Advanced TCG Concepts #1

Today we'll be discussing some concepts that are important both for high-level play and for consideration in modern card game design, since knowing how top players think is imperative to preparing cards that will appeal to them.

We'll be touching on damage benchmarks, damage per energy, card advantage, pivots, and one secret bonus topic at the end. We'll leave prize mapping and deck thinning for another day, since those concepts don't come up as much in the WotC era as they do in later generations.

Damage Benchmarks

The damage benchmarks for a metagame are broadly defined by the most important targets to knock out. In Generation 1, most of the meta-relevant 'mons have exactly 70 HP. As such, many players refer to this as the "magic number" of Base-Fossil.

There aren't any attacks that do exactly 70 damage except for Dugtrio's Earthquake (but Dugtrio's terrible), so this damage benchmark is usually hit by adding a Pluspower to an attack or combination of attacks that deals 60 damage.

Decks that run Jungle Scyther, for example, are advised to run a Pluspower because it can turn two uses of Slash into 70 damage. Attacks that do 30 and hit key targets for super-effective damage are also important for this reason. Charmeleon's Slash can be used to one-shot Scyther after a Pluspower, for example.

Not all benchmark cards are obvious at a glance, though. This Pikachu can do 50 damage on turn 2. This may seem irrelevant, but then you remember that one of the most powerful decks in these formats is Rain Dance.

This Pikachu just so happens to do exactly 100 damage to Blastoise, meaning it's a guaranteed one-shot. This isn't a super-prominent card, but just the fact that it has this niche means you have to be aware of its existence when you play Rain Dance.

Formats that include Neo Genesis are dominated by the babies, most notably Cleffa, which is generally considered a mandatory 4-of in every serious deck.

As a result, attacks that can do exactly 30 damage get a massive boost to their viability. This is especially true of ways to do 30 damage to a benched 'mon.

Dark Gengar and the Dark Golbat/Crobat combo are two extremely important additions to the Neo formats because of their ability to snipe Babies on the Bench, where they're unprotected by the unique Baby Rule.

But even an attack like Tyrogue's Smash Punch, which only has a laughable 25% chance to one-shot Cleffa, is STILL viable because of how hard it could shut down the opponent.

Damage per Energy

Damage per energy (DPE) is an important concept when comparing attackers to each other, and it's not super complicated. This Rattata does 20 damage for a single energy. 20 divided by 1 is 20, so the DPE is obviously 20 here.

Another way to measure damage is damage per attachment, since some 'mons can be accelerated by other cards. Double Colorless Energy is the most iconic example. Any attack that does 30 for 3 energy may only have a DPE of 10 (30/3), but it's also hitting the requirement a full turn faster.

For this reason, my personal favorite way to measure damage is actually based on turn count. Jungle Wigglytuff will do a maximum of 60 damage as early as turn 2.

It does require some setup, but the Trainers of the time make it fairly easy to set up a full Bench and draw into a Double Colorless Energy and Wigglytuff very quickly.

As such, most players will really think of Wigglytuff as an attacker that hits for 60 on turn 2. The damage per energy would've already been 20, well above curve for the era. When you also account for the existence of Double Colorless Energy, it's kind of a miracle that a card like this ever reached the printers.

Or, depending on your perspective, a disaster.

Also, I've touched on this in a few articles now but the damage of an attack involving coin flips is typically just calculated by dividing the maximum possible result in half. There are exceptions, such as when part of the damage is set damage unrelated to the coin flips, but even then the math isn't super complicated.

Jungle Kangaskhan, for example, has an average expected damage of 40. This makes its DPE a miserable 10, but you have to consider that this could be as early as a turn 2 attack...if you're willing to burn through your deck.

Card Advantage

Card advantage is a pretty simple term in theory, but I've seen a lot of people mess it up. The idea is that you're constantly adding and subtracting cards to your available resources, so some cards can be measured as a +X or -X value.

But there are a few things that tend to trip people up. For a classic example, here's Bill. He just draws 2 cards.

Some players get confused and think this means the card is a +2 in card advantage. Not quite. It's important to remember that you discarded Bill; he didn't stay in play!

As such, you're actually going +1 in card advantage, because you subtract Bill. As a general rule, you usually want to go plus in card games, but there's a big catch we'll talk about later.

It's worth noting that retrieving cards from the Discard Pile is also a form of card advantage. Energy Retrieval has you discard another card and itself, but you get 2 Energy Cards back. You're discarding 2 and retrieving 2, so it's technically a net neutral.

This doesn't automatically make it bad, though. Energy Retrieval is a staple in early formats because it was the obvious antithesis to Energy Removal and Super Energy Removal, two broken cards that warped the format.

The card economy isn't just based on your cards, though. While the Pokémon TCG isn't as prone to removing resources as other games, there are a few cards that can directly remove cards from your opponent's hand or board.

Rocket's Sneak Attack, like Energy Retrieval, is actually a net neutral in terms of card advantage. You're discarding Rocket's Sneak Attack, but you're also discarding a card from the opponent's hand.

You also get information on their future plans as a bonus, and being able to rip a Professor Oak or Super Energy Removal away before they get to use it is extremely powerful. As you can plainly see, card advantage isn't the end-all, be-all.

But then there's this bastard. If you have no other cards in your hand and only discard Oak, then he's a flat +6. Even if you discard 3 other cards and Oak, that would still be a +3.

Professor Oak is an extreme swing in card advantage, and there was no rule against playing 4 copies in a single turn. This card turns a lot of game design conventions upside down. You can play a -2 like Computer Search or Item Finder with impunity because you're just going to refill with Oak anyway. This guy was a bit of a problem, to say the least.

Card advantage is supposed to be a way to balance out powerful or weak cards. Bill may not contribute anything to your board state, but he's just a raw +1 with no downsides. Meanwhile Computer Search has a massive discard cost (itself plus 2 cards), but it lets you search for any card from your deck.

Cards like Professor Oak are a big no-no unless they have some sort of major restriction or downside stapled to them. In the future, the TCG opted to add a whole class of cards to solve this issue (Supporters), which could only be used once per turn and would lock you out of playing any other Supporters that turn.

Pivots

A pivot is a card meant to be easy to get in and out of your active position, to add flexibility to your deck. In the old formats, this was a very straightforward role provided by anything with a free Retreat Cost.

Of course, they also went the extra mile and made pivots a little too good. Jungle Scyther had an absurd HP value for something that could disappear at will. Fossil Gastly could paralyze the foe or retrieve Energy Cards from the discard pile. Jungle Dodrio reduced the Retreat Cost of your entire board just by existing.

And then Babies happened. 30 HP nuisance cards with powerful effects that could potentially block any attack on a coin flip. Perhaps as a result of these egregious early mistakes, the TCG has gotten much, much more conservative with printing zero retreat cards.

The conventional wisdom for these early metagames is that you typically want about 6-8 pivots, though some decks don't necessarily need them. They're perfect to open the game with, since they're non-committal, and can be used right after an ally is knocked out to leave your options open.

Keep in mind that there was no once-per-turn limit on retreating either, so pivots could even cure themselves of Poison for free just by switching out and back in.

Bonus Topic: Resource Management

The earliest formats, especially Base-Fossil, have so much draw power and such long games that you are much more liable to actually lose due to running out of cards.

The biggest issue players have when coming back to these old formats is that they get drunk on the raw power of Professor Oak and burn half their deck...only to lose dozens of turns later and not understand why.

As a result, it's imperative to not be blinded by raw card advantage. The number of cards that are still in your deck are a resource in and of themselves, which isn't normally a major consideration in card games.

The most important lesson you can learn for Generation 1, specifically? Only draw what you need.

Closing Thoughts

Naturally, these are not the only advanced concepts in the TCG. But these are a few of the things that tend to go under the radar for newer players.

I'll probably go over things like prize mapping, virtual card advantage, card selection, and deck thinning at some point in the future, but we'll leave it at this for now.