This is a
continuation of Part 1.
As we left off,
we had just reached the 50th pokémon card, and while the first
pokémon introduced a lot of new concepts, things were now starting to find a
balance. Instead of introducing new mechanics, old mechanics were being fleshed
out. So let us continue, see how far we will get, and see if there is time to
lift the veil on some more over-arching game mechanics like idol powers and
their connection to each type’s theme.
Meowth is a
simple card, that in its simplicity holds a bit of flexibility. It can be used
as quick removal, or it can attack the enemy idol to act as a wanna-be
Charmander. Also, its low cost makes it a great way to catch up against the
opponent’s turn 1 play if you did not play anything yourself.
Persian is a
card that is quite synergistic. If you have a couple of low-health pokémon, for
instance if you just made some trades with enemy pokémon, Persian will come in
to save your board-presence. You might alternatively put it into a
swarm-focused deck, hoping to get its effect off on as many pokémon as
possible. Its high cost does however mean that it relies on pokémon from last
turn actually surviving, which explains why its stats are quite good to
compensate.
While the
normal-type cards feel normal, Psychic usually has some much more interesting
effects. I believe Psyduck shuffles your hand into your deck and then draws new
cards. Perhaps it can be used to get rid of some unusable cards, or to fish for
an answer to use the rest of your six mana on. In the lategame. Compared to the
Hearthstone version, its low cost makes it much more flexible.
Golduck has an
effect that sounds really good. Imagine that, you almost have no cards left,
and your opponent’s hand is full, to then take all their card and give them
nothing in return! It just rarely is as good as it seems. Its high cost and low
impact makes it clunky, leaving it to sit in your hand for a while. Building
your deck around it with a lot of low-cost cards, another question arises – do
you put one or two copies of it into your deck? Because there is nothing worse
than having two Golducks in your hand – your opponent can just trade right
back.
Though Golduck
is one of those cards probably
undervalued by the AI, it sits at a neat 51% winrate, and my own
experimentations seem to suggest that this estimate is not too far off.
Attack this turn
is just about what you’d expect – it is a temporary increase in attack that
fades at the end of your turn, meaning that Mankey’s effect is basically “deal
2 damage” conditional on having a pokémon that is ready to attack and was going
to attack the same target. If I were to give it a value, it would be around two
thirds the power of dealing damage directly.
Primeape’s
effect sounds similar but is quite different. You will always have your idol,
after all. Instead it allows you to deal three damage, but your idol takes
damage equal to the target’s attack. This is a pretty strong effect in the early
game or when you are ahead, but if your idol already has low health, you might
be better off attacking your opponent’s idol which has zero attack.
Growlithe gives
permanent attack, opposite to the temporary attack of the previous cards. The
difference between temporary and permanent attack is miniscule in practice,
however. It does offer a different way of using the card, though, trying to
keep your buffed up pokémon alive. This might be easy if your goal is to deal
damage to the enemy idol instead of trading pokémon, as is the theme of the Fire
type.
Arcanine kind of
abandons that theme. Instead, it is a late-game, value-oriented card. Inspired
by Arcanine being the legendary pokémon, it gives you a legendary dragon – or,
well, a Charmander.
I think this
might be a good time to mention that random card generation is way stronger in
this game than in Hearthstone. Very few cards are weak or underpowered. Sure,
the random card probably does not synergise as well as the other cards in your
deck, but overall, random card draw is almost similar in power to normal draw.
Considering Dragon cards are often late-game, Arcanine might be a one-stop shop
for value in an otherwise aggro-centric deck.
Poliwag is a
friendlier alternative to Growlithe’s effect. All things considered, its cost
is also quite low, so even if it does not have a lot of stats on its own, it is
a good end to a turn of flooding the board.
Poliwhirl is
just a blocker, and I know you’ll say “boo”, but really, every deck needs a few
blockers to be any good.
Finally,
Poliwrath packs a punch, and because of that, it has been banished to the rare
realm of 8 cost cards. Dealing four damage and putting a strong pokémon on the
board with just one card is an effect that one should not underestimate. Also, I want to mention that it illustrates an overlapping theme between fighting and water in dealing damage.
Finally, some
more Psychic type cards so we have something to talk about.
Abra is the
first of a series of “infinite” cards. It might sound really good to be able to
summon an 2 attack 2 health costing only 2, without having to worry about
running out of cards. Well. No. It is nowhere as strong as a repeatable power,
because you can only have one on your board, and your opponent will just know
not to attack it, meaning that to use its effect, you will have to trade it in
even though it is not strategically optimal.
But what if you
had an Abra on the board, then played Kadabra? For the rest of the game, you
could play it over and over again with cost 1!
And what about
Alakazam? It can return your Kadabra costing 1, so you can use Kadabra again
and again, and your Abra will be free, and you will have spent a lot of time
creating a magical combo that ultimately does nothing to hurt your opponent.
These cards are
what can be called combo-enablers. And it is even quite easy to make almost
infinite combos with them. But the time it takes to put the combo together and
staying alive makes this strategy alright, but far from unfair. If only you
could have a Charmander, Primeape or Poliwrath. Unfortunately, psychic pairs
with steel, and neither of them are particularly proactive. Or perhaps I should
say fortunately.
In general,
Fighting has an aggressive theme, but all themes need a counterweight. Like
these three cards that are all based around blocking. Now, this might seem incongruous,
but remember, one strategy for playing aggressive cards is to have a wall to
protect them. And a card like Machamp could be used either for defence, or for
giving your pokémon enough health that you can attack the enemy idol two turns
in a row.
Talking of
purple cards that return other cards to the hand, here is another set! Bellsprout
is also a combo enabler, allowing you to play cards with strong cries several
times, but at quite a cost. Important to note is that while most stat changes
are kept when returning cards back to hand, when played, pokémon regain full
health (even if that health has been raised from the original value). Bellsprout
thus has three uses: Comboing with cries, healing cards fully, and being an
okay card to play on an empty board.
Weepinbell,
however, finds its strength in removing enemy cards with high cost and
negligible effects. Sending a Poliwrath or Meowth back to hand is not
particularly strong. Sending a Charizard back to hand is amazing. These three
cards constitute the back-bone of control-oriented Poison-decks, and Weepinbell
is both strong in the late game and helps you get there. Its use is a bit
context-dependent, however.
Victreebel is
slightly less context-dependent. It is pretty good in almost all cases where
you are behind in the game. But again, you need to pay attention to whether
your opponent has buffed their cards, or have several synergistic cries that you
then enable them to reuse. But nothing can change that this card is pretty amazing.
For the same reason, its winrate is almost unrelated to how good its stats are –
the only important thing is its effect.
It should be
noted that statuses like poison follow pokémon as they are returned to hand. It
does not do anything while in hand, but when played again, the card will once
more be poisoned. Or have block or whatever.
Hey, a couple of
boring cards! The only thing I want to point out is their stat distributions. Block
is strongest when attack is in the 2-4 range. 1 attack blockers only delay without
changing anything. And more than 4 attack just is not as important as health.
Yeah, I have no
idea why Machoke has a 50% winrate. It’s pretty strange. I guess all decks just
need a blocker or two.
Our first rock
types! You might even be able to guess what the theme of the rock type is. On Geodude,
it is just a small flavouring, since gaining 2 health is nowhere near as
important as dealing 2 damage. No matter how much health your idol has, it will
not defeat your opponent.
Graveler,
however, really leans into the effect, losing quite a few stats as balance to
its whopping effect of giving ten health! With that amount of health-gain, it
can actually turn around a game, giving you a few more turns before losing to
aggressive decks, allowing you to regain control of the game with other, undisclosed
cards.
Golem saying 5
armour is a typo from an earlier naming convention, oops, it should say “+5
health”.
Golem is fun
because it has two effects in one. On one hand, it is anti-aggro, allowing you
to remove an enemy pokémon the turn it is played, and healing you up at the
same time. On the other hand, sometimes dealing four damage to the enemy idol
can win you the game. Anyway, Golem had to have Quick, it’s a rolling boulder
turned into a pokémon. On the third hand, if it sticks around, it can quickly
give you huge amounts of health.
I should
mention, there is a difference between attacking and being attacked. Golem’s effect
only triggers when it attacks, not when it is attacked, so at max, once a turn.
Talking of the strength
of quick pokémon! Ponyta might seem like a worse version of Meowth, but you
need to remember what strategy the Fire-type usually uses. Also, while health
is generally much less effective than attack on a quick pokémon, the difference
between two and three health is possibly one of the most significant
differences. For instance, Ponyta can survive butting heads with itself.
Opposite to Ponyta’s
subtle power, Rapidash is a pure monster. Dealing six damage that can be spread
strategically. Oh, I love this card. It used to be incredibly overpowered, but
then I nerfed a lot of the other Fire-type cards, and that made this card much
more fair. Still, I think it is generally an auto-include in Fire decks, even
though they generally do not want to have many expensive cards.
It’s actually pretty
strange that we have come this far without any cards that say “Draw a card”,
since it must be one of the most straightforward effects a card game can have.
Here we see that in this game, drawing a card generally costs 1 more than other
effects and statuses.
It used to be valued
even cheaper, until I at some point decided to nerf all cards that draw cards
or add random cards to your hand. To my big surprise, it almost did not change
the winrate of the cards. Apparently, the nerf hit almost all decks equally.
The aggressive decks did not become much more oppressive either, perhaps
because you will simply wait on playing your now weaker card draw cards until you
are already winning the game.
A new status!
Shield is one of the themes of steel-type cards. Shield protects the Pokémon from
the first damage it takes in combat, then disappears. If we compare Magnemite
to Machop, we can see that the Shield status is better than Block, more
comparable to Venom. This however neglects the whole strategic aspect of
Shield. Shield is really good against big enemy pokémon and mediocre against
small enemy pokémon. It has a great weakness to effects, however, since they go
right through the shield. For instance, Poliwrath can take out Magnemite with
its cry.
Magneton shows a
common card design, where its effects are a marriage of the two types the pokémon
has. Steel has shields, Electric has spreading damage randomly, and as Magneton
is Steel and Electric, it has both combined. This is a very easy, if not
particularly interesting, way to design cards that are still technically unique.
The possibilities are endless (or equal to 9*17 = 153 unique type
combinations.)
This is our first example of:
a) A
card generating another specific card.
b) A
card that is not a pokémon but just an effect.
c) An
uncollectible card. Like, you cannot just put a Leek into your deck, what a
strange notion.
I have found this
to be a great way to make new cards. It makes it easy to create unique,
thematic effects, it enables easy balancing, and the resulting card has a
strategic flexibility. You can play Farfetch’d as a simple 3 cost 3/3, or you
can wait a couple of turns and play it as a 5 cost 5/5. Also, if you have
another pokémon on your board, you can buff that up instead, giving a more
immediate effect.
I am told that
Farfetch’d actually is holding a green onion, not a leek. I think calling it a
Leek makes it understandable to more people though.
Generally,
attack is much more important than health when it comes to quick pokémon. This
means that usually, quick pokémon are much weaker than their slow counterparts.
But with low-attack high-health cards, you do not have to be as careful with
their stats.
Dodrio is an
interesting card. It seems quite simple, but both its statuses are high-impact,
so it surprisingly creates quite interesting scenarios. It is a much more
interesting way to deal with aggressive decks than a simple high-health
blocker. It also becomes really strong if given a Leek.
I should note
that while the Pidgey-line and Fearow-line have had their normal-typing removed,
it stays on Farfetch’d and the Dods because they are birds that spend more time
on the ground. Okay, I know that sparrows and pidgeons also spend a lot of time
on ground. If we are to make a biologically consistent border, it is whether
the birds are arboreal. Could you imagine a duck, dodo or ostrich sitting in a
tree? No? I thought not. Therefore they can keep their normal-typing.
…
Why do ducks not
sit in trees?
Talking of
type-changes, it is a bit sad that so many Ice-type pokémon are also Water-type.
There are enough water-types anyway, so they can do without.
The theme of the
Ice type centres around freezing enemies! Frozen pokémon do not become ready at
the start of their turn; instead, they thaw. Freezing is thus a one-turn delay.
Freezing fits neatly in a control-style deck, but can also be used as a strange
version of aggro where you simply disable the enemy from trading their pokémon into
yours. The Ice-type cards generally lean into the control and combo oriented styles,
though, having effects that become stronger the more frozen pokémon there are.
Seel might seem
pretty strange, since usually the first pokémon with a mechanic had the simplest
version of it. The problem is that later on, I made Spheal, which was almost
like Seel, just better. Therefore, I had to go back and change Seel to make
them different and equal. I like Seel’s effect. It just does not fit well with
Dewgong, which has the base effect. Perhaps that can teach the pokémon company
what happens when you make two pokémon that are basically the same. Your choice
if that refers to Seel and Dewgong or Seel and Spheal.
Our good
friends, simple pokémon. I should mention that while Shield has its strengths and
weaknesses, it is really good together with Block. I hate Muk. It has ruined so
many of my game-plans.
This also shows
that not all pokémon need to stay within their type theme. Not all Poison-type pokémon
need to poison or be venomous. Some of them can just be blockers. All decks
need a few blockers, after all.
Have you heard
that all decks need a few blockers? This is also true of Ice-type decks.
Freezing is to Frozen as Venom is to Poison. Whenever a Pokémon with freezing
is in combat, it freezes its opponent. It is a good way to add a few extra frozen
enemies to the tally when you play your synergistic cards – you can only afford
so many cards in a turn, after all, so playing some of them the turn before is
a good idea.
You might say
that Shellder is strictly better than Grimer. Well, not if your opponent is
also playing a freeze-synergistic deck and want to freeze their own pokémon! I
think this is another balancing mistake, where originally Shellder did not have
block, but that made it too weak.
Cloyster is totally not identical to a well-known card from Hearthstone.
Maybe I was
running out of ideas when I was designing these cards? I don’t remember.
Talk about really
unique cards, the purple ones always save us.
Originally Gastly
only had the positive effect, but that obviously made it too strong. I promise you
that the drawback is not derivative at all but is made necessary by
balance-testing.
Haunter, however,
now that’s a bit more interesting. What would you rather, draw a card from your
own deck or your enemy’s? Your own cards probably synergise better, but if the
game goes on long enough, one of you will empty your deck, and Haunter helps
making sure the enemy runs out faster. The effect is also quite thematic with
the pokémon.
Gengar is really
strong in theory, but it tends to mostly just fill up your hand with the cards
your opponent did not feel were good enough to use. Either it has little effect
at all, or it fills your hand so you do not draw the cards you want from your
own deck – or at least, that is my experience from playing the card. It sits at
a mediocre 48% winrate, as do its pre-evolutions.
Onix is a boring
card, sure, but let me just go back to what I said about the value of Shield
earlier – that it was valued to cost one stat more than the average effect.
Well, with Onix we can see it is actually two stats. So which is it? One or
two?
It depends on the card, of course. Mostly on the attack-value, however. As
Shield generally lets it attack one more time than if it were unshielded, the value
of the shield depends strongly on its attack.
But health is important too, as
effects go through the shield. Thus Magnemite could be removed with a 3-damage
effect without caring about its shield, but it is a lot more difficult to find
effects dealing 5 damage.
This explains why Onix has comparatively worse stats
than Magnemite. They still are equally good cards. Magnemite sits at 50%
winrate, Onix at 49%, a tiny change that probably can be due to variance.
Drowzee is basically a better version of Jigglypuff, but if you were to build a deck centred around sleep, you would probably want to include both of them, just to have more copies of cards that can make others fall asleep. I should also mention that psychic generally plays control or combo-oriented, so making pokémon fall asleep works great, even without having a specific combo to do with sleeping.
Hypno, however, is that combo. It might seem like a pretty strong card, to be able to, for just four mana, remove all the cards you have been storing away with sleep. But you need to remember that its effect relies on playing Drowzees ahead of time. And perhaps it isn't even that important to remove the sleeping enemies, if you just make sure not to wake them up.
As the Squirtle-line already showed, the main theme of Water has two interlinked effects: Spreading damage between enemies (bubble) and dealing direct damage (water-gun). The Krabby-line falls into the latter camp.
Dealing direct, controllable damage is a really strong ability. This means there are several ways to take it: Cards dealing small amounts of damage and having acceptable stats, or, like Krabby, having negligible stats, but dealing a decent amount of damage.
Both of these cards are missing three potential stat points, but Kingler is way stronger at 53% win-rate than Krabby at 48% win-rate. It might seem obvious, when Kingler deals 3 damage compared to 2 - but at the point in the game where Kingler is played, 3 damage is not as important as 2 damage is when Krabby is played. I think the reason Kingler is so strong is that it has both acceptable stats and acceptable effect, while Krabby, as mentioned, has negligible stats.
Voltorb might seem quite similar to Diglett, but since its effect only hits enemies, it can be played both when ahead and when behind, making it much more flexible. Thus, it has its stats reduced while being equal or perhaps stronger than Diglett. This, however, might also be related to the theme of the Electric-type, which has a lot of effects that spread damage out. Once weakened with spread-out damage, a weak-but-wide effect like Voltorb might be boosted quite strongly.
Electrode is both strong and weak at once. If the opponent has any pokémon with less than four health, it is basically a two-time "deal 3 damage to all enemies". Importantly, the opponent might be able to control the second time it triggers. As such, though its potential is high, its cost of six is fair, netting it a 53% winrate, which is good, but for from unfair.
Thematically for me, Electrode is stuck in my head as a pokémon that uses Self-destruct. Similar to that, if you take it out with one of your own pokémon, its effect makes it explode, dealing three damage to all your pokémon. I think that fits close enough to the bill.