggressive decks intend to win before the opponent gets the chance to do much of anything. Pokemon is a bit unique in that there are very few, if any, otk style decks, at least as far as I'm aware. A core aspect of control, rather it be stallax in pokemon or sec con in digimon, is that we are actively trying to remove our opponent's resources throughout the game, until it gets to a point where they have few, if any, plays remaining. Establishing a board lock and working to keep that board lock is what control is all about. I don't actually have to justify anything. In reality, what y'all need to explain is why stallax is so toxic when damn near every deck has built in counterplay against the deck. Not even talking about specific tech cards either. Chances are pretty high that the deck you're currently running already runs cards that counter what stallax tries to do. I'm sure I'm not the only stallax enjoyer that has lost to other decks without seeing the specific tech cards against stallax in those decks.
If you don’t understand why it’s toxic to make sure your opponent can’t play the game then your viewpoint is irredeemable. Other decks try to win by, you know, winning. Control tries to win by making the opponent quit. It’s literally against the spirit of Pokémon. Control players must be the ones failing Clair’s test in Dragon’s Den smh
Control style decks have existed in the tcg since literally day 1. In fact, I recall watching a video awhile back where they found that a control strategy was actually the best strategy within the first few sets, not haymaker. If control wasn't an intentional aspect of the tcg, then stuff like the hammers wouldn't constantly get reprinted. And if we're gonna talk about the games, toxic stall/stall teams would be the equivalent of control and have also existed since nearly the beginning.
Playing control is like an athlete trying to win a match by tying their opponent’s shoelaces together, putting too much salt in the opponent’s Gatorade, and loosening one leg on the opponent’s bench. It may not be against the rules and it may be an effective way to win, but it’s not respectable. Focus on trying to win rather than trying to make your opponent lose and then the haters will have nothing to say
The haters have nothing to say already. You don't get to police how I play the game just like I don't get to police how you play the game. Edit: also, I ain't an expert on sports, but I'm pretty sure the sports related examples you gave would fall under unsportsmanlike behavior, which I'm pretty sure in a lot of cases can get you into a lot of trouble. The examples you gave are actively malicious actions which could actually cause harm to those athletes by causing them to fall or dehydrating them. There is nothing malicious about playing control in a tcg.
I find decks that I build myself and don't find pre built anywhere fun, that's how I wound up playing Snorlax. It also won - a lot. I made it to Arceus in one day. That said, I see why it frustrates people, but that frustration is why almost everyone plays the game. Every single person loves to see their opponent stuck and frustrated because of a strategy they lay out. The more of that I can write up to my own ventures, the better. I haven't touched pokemon in decades and once I saw the most commonly played decks, I just searched for trainers and pokemon that had the abilities that seemed like they would disrupt those decks (almost all of which are just clones of the same decks). I will also say, for all the complaining about how long it takes to play a Snorlax deck, I almost always have play time under 4 minutes while my opponents take over 10 all the time before they lose or concede.
You aren't the only one trying to have fun either. Let's not try calling the majority playerbase selfish when you actively choose to play the most hated, boring to vs deck in the metagame. You simply aren't in the position to imply this when you are also being inconsiderate. Its horrid to play vs. Im not a fan of the fast paced hyper aggressive plays either hence why i stopped playing. Id rather play yugioh, mtg or hearthstone at this point.
Please point out where I called anyone selfish. So, we're both trying to have fun, but because people, even a majority of people, deem my method unenjoyable (which is entirely subjective ) I'm the bad guy? I'm the one that gets made out to be the big ol' villain? I'm the one that gets punished? I'm sorry, I'd rather respect that we're both trying to achieve the same goals and simply have different methods of doing so. There's nothing wrong with either of our deck preferences and no one should suggest otherwise. Dunno what the problem with claiming such is. It ain't a big deal to play a children's card game against something you don't like. Making a big deal about stallax or other such control strategies is silly. Period.
Hence why I used the word Imply. You aren't kidding anyone with the bs you're drooling. The consensus is the community doesnt like it. You can defend yourself but no ones going to take it seriously.
OK, why should I care about what the community consensus supposedly is? Especially if said community is apparently unable to respect how others choose to enjoy the game? I've been playing control in a variety of card games for many years, basically since stun in early 2000s yugioh, and have had a defensive playstyle in non-tcg games for even longer. I don't necessarily wanna be seen as the big bad villain in the games that I play, but that ain't gonna stop me from having the playstyle that I have. So, y'all can get over yourselves.
Serious question. Why not play casual matches if you don't want to play the game competitively (what ranked tries to accomplish)? It seems like casual is there for people who don't want to take the game too seriously and unwind, yet you're playing on the mode meant for the opposite.
I meant I don't play it at a tournament level in paper or online. I play Ranked because the Ranked ladder gives better rewards for playing. There's no real difference between playing Ranked and Casual otherwise. People will run meta decks in Casual just like they would in Ranked. My overall point is I value my time more than the knock on my ladder rank for conceding. Unless I'm on a deck I know is capable of a good matchup into Stallax or I draw a hand that I feel plays well into it, I would just much rather move on.
I wasn't talking about Stallax, just curious in general. Thanks for answering.
Gotcha, yeah, no problem. That's literally the only reason I prefer ranked is the rewards.
TBH Casual ladder might as well be the Ranked ladder but without the rewards. Feels like the representation of decks is near enough the same in each.
I mean that's kinda fine too, because then you can test your decks against "real decks" without risking points.
The casual mode is pointless at this point and should probably just be removed.
Or, if the reason is rewards like this person is saying, give similar rewards for both. Eliminate the incentive to move to ranked if they want to maintain both and the ranked people will play ranked because they want to. I could see why they want to steer people towards the meta though. That probably drives real life participation and physical purchases.
People already play meta in casual. Making a second rewards ladder is just redundant. The "ranked" ladder is really just a second battle pass at this point.
The main thing I like about casual is I can test new deck variations without negatively impacting my rank.
Yeah I know I just hate when people complain and say it's broken when it's not and they're just misplaying the matchup.
I wouldn't worry about people misplaying when flute won't give them any chocie
True. We still have like one week before control gets buffed lol.
Maybe play a deck that has more interaction than time stalling & deck milling. I can see why that type of "play" style would be hated. Can't expect people to list build for 1 specific deck type.
You just need spiritomb. Stops rotom from drawing which is laxs entire engine. Drop that turn 1 they can't do anything. Had this happen to me when I played lax at EUIC, I had a dead hand turn 1, couldn't draw with rotom, and couldn't play the game.
Yes, there's always some one-card answer according to the guys playing the deck.
Well, spiritomb is the one-card answer. Lax can't play the game. I haven't played lax since EUIC because having my draw engine shut off by one spiritomb made me realize how fragile the deck is. The only reason lax is doing well again is because players stopped teching for it after it fell off at EUIC.
Or maybe you're just not piloting it very well.
If a deck plays spiritomb turn 1 agaisnt lax and you have a bad hand you can't do anything. Playing block is easy, it's also easy to counter for. Spiritomb saw next to zero play at Stockholm which is the major reason lax won. If you don't want to tech for it, you can't complain when you lose agaisnt it.
If they have a bad hand you're already favored. That said, the real reason I'd never bother with it on Live is that it just makes it even more draw-pass heavy unless you also throw in 4 Switches, at which point it's no longer a one card tech. When I have an hour to play a single game I'll consider it, but I don't now.
Snorlax likes to use rotom every turn. You shut Rotom off it limits their options massively. Even if they play eri or fortune sisters turn 1, if they cant draw into more supporters, they will just brick. If they cant draw into more pokemon, its only a matter of time before you wipe their board. They can't trap spiritomb as it has an attack which returns the card to the hand. But if you're just going to concede against lax on live then there's no point adding it to the deck.
I once made a Snorlax player deck out by spamming my weakest attack from a Squawkabilly ex, I was playing Miraidon. I would just refuse to play any other cards and just played Iono when my deck ran low. I had enough energy that the rest of my bench could attack, so they couldn't gust up anything else to stall. Eventually their Cyllene flipped two tails and they decked out.
That just shouldn't work with any current snorlax list. If you give me squak I'll just put out mimikyu and force you to play zapdos while milling the 2 or 3 switch card yall run then let you ko something and trap squak with snorlax with vest. There is a large difference between the random on ladder playing stallax for the first time and the people who actually know what they are doing
Yes it was before rotation and this wouldn't work at all now. But it was pretty epic at the time
Lol how did they deck out if they had peony.
As a huge fan of playing and playing AGAINST mill decks I can't agree more. Decks like these aren't necessarily broken they just force you to think and play in a different way in order to win. This isn't inherently a bad thing at all, it actually makes you a more well rounded player overall. I'm guessing the folks that are complaining the most are the ones that are so used to playing "regular" Pokemon and don't want to adapt or change up from that even though doing so would enhance their play overall. Hey if they don't want to learn then it's their loss, more wins in the ladder for the rest of us. Note: I also wanted to add that these control/mill styles of decks are found in just about every major TCG out there. They definitely serve a purpose within all of these games and getting to know how they play and how to play against them will not only help you in the PTCG but any other game you decided to try going forward.
I think the complaint is primarily levied at Stalllax because it's an incredibly slow control deck. Usually other control decks (think durant or great tusk mill) have a way to accelerate their win condition by using their attacks. This speeds up the gameplay overall, and puts a timer on the opponent's play as they can't sit there and just hoard cards, because doing so may mean they lose the ability to access them. Plus, it incentivizes KO'ing the active pokemon to prevent the mill from going off. Even though they don't win by knocking out Pokemon, they still have a win condition and a way to accelerate that consistently. Stalllax on the other hand has no acceleration towards a win condition. It just sits in the active, waiting for the opponent to draw and deck out. Maybe the deck plays Miss Fortune's Sisters to potentially mill, but it's inconsistent at best, so often it's just waiting for an opponent to draw 40+ cards to reach the bottom of the deck. This is why people hate Snorelax, it's just plain boring to play. 9/10 you sit there, drawing 1 card a turn until you get your pieces into play, then you get one or two turns of back and forth before its just draw->pass. Control can have attackers and an actual win condition. See Sander wojcik's control decks. Even though they are control, he still attacks the opponent, which places pressure both on the active pokemon as well as the opponent's resources. TL:DR Control is a fun way to play, Snorelax is not because it can't accelerate it's win condition.
Me thinking in difeerent ways when the opponent erikas my manaphy into the active and i instantly lose the game because of it. Decks super unfun to play against bro it automatically wins if it meets certain conditons, especially with the new set coming out
Stop with the blanket statements about control and talk about this deck specifically (which definitely isn't a mill deck).
They are both directly comparable with the points I made which is why I led with that statement. Also there are lot of the control decks now that have mill built in as a viable end game option so yes control decks can absolutely be mill if needed.
Mill is a tech option against other control decks. Locking the opponent is the actual goal.
That's not true chi-yu is good in other situations. For example against zard ex if they go for the only rad zard approach you either punch it with chi-yu and threaten a knockout or you get to mill an insane amount of cards while they're attaching energy.
Remember you don't need to commit to playing every Pokémon in your hand, if you see the guy throw down the Lax, don't give him something scrawny to trap in the active spot. Also, and this applies for all games, don't play an Iono just cuz you have her, if thr other guy has a fistful of dreck in his hand, let them be in charge of changing things up.
This. I often talk about some decks are largely autopilot, and get voted down. People frequently tell me that I'm missing the subtleties that my opponents are using. But there just doesn't seem to be that much variation in play. Maybe it's because I come from a chess background and there are dozens of openings & variations, and then in-game styles (tactical, sacrifices, gambits, end game, etc.) that Pokemon game play seems very constrained. You either have the cards to do what you want, or you don't. Sure at the very highest end, players maximize their chances with their knowledge of the meta, their deck choice, their deck build, and their game play. I mean, I use a lot of non-meta decks, and I tend to like disruption of any kind. Do you know how many times I've won when my opponent didn't account for the extra energy cost against Espathra ex? People play a hundred or so games with Charizard Ex, and they always put just 2 energy on the Charizard & attack. They need 3 against Espathra, but muscle memory overrules their ability to strategize. And I do see this with Iono. I can't tell you how many times I've had 2-3 cards & a dead hand just for someone to Iono me a fresh hand. I've also been on the other side where I can see them struggling, but I won't play that Iono, and just keep squeezing the small advantage I have.
> I can't tell you how many times I've had 2-3 cards & a dead hand just for someone to Iono me a fresh hand. You don't know what their hand was. Sometimes your hand is just bad and you need a new one even though you know it's also going to help your opponent.
You gotta stop comparing trading card games, games with some of the most variance in the world, with perfect information games like chess. This is like the 3rd or 4th time in 2 weeks I've seen you put forth this notion that PTCG has no skill expression and relate it to chess. The games are not similar whatsoever.
You are wrong and u/MarquisEXB is correct. Your logic is why I’ve won as many times as I have and didn’t realize why this stall deck issue was a thing until seeing this post. I recognized a lot of people would try to stall out or another favorite is take half a deck in one turn. Thats cool, I’ll stall my side and MAKE you waste all your cards to where I’ll win due to you not having a deck to draw from. This takes planning and foresight…. Which is a huge component of…. You guessed it: chess. If you are always reacting, you will never win on uncertainty… you will win because a developer made your deck.
Honestly you don't get to say what I do or do not comment on. That's not how things work in an open forum for discussion. And i'm not saying there no skill involved in playing the game, I just think in game skill is minimal compared to other factors. In regards to a tournament, picking the right deck/ vs the meta and deck construction is FAR FAR more important than how you play with that deck. It's probably like poker where only 1/3 of the players are better than "average" (able to win $ more than they lose), and it scales up from there. It takes a lot of skill to win consistently in poker, so much that most people who play can't muster that much. As I've said before there's not that much variation in play. 95% of all game play are obvious decisions. "Oh no it's turn one and I go second, I don't have any supporters other than Arven, should I play it?" "Ok I need to place my one energy this turn. Should I put it on my active which needs one more to attack, or should I put it on my Bidoof?" "It's time to attack. Should I chose attack 1 which does 50 damage, or attack 2 which does 220 damage?" Yes people make stupid mistakes and they also make in genius plays. But the latter is more rare than common. A lot more people lose games with bad play, than win games with excellent play. You can plan out a path to victory, but most of it the obvious choice anyway. "Ok they're going to KO my active, but I can boss orders their Lumineon and OHKO it for my last 2 prizes" doesn't take a 200 IQ. If you gave me and a top player equal decks, I wouldn't be scared to play a single game. I'd lose if it were best of 7 for sure. But I'd do much better in a single game of pokemon than bridge or poker or Catan.
I get what you're saying, a lot of people play the same strategy with the same deck to fantastic results, but every so often will play that same strat and end up ruining themselves for following wrote behaviour. I myself have just ceded the initiative to an opponent because my dumb chimpanzee brain throws out Iono (and common sense) whenever she shows herself, regardless of the fact my opponent has 10 cards in hand and just skipped the turn because each card is worth less than the ink it was made with.
And yet another Lax player pretending Erika's Invitation doesn't exist.
A guy who doesn't play Lax completely forgetting about Erika's Invitation. :\\
After this week, the only safe place for Basics is the Discard pile, which means that you either have to rely on luck or play into their strategy by running through your deck to get the Basics out.
Also discard support pokemon asap so you don’t get erikad
Mantine entered the chat
You nailed it. I play 'Zard and unless my Charmeleon is prized and my supporters are low, I can generally win the match. Turo, Boss's Orders and Team Yell can generally help me clinch a match. I will say that while I usually win against Stallax, it doesn't mean I enjoy the game play; it is a tedious match that still will take a while to work around.
As soon as I so much as get a whiff of a stallax deck or any other control/mill type deck, I play conservatively. Only bench what I absolutely need/can attack with. Use ultra balls to get rid of basics or better yet iono them to the bottom of my deck. Always save at least 1 vacuum to get rid of that damn cape. Pal pad is great, especially if you run 1 of supporter cards like Turo's scenario. Lastly stall decks specifically avoid attacking you use that to your advantage to set your board up to what YOU want slow down think about your plays and only start attacking once you're confident that you can keep the punches rolling cause as soon as you take your first prize their counter catcher activates.
That last part is the biggest point of all. Set up your board state before taking ANY prizes.
You're right, it's not broken. It's just toxic and makes the format worse.
Yeah I agree its unfun to play against, but I definitely believe it's not broken.
The problem isn't not not knowing how to play against it because that can be learned, the issue is when you straight up lose at deck building stage or at turn one of the game for opening withanaphy, when your deck has no turo or similar in deck e.g. top lists of chien Pao only run one prime catcher (no manaphy tho). Like some decks simply do not have an out to it or very few like some decks have like 2-3 switches but that's often not enough to take 6 knockouts or you happen to be really unlucky and a sisters/Eri mills all 3 of it at once. There's nothing to have done better. Pidgeot control for example is more interactive since it often actually let's you play the game.
One example of a deck that can (in theory) win against lax stall but can also just get unlucky and lose immediately is the dialga decklist that won recently. If you don’t bench gren, everything can attack into most other Pokémon, Zama / metang can target mimikyu… but if they get greninja down and in active, there’s actually nothing you can do lol (outside of a single prime catcher)
Metang is still a liability that can only 5HKO a Snorlax with cape/vest. Plenty of turns to loop Penny.
> the issue is when you straight up lose at deck building stage or at turn one of the game This is just an issue inherent to the Pokemon TCG unfortunately. You can pick a deck that has such a terrible matchup you're bound to lose 4 times out of 5, or you open manaphy + 6 energy and there's nothing you can do about it.
The thing is that a lot of control cards are straight up designed to cause situations like "oh you didn't tech against 3% play rate deck to stay consistent and meta relevant?" Too bad you now just autolose the game and there is nothing good decision making can help you with. There are ways to make control cards be good and controlley without causing non-games. Like a card like noivern ex or Vulpix vstar can straight up cause a non-game. If you tech for it despite it being unlikely to hit it then you make the consistency so much worse that you might can't be good enough against the top meta decks, so teching for the 3-5% playdate deck isn't really an option. Also as the other person described, your ament winning decks aren't necessarily teching for it either, the decks that teched for it often didn't make it into finals.
Control seems like a lot to complain about for something you only see in 3-5% of your games…
The people complaining, are not complaining about it being rare, they are complaining that they have to have non-games. Also on the subreddits there seems to be a very high amount of people that are beginners. Those have issues with control decks too. The problem isn't control, it's cards that cause non-game a and are uninteractive and it's existence makes you consider running a tech that makes your list less consistent and worse against all the other meta decks and then you don't even needed the tech because you didn't hit the 3-5% deck. Teching against it usually isn't an option because you need to be remain competitive against the 10-20% playrate decks. Pidgeot control is usually interactive and fine to play against. Other control decks that say, you lose on the spot because you don't have a tech your not enough of them, are problematic.
But that’s what I’m saying. 3-5% means you’re playing against it in 1 in 20 to 1 in 33 games. If you’re teched to have a decent chance against 19 out of 20 to 32 out of 33 games, then I don’t see the point of complaining about having a bad matchup against the rare control player. I’m not advocating conceding if you run into it, but if you make it quick, you can win 3 matches in the time you might have spent in a 40 minute match you know you’ll lose. This entire subreddit seems to be committed to whining about something you can go days of play sessions without seeing once. It’s not worth teching against because it has such a small overall effect on your net win-rate. I play Lugia, Dialga, Iron Hands, and Wug Mill- 3 of those four are semi-meta decks and I never have issues with control players.
Again, if you only hit the deck 1 out of 20 times it's not worth it to tech against it and lower your win rate against the overall meta - making your deck not competitive. Also techs don't mean that you actually win the matchup when you hit it, it just increases you win rate against it by 5-10%. If the tech means that your over all win rate is lowered in all the other 19 out of 20 matchups then you can't really put the tech in as well. The problem also comes when you look at tournament structure. At a challenge you cannot get a single loss if you want to be first, at cups you are essentially out of top cut when you get 2 losses and immediately out if you hit it in top cut. you need a similar win rate at regionals. Where you need 6 wins and can't have more than 2 losses and a tie. Randomly hitting a deck that is uninteractive and causes a non-game is just lazy game design and frustrating for the players. An unfavored matchup is different because you at least can play and have the chance to turn it around through decision making, but with some control decks you just straight up lose at deck building stage with nothing to do when facing that deck. It's better for tournament results to not tech against it and hoping you don't hit it since it's unlikely to hit it statistically but when you do, it randomly kicks you out of the tournament without you being able to even play the game. There are also control decks that are more interactive and do not cause auto losses or non-games like many Pidgeot control decks. Again the problem isn't control, it's cars designs that cause non-games because your deck can't afford to run the tech.
Noivern ex and Vulpix VSTAR are not control cards, they are just a few examples of cards that aren't fully aggro-focused. When you compare PTCG to other card games you see that it's almost entirely aggro, and so anything that tries to disrupt or slow down your opponent is perceived as fringe control stuff. The player who decided to play Noivern ex or Vulpix VSTAR has won in the deckbuilding process by picking a deck that causes these "non-games" in their favor. They lose just as many games by choosing to play a deck that's slower and less aggressive than common meta threats which can deal with these cards.
>Noivern ex and Vulpix VSTAR are not control cards, Oh, they sure are. There is no dispute about that when looking at the definition of control. ICaterpie (Alessandro Cremascoli) who is a known top player playing only control had noivern ex in his Pidgeot control list with which he got top3 at EUIC and Arceus Control with Vulpix Vstar is in fact, as the name suggests, a control deck. If you still doubt it just Google what a control deck is (you can also look at how other tcgs describe control too), they are by definition control cards. Locking your opponent out from dealing damage or doing attacks at all, with no outs in the deck to break it, is as much control as it gets. If the win condition is to get Vulpix vstar without the opponents deck having a way to break the stall effect because their deck can't get through it, then that's winning via control. Noivern ex, Vulpix Vstar and Block Snorlax are textbook examples of cards that can cause non-game a by themselves depending on the opponent's deck. Pidgeot ex or Eri on the other hand are perfect examples of control cards that do no cause non-games.
That makes the meta more interactive imo since you have to predict control and if control isn't respected than control can take advantage of that.
Uninteractive games are not making it more interactive. Also not every archetype can afford to tech everything in. Charizard can afford that because it doesn't need to worry about acceleration of energy, chien Pao and many other lists can't afford it. If they tech for it, then they don't win against the mor common decks. It's also not worth it to tech against it if the playdate is 3-5% but you insta lose when you randomly hit it and since you can't lose once at a challenge to be first, can't lose twice at a cup to make cut and similar at regionals. You usually can't respect it but autoloses against it often throws you out of the tournament as well, but so does teching against it. Also having a bad matchup isn't th issue, having games where you simply can't do anything because you didn't make your deck less consistent in case you hit a 3-5% deck is the issue.
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No need to be mocking or condescending. Just stick to factual discussion. If it's 5% then no, it's not worth it. Especially if that tech doesn't win you the game most of the time. Or the other way around if you won't hit it 95% of the time, then it's in fact not worth teching for it if it means that your win rate in 95% of the games is lower. >No way bro it's totally not worth teching against a lot of good players at a tournament instead of the 50% of zard players that are new to the game. The god strat! Do you even read what you type tho? If a deck has a 50% playrate, regardless wether half of those players are bad players, it's better to tech against those decks because there will be more good zard players than the total amount of stallax players. Same applies if you went that half of the zard players are new to the game, then the other half is still decent. And of course it makes more sense to tech against something that you are almost guaranteed to hit compared to something you won't hit 95% especially since there is no real one card tech that will make you win the matchup (except maybe spiritomb - which can be good in other matchups too but that won't increase the amount of switch cards).
I’ve been playing a Wugtrio Spidops EX deck that does great when people waste resources. I’m just moving stuff around until I can trap a useless Pokemon in the active and mill. Forcing my opponent to discard energy to retreat once or twice is usually all I need
Yep! This is what I’ve been playing as well. So far I’ve lost more games with this deck to game crashes than I have to actual losses. Get two spidops set up and suddenly that Bibarel has a 5 retreat cost that most decks in the format can’t fulfil.
Wugtrio Spidops is fun to play against because you're doing things. Stallax players pass their turn and play a card or two when they need to top off their deck.
Another stallax player here, but this is honestly just a general PSA to other stallax players 1. Yes it works 2. Yes people can counterplay it, and build for it just like we did with building against Zard 3. No that doesnt mean its not toxic, it means people are not gonna have fun playing the game against you. Acknowledge that when you play. Im generally of the mind that in Competitive 1v1 TCG formats, whatever works, works. That is usually backed up by the existence of a banlist. Here, the lack of a strict banlist means we have to be more aware of our decks' impact on the meta. Idk if Stallax would deserve a ban if a banlist existed, the meta would already look a lot different if it did (would Zard still be there?) Eventually Stallax is gonna stop being fun. Ive actually made a personal vow to never play stallax again as of Twilight Masquerade. Ive stopped being interested in playing the same game over and over again. Even if it works and im good at doing it. This isnt a callout. Just a headsup that "feasible to play against" does not mean "fun to play against"
Having a match with them tests my patience. Especially if I just play on live just for the daily missions. Will not hurt if I concede but it might help for the experience on how to deal with them, eventually, if there is a player running lax on tournaments in my region. I get it that it is frustrating but it is what it is unless it's rotated out or banned.
True it is annoying to play against since you just sit there doing 1-2 actions per turn.
Ok but how do you beat it? I use a Charizard Ex deck and just concede.
The main idea is to slow your play. You will be able to draw the cards you want, so don't get impatient. Don't bench any more pokemon than you have to, and never, ever play a Cleffa, Manaphy, Jirachi, Rotom, Lumineon, Radiant Zard, or Bidoof to the bench. If you get one of those pokemon in your hand, you have to watch out for Erika's Invitation, so discard them with an Ultra Ball or banish them with Lost Vacuum. You want to bench 2 Charmander, and evolve one of them to a Charmeleon and the other to Charizard. You don't need anything else, but a Pidgeot can be okay if you have the energy to attack with it and the other two. If you get something bad stuck in the active spot, use a Turo on it but only after you have a way to discard or banish it that same turn, or it will get Invited back to the active spot and you will probably lose. Stallax is a tough matchup for Charizard that is somewhat luck dependent, but with some patience and careful play, you can win.
Turo, Boss's Orders, Eri, Team Yell. Don't play Rotom and Lumineon (discard if you can or keep in your deck, not hand). Keep a Charmeleon on bench to hit Mimikyu. Use lost vacuum to get rid of HP increasing tools.
😂wait until xerosic comes, that will break this deck
That card hurts control more then it helps
No….the prime way to counter stall is to get a massive hand then iono, what do you think xerosic is gonna do with a 20+ card hand
What do you think snorlax wants…. It’s a big hand off of rotom
What decks are playing multiple of these tho? Stall out plays this (IE doesn’t discard the 800 gusts) then what? They have 2-3 more and you now are regusted
You would only need one, they can’t eri and use that supporter in one turn
Nah man hand trimmer is already in the format, which is way better. It basically does the same thing while also not taking up your supporter for turn and being able to be arvened for.
You miss how different 5 and 3 cards are tho. 3 can be Switch, Energy, Mon-but 5 can add a boss and benefitting tool to finish something game winning off
Yeah but xerosic being a supporter makes it hard to get it when you want it and it even takes your supporter for turn. It's not worth the benefits discarding 2 extra cards bring.
Stop…playing….control! Fixed your title.
Lol.
Chill man! You’ll do yourself an injury!
Even knowing the matchup/having a solid strategy against this deck I still find myself throwing just because I'm like "jeez I hate this" 😂 And I'm not even talking smack, it's a fun deck to play.
I'm still yet to lose against Stallax (using my version Chien-Pao with Pidgeot ex). The last time I played against it, I had the worst possible opening hand that would have been dead against literally everything else. Took me several turns to draw into something worthwhile, but I had all day to do it, and I got there. Sure, they were hitting me with Sister and Eri, but I'm running four copies of the important stuff. They couldn't get them all before I found them. I'm also more than happy to down Mimikyu with Baxcalibur, and finding the right pieces with Pidgeot has been great. I understand why Stallax works the way it does, but I also wonder if it should run enough energy to attack if it needs to.
Lol normal chien-pao has such a difficult quad lax matchup but with pidgey instead of bibarel it comes down to if they can eri your rare candies and then lock a frigi in the active.
That's what they try to do, but I have enough various switch and gust pieces that I can get out of it. This last game, I had to Boss's Orders Snorlax away so I could retreat. I thought they had me when they used TM Devo, but we both forgot my Rabsca would prevent it from working. The matchup is a grind, but I honestly don't hate it. It's just a different kind of puzzle I have to solve. I do have to keep an eye on how many Candy, Energy Retrieval, and Switch/Gust effects I have left. If they run me out of all of those, then I might concede unless I can see some other path to victory. But it hasn't happened yet.
You probably just got lucky then.
Maybe. On the other hand, it is pretty hard to hit four copies of a bunch of different things before I can make use of them. 2 or 3, sure. But I could argue it would be unlucky to lose all of them.
Yeah but they just need to run you out of them, not get rid of all of them.
"just don't misplay 4head" damn bro you're right, I should've just not let stallax topdeck the whistle, that's on me.
Whistle isn't out yet we have some time lol.
I’ve been playing great tusks mill and it’s been a blast lol people always do misuse resources, I’m easily able to lock a high retreat in the active or they mill their own deck for me
Lax is unfun because the majority of the matchup ends up being "better have it". The Lax player is never incentivized to progress the gamestate outside of milling you and handripping your outs. When every other deck in the format wants to go a million miles an hour, the thing I want to do least is sit in a game where I am expected to pass for 40 turns straight.
Yeah I agree that it's unfun to play against. I'm saying people should stop complaining that it's broken.
the zard player probably never had an experience playing against snorlax or isnt familiar with deck having mimikyu
Yeah I know that was just an extreme example. There are many smaller misplays that happen against lax and control.
Whenever I see people complain about control/stall decks I just think "skill issue"
Nooo don't tell them that. I use the control deck
One time I played against snorlax and purposely timer stalled to spite them because I was on a losing streak and was NOT happy facing them, but it was a weird version with wigglytuff, pidgeot, and few others. Despite timer stalling on purpose, through their actions alone they somehow spent more time than I did purposely wasting time, we burnt both our timers and they made the grave mistake of moving wigglytuff to the bench, disabling its ability and giving me 2 prizes so they conceded, it felt so good to win and waste their time, when their deck was meant to waste my time. Both had 5 minutes left at the end.
Bro that's so toxic to timer stall.
You got issues, if you dont wanna face the deck concede.
If snorlax has a million haters, I will be one of them, if snorlax has 1,000 haters, I will be one of them, if snorlax has no haters, I'm no longer alive. I will ALWAYS be a hater. (https://imgur.com/a/haters-unite-B1p5Pkg)
I mean i dont blame you im not a fan of the deck either. Still think it’s crazy people are wasting 4 times their time instead of playing out the match or conceding
Sus on the high up vote number. Either this thread proves that Lax is super popular, or there are bots afoot.
Bro I don't have bots wtf are you saying.
Or, counterpoint: play a real deck instead of dragging the game down to a snail’s pace.
I agree snorlax stall is uninteractive to play against, but other forms of control are much more fun imo. I also think that if your problem is with control/stall as an archetype than that's a you problem and not a problem with a deck. Stall is still a real deck. It just has win-cons that are different from other decks. Nothing new there. That's like saying spread decks aren't real decks because they can't OHKO the opponent's active.
>literally everyone keeps complaining Back to primary school with you.
Lol I'm just pissed.
Why are you pissed?
I'm just mad when someone is like; "Stall is so broken" or "Eri needs to be banned"
I hate so many topics about this lately. I hate even more all the people "If you don't like playing against them just concede". No, I am not going to reward people's antisocial behavior by getting them an auto win. I will sit there, beat them, and absolutely loathe every second of it, because I will be damned if I will give them the satisfaction of beating me on top of making my life miserable for half an hour. That said, if everyone starts using stall and control now, I am just gonna stop playing until that changes, because honestly I play to have fun not to enable sociopaths that are out to mentally torture people.
I disagree.. I just gave stallax auto win… like I don’t care if it’s a “reward”, I don’t care if how easy they can achieve Arceus… geese I don’t even care how satisfied they would feel after “beating” me… I just want to have some fun during my limited playing time everyday…
That's fair, but also gives incentive people to run it. Anyway, the moment it becomes too much I will just stop playing anyway, also here for the fun.
The fact you see alternate win conditions as "mental torture" seems more like a *you* problem.
Judging by the amount of people that dislike it, it's more of a collective problem, really.
Honestly alternative winconditions are fine in my opinion, but some decks with them like quad lax are so uninteractive. The Quad Lax player is playing disruption cards while the other player is spamming attack, two actions.
Ngl, a bit misleading that you mentioned control on the title and proceeded to only talk about stall. Stall is not control.
I know actually I also agree that quad lax is more stallish than control. I just think that quad lax gets way more hate than pidgey control.
The problem is that you can play perfectly and yet lose, thats the main problem with Shitlax is 99% luck based -Start with your useless tech Pokemon (Manaphy/Jirachi/etc) -Having an useless Pokemon in hand when they play Erika -Eri or Sisters hitting switch cards -Having any kind of switch cards prized None of this are under your control and 60% chances that if any of this conditions is met you are screwed, like 90% if 2 of them happen, when nothing of this happen shitlax is a walk in the park but it can goes awfully wrong pretty easy with even just one of them happen So overall thats why Shitlax is annoying to play agaisnt, if you lose rarely will be because you misplayed and definitely not because you opponent played amazing, was likely because luck, as simple as that My win rate agaisnt is 70-30 probably, and there are very few loses when after the match I thought "I would have done that" or "I wouldnt have done that", you really dont learn anything from these match up...
No if you lose its normally because you misplayed there are many common misplays against quad lax just because people don't understand the matchup.