Artwork by Masae

Written by Andrew Martin
Edited by Conner LaVelle

Introduction

The phrase “time is money,” a central theme of this article, is a phrase you’ve likely heard before. Time is as important a resource as the cards in your deck, and it needs a similar level of management. In this article, I’ll be diving into ways you can improve your pacing and play faster.

One vivid memory I have of an event is from Dallas Regionals 2018. I had joined the game about a year prior and was starting to build my confidence as a player. However, that all went out the window when I discovered a huge, gaping hole in the quality of my play. I ended up tying 4 times during the event, quickly realizing that I had terrible pacing. The frustration I felt leaving the event pushed me to make a change. While I thought I had the idea of good pacing in my head, there were substantial skills I had not worked on that were going to make all the difference.

Those skills include:

• Shuffling Faster
• Synchronizing Movement
• Knowing When to Scoop

Shuffling Faster

One of the best parts of learning card games is their approachability. Pretty much anyone can participate and there are not a lot of physical hurdles to get over, even to play competitively. However, you can tell how experienced a player is by how they shuffle. Everyone has their own ritual, but the best players are nearly always efficient with their execution.

What do I mean by efficient? A shuffle should be strong enough to randomize the deck, yet quick enough to avoid wasting time. A way to test yourself is to use a stopwatch, easy to do with any smartphone, and measure how long it takes for you to randomize your deck. The benchmark you’re looking for is 15 seconds or less. The problem with most players is that they will either shuffle for too long or move too slowly. We want to keep everything moving during a tournament and it’s easy to lose time while going through the motions. 15 seconds is the guideline the rules set for an acceptable pace, so we need to adhere to those standards. If you’re someone who hasn’t had a lot of experience with card games before, this may be the best place to start working on your pace.

You might look silly for working on shuffling at first glance, but you will be happy in the long term with the time it saves. What I used to do was sleeve a full deck of energy and practice when I was killing time, sitting at my desk, watching TV, on my way to events, ect. Increased comfort with this can shave minutes off your sets. This will also commit it to muscle memory and cause a lot less mental fatigue when going through regionals. This is by far the easiest way to start getting faster and can be improved on at any level.

Synchronizing Movement

Something you might observe a top-level player do in tournament is resolve multiple card effects at the same time.  This kills two birds with one stone. For instance: if you are going to play two copies of nest ball consecutively, then it would be more efficient to resolve each effect immediately rather than go through the effort of playing the first nest ball, resolve it, shuffle, then play the next one, and so on. This might seem wrong in the sense that you are not completing each part of the card, but we need to think about it in terms of game logic. Most judges will agree that there is no need randomize the deck if you intend to break that randomness immediately. In the end, it wastes time, so synchronizing your plays moves the game along. Being able to recognize these plays is a sign of player maturity and will make you a much faster player.

I find it best to work on this while testing with friends or playing solitaire games. When you’re testing, look for ways to shortcut and try to get comfortable with the motions. While you shouldn’t focus on shortcutting everything, with the fear of making an actual game error, learning to combine simple things like multiple search actions can save you a marginal amount of time. The best advice is to have a game plan going into your turn and focus on the sequence of the cards you are playing.

Knowing when to scoop

A smart player knows that the battle is not the war and it is not always a good idea to spend time on a game that isn’t going to end favorably for you. It can be hard to determine when the best time to scoop is, but I’ll try to outline some scenarios that, generally, mean it’s time to abandon ship.  The best way to work on this skill is to have a solid grasp of your deck and using that experience to influence your judgment.

That said, here are some general situations where I tend to scoop:

1. I am out of win conditions/recognizing checkmate

This one probably seems obvious, but I’ve been guilty of playing out games where my opponent’s board grossly out powers mine. This is most common in mirror matches or prize race match ups. Generally, this comes from not having an answer or not being able to keep a crucial win condition on the board. The mistake is usually waiting until the last turn possible to see if anything changes, and by that point it is usually it is too late.

A good example is the ZoroRoc mirror; whenever the board becomes my opponent’s Lycanroc controlling the game and halting me from setting up a way to deal with it then I know I have lost, even before they’ve taken all their prizes.  This is less of an issue in expanded with cards like N that allow you pull a comeback, but in standard there isn’t much you can do. If it is nearly impossible to take back momentum, scoop and give yourself enough time to finish the set.

Learning to understand when you are in a checkmate position is also important. A check in chess refers to a situation where one player’s King piece is under threat of being captured on their opponent’s next turn. If a player cannot move their King to a safe spot on the board, then it is called a checkmate. At this point the player cannot win and is unable to stop their opponent from winning.

In Pokémon this works in a similar way. If you ever find yourself in a position where your opponent has set up the board to guarantee the game or to have the out to win the game on their next turn, then you are the one in check. If you can’t stop them, then you are in checkmate. These almost always will result in a loss and recognizing them is a good step towards saving time.  

A good example would be a situation where your opponent only needs to take 1 more prize and they have two Pokémon set up that can attack for the last KO going into your turn. This would mean that no matter what route you take, if you aren’t going to win the game on your turn then they almost certainly will be able to close it. Assuming there is nothing you can do at this point, when is the right time to scoop in this match? If you are out of win conditions, the correct time to scoop is when the check mate is established, so the moment it is impossible for you to win. Recognizing these situations before they happen is key to saving the most time in a set.

2. The combination of cards/turns needed to win is far greater than what my opponent needs.

This happens most often in a set up deck where your opponent has pressured your board long enough to where they only need to hit one or two cards to win the game. It is easy to get stuck in the mindset that if you can pull “x card” you’ll be able to come back but this is almost never the case. It’s best to sacrifice an unlikely win for more time in the set. If I know it is going to take 5 turns for me to win, and that my opponent has access to the cards they need to win in deck, then I would rather not bank on the misfortune of my opponent.

There can be exceptions to all of this, after all. N to 1 under Garbotoxin is a strategy I’ve committed to many times, but that is where the experience is important. Some matchups can swing very fast, and it is sometimes worth it to see if your opponent makes a mistake or fails to find what they need to close the game. That said, I use this scenario as a guideline to manage my time, so take it with a grain of salt.

A word on playing too fast

However, the race is not always to the swift. While a slow pace has its issues, playing too fast comes with its own set of problems. Often a result of nerves or stress, being too hasty with your pace will generally lead to more mistakes and potentially more game errors. It also showcases a bit of naivety by making hurried decisions without considering their consequences. This is not to say that playing faster than usual is always bad thing–sometimes it is necessary to get through a set–but to do so in a manner that causes you to perform worse is detrimental to your growth as a player. The best thing to do is to find a middle ground where you can perform quick actions but still have enough time to analyze what you are doing.

I was not very fast when I started playing, like many new players. I would find other players who were faster intimidating and couldn’t understand how they were able to pull it off. My solution was to try to imitate the pace of the better players around me played. While I proved to myself that I could indeed play faster, I made many misplays and got even more frustrated with myself. The valuable lesson I learned from this was that I need to play at the rate it takes to play well, and, if that pace is too slow, then I know where I need to start.

Figuring out how to be efficient while playing is challenging and takes a lot of effort. However, doing so has gotten me farther in tournaments and made me a better player overall. Pace is something I strongly recommend working on to anyone who is trying to play this game at a competitive level. It’ll take some time, but it will separate you from the average player in the long run.

Conclusion

Applying these tactics are what broke me out of my slow playing rut, and hopefully they also can work for you. If you still find yourself struggling, it is never a bad idea to seek help from others. A strategy that worked for me was getting feedback about my pacing from different players in my area. This provided a better perspective for how I play, and I could pin point exactly where I was falling short. With all that said, the only thing you need to get started is a good attitude. Time is a powerful resource and figuring out how to manage it correctly will make you an even more powerful player.

Thank you for reading this article! A huge thank you to Connor LaVelle for editing this article. If you are enjoying the content then stay tuned; we’re going to be putting out more content going into the Unbroken Bonds meta. Also be on the lookout for the Sky Pillar Podcast, coming sometime soon, though it’s more of a work in progress.

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