A Few Words on Finesse

When my (step)son, JT, was into D&D and later Magic, I used to find it highly amusing to watch him and his friends 'play.' Very often they would sit around a table, pour out all their game acoutrements (decks, dice, figures) and then proceed to spend the next half hour or more trying to finesse the dice rolls to build the best possible characters and teams of characters. I mean, sometimes they wouldn't even play the game, just spend all their time making the team.

Okay, I get it now.

Yesterday evening, Sarah and I spent a good bit of time making decks and remaking decks and tweaking decks and talking about it all. I suppose this means that I'm finally starting to 'see' how the game works. I found myself saying things like "I'm going to need some draw cards" or even more specifically, "I'm going to need some draws for Evolutions." I was also thinking about how to counter cards that can do bench damage or how to draw down my deck to increase the odds of finding what I needed to find, fast.

Almost every time we play, Sarah and I also debrief the game. "Wow I gotta get my Basics out faster." or "Man, I don't have enough Dark Energies." Then we look at our decks and try to improve them to deal with that problem. Of course, it turns out that the luck of a good shuffle is responsible for a lot of the difference in the way your game unfolds. We have learned some cool shuffles from other players at Cities and at the Gym. We have each suffered through an unrelenting hand of Evolved cards with no Basics to put them on, or a handful of Energy and no Basics to power up, or a handful of trainers that can't be used with the current cards. It's funny and frustrating.

However, there is also the intelligence of the player as a key factor. I can't tell you how many times one or the other of us has declared, after playing a card, "Oh man, I can't believe I did that!" An important element in TCG, especially for the 'real' players, is strategy. And, the key to strategy is mindfulness. You have one card out in front as the Defending Pokemon. But you have to think about your bench (the 0-5 cards you have laid down as active and available) and your hand and the odds of drawing various cards in your deck. Here's an example of a slow mind, in this case, mine:

I have a card out there that has 60 of 70 hit points taken; this guy's about to die. But he has a great attack and it would be a shame to lose him. He can do 60 points of damage to the opposing card. So I 'retreat' him to the bench, which costs me one Energy card, and I bring out another card to attack. The other card is good. But my opponent has a card that can hit the bench for 10 pts as part of its attack and suddenly, my big bad dude is dead. (Actually, we don't say dead in Pokemon; this is a kid friendly game and Pokemon don't die, they faint.). Here's the stupid part. In my hand I have Mr. Briney's Compassion, a card that lets you take your active Pokemon back into your hand, thereby healing it completely, and of course, protecting it from attack. And, I wouldn't have lost the Energy card either. DOH! I was just too slow to see that possibility.

Here's a more positive example. I was looking to fill out my deck, having determined my main line of Pokemon, my Energies, and my Trainers. I was flipping through my binder of cards (yeah, lol, like I have a lot of cards...NOT), and I noticed this weird little card all by itself: Lunatone. Things to notice about Lunatone. First, Cosmic Draw. For one generic/any kind of Energy, Lunatone will let me draw three cards if my opponent has any Evolved Pokemon in play. People evolve their cards pretty quickly to get the better attacks. This card will almost always get me at least two rounds of card drawing before being knocked out. Remember I'm already normally drawing one card each turn, so now I'm getting FOUR cards each turn. That's just awesome. And, if I need to, I can toss a Psych Energy on Lunatone and do a decent attack of Lunar Blast for 30 points.

So it turns out there's more here than first meets the eye. I'm still intrigued by this game.