Team Magma’s Torkoal · Team Magma vs Team Aqua (MA) #12

7 comments

1. 

   Ambassador

   (3 years ago)

   According to ポケモンWiki, this card, in combination with Fossil cards & Multi Technical Machine 01, became popular as a milling deck, and saw a decent amount of play in qualifying matches for Japan’s Fall 2003 Battle Road tournament. The idea, presumably, was to use Magma Burn enough times to put your opponent in a precarious situation, and then stall out the rest of the match – either stop them from attacking using Multi TM 01’s guaranteed paralysis, or let them attack but not get any prizes for doing so because they’ve only knocked a Fossil out.

   https://archive.ph/gLN10

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     AmbassadorAmbassador

     (3 years ago)

     Here is a sample deck build (c/o ポケカwiki);

     x2 Team Magma’s Torkoal

     x2 Professor Oak’s Research
     x2 Underground Expedition
     x1 Mr. Briney’s Compassion
     x2 Town Volunteers
     x1 Warp Point
     x2 Mysterious Fossil
     x2 Claw Fossil
     x2 Root Fossil
     x2 Multi Technical Machine 01
     x2 Super Scoop Up

     x8 Fire Energy
     x2 Cyclone Energy

     https://archive.ph/f9ENA

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       JP Ambassador

       (3 years ago)

       Ah, it’s one of those half-deck formats. It makes sense that milling would be effective there since setup takes up proportionally a higher percentage of your deck, relative to the number of prizes for a half deck game vs full game. 20 cards left in deck / 3 prizes at the start of a half deck game (before anyone draws a card for turn) vs 47 in deck / 6 prizes for a full game.

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         AmbassadorJP

         (3 years ago)

         The half-deck format I glossed over explains something for me too – the ferociousness of the way the deck’s potency was nerfed (i.e. that I outlined on LM Mysterious Fossil) seemed completely overboard as I didn’t imagine it being *that* effective, but in a 30 card format… yeah.

         As far as whether this could’ve worked in a 60 card format.. yeah, I think it could’ve scaled. It would not have been as simple as doubling the numbers of cards (e.g. I think there might be a benefit to running just 2 Torkoal even at 60, so as to mulligan a few times) and would not adopt to full-deck format without *any* problems but it still would’ve been disruptive.

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2. 

   Tatu chín đai

   (3 years ago)

   Was this card actually the best milling option back in early Gen 3?

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     AmbassadorTatu chín đai

     (3 years ago)

     The search {{ text:”discard” +text:”opponent’s deck” series:e-card,ex }} looks like it’s probably getting everything that’s worth looking at – that syntax isn’t picking up Skyridge Magcargo so it isn’t fool-proof, but SK Magcargo doesn’t look like it enables milling anyways. It seems like it might’ve been the only milling option, really?

     I must say I’m much cooler on Torkoal working in a 60-card format than I was yesterday – I crunched some numbers after that post last night and I think if you played against someone who wasn’t expecting your deck and wasn’t running anything whatsoever to handle it, you’d be able to get their deck down to 10 cards and are then kind of fingers crossed hoping things continue to go your way – it would probably get dicey past that. If it had taken off I think Prof Oak’s Research could’ve countered it in full deck.

     Outside of the JP-only anomaly in 30 card decks where this strategy happened to work, the developers don’t seem to have intended for it, I am struggling to find any mention of “mill decks” or “deck(ing) out” the opponent as a strategy for the time, and I just cannot remember any mention of milling decks. Gen 3 did have a handful of cards that offered you risk/reward scenarios in exchange for self-milling, and there were also some cards that enabled discarding cards from your opponent’s deck, but they were designed to be incidental nuisances rather than enable milling your opponent as a possible wincon.

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       AmbassadorAmbassador

       (3 years ago)

       You might have to get rid of the + sign in that search syntax, I forgot +text doesn’t play nice with apostrophes in the string.

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