Play testing.... a waste of time?

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TheBlackSuperNinja

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It kills me everytime I come up a "consistant" deck... it craps out at a PCQ. I mean what's the point of play testing, if the same thing doesn't happen at a pcq. I believe I'm cursed. That's it i have the best idea ever, I'm not going to practice for atlanta cuz it won't matter anyway... I think i'm just bitter, i just finished 2nd to last at my last pcq. I never knew what it was like.... i know what it feels like to be DaAmazing1. Man does it stink. I mean the guy who beat me looked mentally challenged!!!!!!!!!!!! What's the point of play testing when i get beat by a guy like that. How do u deal with it DaAmazing1 cuz man it sure is hard.
 
hmmm.... I don't know I don't think, I ever did that bad! It could always be worse, like cheating a blind person at a PCQ to get a win! That's just low....lol
 
I talked to him earlier, he was saying that he was going to bring the brotherhood deck and beat us all with it!!!! lol... I think I'm going to put fearsome men togehter just to play against him with it.

"I wanna be like DaAmazing1"
 
he started blabbing about 6 drop mystique....... then he started braging how he beat tom's wife when she had the new brotherhood deck.... when did she play cards????
 
The deck she had ran darkoth!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Darkoth!!!!!!!!!!!! Terrible. What's the point of him playtesting... against tnb.. like that's the meta... hey wait a minute what is he doing with tom's wife!!!!!!!!!!!!
 
"I wanna be like DaAmazing1"
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Who wouldn't?

I don't play VS, but I playtest my YGO decks a lot and have run into the same problem many times. I test my decks at home, but when I get to a regionals, everyone's running different decks from what I used to playtest, and I fail utterly. The solution I found was to use proxies to netdeck some of the top decks from Worlds last year and use those as "punchbags". It doesn't work perfectly because the meta fluctuates, but it helps.

Best advice I can give is don't let it get you down. :duel_yes_
 
Jason_C said:
Who wouldn't?

I don't play VS, but I playtest my YGO decks a lot and have run into the same problem many times. I test my decks at home, but when I get to a regionals, everyone's running different decks from what I used to playtest, and I fail utterly. The solution I found was to use proxies to netdeck some of the top decks from Worlds last year and use those as "punchbags". It doesn't work perfectly because the meta fluctuates, but it helps.

Best advice I can give is don't let it get you down. :duel_yes_
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The best way to playtest is to play real people in real life. YVD comes a close second to that, and I'd imagine VS has a program that enables online play as well.

When you playtest, you need to playtest against all the current "CC"s out there multiple times and make changes to your deck along the way. "CC" decks are never stale, 1-2 card difference CAN make a big difference from one "CC" deck to another.
 
The biggest difference between VS and Yugioh is that when you playtest in VS you have to take a guess at what you think the meta is going to be like at the PCQ you go to. Unlike yugioh the meta is way more diverse, you can build a deck to take out Titans consistantly only to lose to curve decks and stall. Or you can build a deck to beat Curve and Stall only to lose to none cure strategies like Child decks and Titans. It basically come down playtesting and knowing what cards are good against what deck types and then pre-scouting the competition before the tournament and making those last second tweaks.

Last I played Yugioh it was always easy to know what the meta was going to be like because everyone always ran the same top 3 decks. It could have changed since its been at least a year since I picked up a Yugioh card.
 
DaAmazing1 said:
The biggest difference between VS and Yugioh is that when you playtest in VS you have to take a guess at what you think the meta is going to be like at the PCQ you go to. Unlike yugioh the meta is way more diverse, you can build a deck to take out Titans consistantly only to lose to curve decks and stall. Or you can build a deck to beat Curve and Stall only to lose to none cure strategies like Child decks and Titans. It basically come down playtesting and knowing what cards are good against what deck types and then pre-scouting the competition before the tournament and making those last second tweaks.

Last I played Yugioh it was always easy to know what the meta was going to be like because everyone always ran the same top 3 decks. It could have changed since its been at least a year since I picked up a Yugioh card.
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same CC madness bro.

yea VS. is different becuase of the whole people running different teams.

Playtesting for VS. is nothing more than playtesting your deck with your draws not with what it can and cant do against another deck.

think about it like this.

you have a Curve Sentinal what you want to play test out is that you get your curve right. thats all. Eventually you know that somebody out there will have a deck that can beat a Curve Sentinal and all you can do is take it like a man but atleast you know your deck worked the way you wanted it to work.

Magic is similar to VS were you can see different stuff. :D
 
I have given up on trying to guess the Meta after yesterday's PCQ. I decided to play sealed and happy I did. I expected to see GLOCK, AGL, and Teen Titans. I think there was 1 or 2 Teen Titans decks yesterday and none of the others.The meta around here changes from week to week and you just can't stay on top of it. As for the upcoming MMA format it will be a little easier to test because the decks will be more limited.

krazykidpsx said:
think about it like this.

you have a Curve Sentinal what you want to play test out is that you get your curve right. thats all. Eventually you know that somebody out there will have a deck that can beat a Curve Sentinal and all you can do is take it like a man but atleast you know your deck worked the way you wanted it to work.
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You really can't do that in Vs much. You do need to know what the popular deck will be and make sure your deck will beat it. If you take a CS deck to a tournament and the majority of decks are Avengers you are in for a rough day since Avengers wins that match up 8 out of 10 times.
 
yea but like you stated you were expecting certain deck and that deck didnt appear chances are that avengers doesnt appear and you rock out.

I run x-static and i never really depend on what my opponent will be playing because all i know is that i will be running only 1 character per time. :)

so its hard for me to say how to go up against something if i know that im just playing with 1 character.
 
In Golden age, its impossible to guess the meta, so playtesting becomes a chore. With so many decks and so many variations, you never know what you'll see. I playtest trying to find the kink in the armor of every deck and how the deck I'm running can beat it. Modern is different because you only have a handful of decks to test against.
 
Maybe my philosophy is a little elementary. But the way I look at it is this way. Play what you play well. Don't try to play something you have little experience with or are rusty at. Play what you know.

I think there is too much emphasis on trying to tech for every deck type at these PCQs. I don't think this is the way to go. I actually hink it's self destructive to what you are trying to do. I'm working on one deck right now that will be my main deck for all PCQs. There's no teching for Squadron, no teching for Doom or GLEE or what have you. The only thing I'm focusing on is making my deck do what it's suposed to do and do it as effectively as possible.
 
That's generally where you start when you start building a deck. Then you start throwing in the tech that can make the deck competitive in a tournament environment. I personally will throw a deck together the way I invision it working then we play test it a couple of times against common decks you might see in a tournament. After running it through play testing a couple of times I make a decision on whether I feel the deck is worth playing within a competitive environment.

I'm all for creative new decks, but if it can't win what's the point of playing it in a tournament? It's cool when you come up with a deck that no one else is using but if that deck can't win it's time to put it on the shelf.....

Play testing is funny, one day I could be play testing Squad and get god draws all day, win every game and the next day I can't win a game for my life. One thing that everyone has to remember there is a fair amount of luck involved in playing VS, (I know a lot of people disagree with me) you have to have favorable match-ups and decent draws to win. If I play Titans against a PCQ full of Spider Friends there is a good chance I will probably lose 8 out of 10 matches. If I end up playing Titans against Big Brotherhood I should win 8 out of 10 matches. Plus, when your at a tournament you don't know what your facing until usually turn 2, making your mulligan conditions more complex. When you play test you know what yoru facing and end up mulligining for the tech to win the match.
 
Ultimately, I feel the teching in aspct is self-defeating. Sure, there are a handful of cards that work well regardless of the build. Most people ran an Avalon Space Station to begin with, so teching in a Slaughter Swamp for Squadron was no big deal, unless, of course, you were running Brotherhood.

But at some point, you start chasing your tail. You can't tech for every single deck type. And since you can't, you try to guess what the meta will be at the next tournament. But that's a "buest guess" scenario at its finest and there's no real pattern one can rely on. So what happens is you start running a stable set of cards with a few open slots for "sideing in" what you'll need if you can get a good idea of what your going to be up against. That's fine, I suppose, but what I'm seeing is mediocrity. I'm seeing a bunch of "okay" decks made good or bad by the cards placed in these open slots. It doesn't make any sense to me. If your deck does what it's supposed to, then it shouldn't really matter your playing against in most match up. This mentality is what, I believe, is contributing to so many crap draws.

I'm going to continue to focus on building my deck with the outlook that if it does what it's supposed to, then only a handful of deck types can counter it and the skill of each player will be the determining factor on who wins.
 
When I say add in tech I don't mean tech to beat a specific deck or specific decks. One thing that I always stress is that you can't tech for everything, the you are right you end up making the deck worse and less consistant.

When I say add in tech, I mean adding in support cards to make your deck more consistant or to help it achieve its goal. For instance right now I'm working on a hellfire club deck, whether its going to team-up, which Hellfire club plottwists should it run and how many is the tech. But when you are putting in all the support plot twists and locations you have to keep thinking about the possible meta as a whole not a specific deck.

Now, once I get this deck together to a point where I think its consistant, and through playtesting I see that the essential core make-up is just not good enough to compete in a competitive environment, then its back to the drawing board. And VS has plenty of garbage teams out there that are almost impossible to win with even if the deck does what it's suppose to.
 
Digital Jedi said:
So what happens is you start running a stable set of cards with a few open slots for "sideing in" what you'll need if you can get a good idea of what your going to be up against. That's fine, I suppose, but what I'm seeing is mediocrity. I'm seeing a bunch of "okay" decks made good or bad by the cards placed in these open slots. It doesn't make any sense to me. If your deck does what it's supposed to, then it shouldn't really matter your playing against in most match up. This mentality is what, I believe, is contributing to so many crap draws.
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Yes, the tech slots can lead to useless cards in your hand, can't argue that point. But, they can also lead to a win in an otherwise unwinnable or almost unwinnable match. For instance the matchup of Titans vs GLock, 8/10 matches will go to Glock because Titans does not have the tools to beat this deck, throw in betrayals and all of a sudden you have a favorable match-up. Or the classic match-up of Sentinals vs Titans, the match-up is in favor of sentinals until Titans run Betrayal. It's almost nessisary to make a judgement call on specific cards like Betrayal, Null Time Zone... You'll notice that almost everydeck that wins a major event ran some tech to beat the meta.

If you take in in-depth look at the Sentinal vs Titan match up you will see that on almost every drop Sentinals characters naturally counter the Titans characters. Without Titans tech in this match-up the Titan's player will almost always lose. (assuming good draws on both sides of the table).
 
Well, I look at this way. Somebody had to win. If it was a case of the one few decks that ran tech that won, then that would be one thing. But what are the odds that everyone ran tech in that tournament? Looks more to me like a happenstance than a catalyst.
 
It's more than accidental that Titans players started putting in betrayal to combat Sentinals. In PC Ny a while ago Sentinals were so rampant that they started teching in Betrayal for the mirror match, then what happened a couple of savvy players started taking mags out of thier deck or started running tech to tech the tech....

When the meta is easy to predict the best tech can win you the game, when the meta is diverse as it is now, I tend to remove the tech cards except for tech cards that I know I can use in almost any match up. (Null Time Zone).... Which would have been great in one of my loses in my last PCQ.

Now, with a diverse meta generally its the better deck in combination with the better draw or better player....
 
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