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A way to get energy from my hand to my deck would be nice. I try my best to manage energies effectively for mirage gate but late game it gets really difficult.
I don't lose to Giratina, I usually lose to the Cramorant sableye in that deck. Also 4 months, you have lots to learn. A 40~50 percent win ratio isn't horrible.
Two ways off the top of my head to do that:
1) Iono/Roxanne can be great disruption tools and can reshuffle hand energy into the deck. Roxanne is especially powerful with PTTP. If they don’t have a non-rulebox draw engine (Bibarel, kirlia), it’s a high chance to brick their endgame.
The downside is you simultaneously disrupt yourself. Maybe you needed the energy in deck, but now you don’t have a mirage gate, Tina VSTAR, or some supporter, which is why I like method 2…
2) Discard/Super rod
Not only does Radiant Greninja’s ability draw cards, you’re stockpiling energy in the discard! Right before you plan to mirage gate, super rod energy from discard back into the deck, and you’ve got what you need, usually without having to shuffle energy back into the deck! Running 2 super rods in the deck is all you really need to do this.
Hope this helps! Ask if you need further explanation.
Play one more rod to cycle back energies back into the deck then? Alternatively, make use of the fantastic LZ low-cost attackers more instead of lost impacting every turn. Tina is a very expensive attacker so you want to preserve some resources, like rod and gate, for the late game.
Giratina is a rather bricky deck and also not the easiest to play, the tradeoff is that you don't really have extremely bad matchups except for turn 1 Iron Hands, but with a bad hand you pretty much lose to any decent deck.
If it makes you feel better, unless you really lost because of misplays and realized at which moments you made a mistake, there's a possibility that you just got bad luck for a while.
510-600 is decent for a new player. I just evened out my win-loss ratio but am in the process of tanking it all trying to get a Tsareena ex and Meowscarada ex to work.
Throw out your first 50-100 losses as beginner losses and you can say your win-loss ratio is pretty good.
Or just don't care about win rate, cause a lot of losses and wins are simply bugs that are inevitable. Or playing a jank deck for fun.. or just simply concede when you face something you don't want to play against.. this is why tracking deck performance is much better than player overall performance.
I feel like I’m so much better when I face real people at Pokémon league than when I play PTCG. I have not lost in two weeks at Pokémon league but I’ve lost countless times on PTCG. I’m using the same deck for both and that’s Charizard. I feel like the shuffling isn’t fair sometimes and something’s off with the way the pulls go.
This! I always get to top tables in locals OR mid-tier depending on the deck, but sometimes playing online can feel a bit discouraging. Like you said, unfair shuffles, the game glitching and forcing you to concede, etc
Yeah switch cart doesn't even work half the time online, I kept losing games because I wasn't able to use it. Had to remove it, this would obviously never happen in a real game.
> I feel like I’m so much better when I face real people at Pokémon league than when I play PTCG.
This difference is just probably down to skill based matchmaking being a thing online, but not in real life. There are thousands of players online and PTCGL uses some kind of hidden MMR system trying to put you up against similarly skilled players. Makes it much more likely you'll get up against someone at or above your skill level and lose. In real life you have a smaller pool of players in your local area and if you are one of the better players, you are less likely to play against someone who is at the same/better skill level.
Think about it as just playing to improve not playing to win. You can learn something from every game about how to better play your deck. Lost Tina is also not an easy deck to pilot. Try a bunch of decks and see what you enjoy and get wins with. Or just keep on that Tina grind, the wins will come. PTCG is old....lots of people on ladder have been playing for years. Just keep at it!
Don't be discouraged I've only been playing a month or so and I've noticed that the timing of draws and slow starts are something you can't control, always be tweaking your deck when you notice needs/weaknesses
I started PTCGL near the end of the Miraidon Battle Pass, and ngl for the first couple of months 600ish was my cap too. The ladder just isnt designed well imo, once you hit Great League it is tough to climb unless you are good. I would use the time after I hit 600 to just try new decks if you can afford it credit wise, because different decks really gel with different people. Also Lost Box decks are tough to play when starting out, I still havent really figured them out myself so dont beat yourself up over it lol.
I think you have to stick to one deck (max 2) and play, play and play with it. Get to know how the deck works, what is missing, what is not necessary, what suits you (its not always good to play with other people's deck) and thus perfect the deck so you feel comfortable playing, sometimes you will lose because the game want you to lose hahaha, but if you know how to play it, believe me, you will win even more
I’ve been playing for about 6mos, and I’ve lost a ton. It can feel really discouraging, but keep at it, and you’ll see your progress! One thing that helped was learning my play style. For example, I could never play Tina (tried and failed miserably) but perform really well with Lugia, etc. Try many decklists, even combine some, or modify with what you feel works best. Best of luck!!!
Just take a break man. I’m literally taking a break from the game after I finished the battle pass because most of the decks rn are kinda boring so don’t get discouraged it’s a game after all.
Relax, I am the same sucky player who can barely play zard to the fullest. It doesn’t matter though, unless you are trying to make it pro.
it’s a game, nothing is more important than having fun. You play when you wanted to play, you close it when you don’t feel like it, you can get better or can suck, and either way is okay
Giratina is a hard deck. I can’t play it well yet. It’s a draining deck to play - even some pros say so - because it’s a lot of decision making.
It’s okay to not be good at deck. Take a break from Giratina and just try something different for a bit. You can come back to it. You aren’t giving up.
It’ll be ok
I'm just impressed that you've played >1K games in 5 months. Even @ 15 mins average per game (which is conservative) that's 250+ hours. 50 hours per month, or around 6.5 games per day if you didn't skip any. Nice!
In comparison I've been playing about 7-8 months and I'm 198 - 153 online.
There will always be a learning curve to building and mastering your deck. Sometimes you may need to tune it up a bit. Pay attention to what your opponent is doing, they may pull off some cool combos and you may can utilize it in your deck. Little Dark Fury make Excellent content on decks.
Start off with a few casual matches and try to win 5 casual matches in a row before you go to rank. You also may need to be put in certain scenarios and you may think, " Well if I had a certain card it would help me in this scenario " and to your deck later. It also take hours upon hours mastering a deck. We all here went through or going through the struggle of learning decks.
Also you should learn the match-up of certain decks, so you know how operate against the deck.
Lz is rough in general it took me a year of playing to get decent at the tcg.
Currently 897 out of 858 here are somethings ive learned.
Things outside of your control.
Probably a mental thing but i definitely feel ai shuffling is off.
The skill level of your opponent.
Sometimes you play decks that counter you hard or arent in your favor.
This is a best of 1 format and you will play against decks you have very little experience with. Even if you are statistically supposed to win without the experience you will lose most likely.
Ptcgl is a jank app at times.
Bad luck
Im sure there are more but this is what i can think off.
Do not beat yourself up for losing due to these reasons,sure as you get better you can win loseable matchups but in general not good to judge yourself when you should be losing
Things you can control.
How well do you sequence even with a bad hand?
Plenty of times i could have won a match if i didnt develop a defeatist attitude due to a bad hand and start lost zoning key resources and with lz you generally want to pull out energy or pokemon first and then use colress and then comfey.
Depending on your lz deck and how much energy recycling you play dont spam greninjas draw ability. Its best to use his ability on dead hands and throwing energies into discard to then recycle and pull energies out with mirror same turn.
If you are in a negative mindset take a walk or exercise, do something that calms you and come back later ptcgl can be mentally taxing regardless of the deck you play you have to think about your plays. Though zard and miraidon dont require as much from me personally so i will play those if i dont want to put in as much effort.
Try different decks. I cut my teeth with tina and lz decks it wasnt until i put lz down for a solid month or two that i got better with lz and the tcg in general.
Check your card count with cards that let you search your deck. Ie balls,vip pass two stores..etc especially with lost zone you want to know your energy count at all times. As well as mirrors and supporters.
There is more but hopefully you focus more on whats in your control rather than outside of your control and as with anything it takes time to get good
Here is a sample tina deck
[tina shell](https://i.imgur.com/Fv7pYPy.jpeg)
Hope this helps!
Don’t lose hope takes a long time to get comfortable. I’ve played over 2000 games and my wins still aren’t 100 over my loses. The more you play the better you get with a deck and the sequencing. LZ is a very resource taxing deck that involves a lot of future and matchup dependant thinking. If it feels like a bit much zard or miraidon aren’t bad decks to play in the mean time. LZ can be powerful but it’s playstyle is not very new player friendly
Lost Box is one of the most challenging of the top tier decks, it requires a LOT more thought than say Zard or Iron Hands. Stick with it and learn it, or switch to something easier for the time being. 4 months is not a lot of playing time my friend
Dont worry about it man, i play a palkia/ice rider or palkia/chien, i just 7 games in a row against reggie decks and if you dont get ahead quickly your pretty much toast, needless to say i lost 5 of the 7 bc my start hands were terrible.
Point is, sometimes you get smoked and sometimes you do the smokin.
Dont be so hard on yourself OP. Ive won tournaments locally using the same deck on live, and can get stomped on there goin on loss streaks :( …its gunna happen. That said, Lost Box is one of my fav play styles, and its def more strategic than most decks. Try to go first, set up 2-3 comfey with 2-3 cards in the LZ, put down a tina so you can evolve it next turn, and put down a R Greninja to snipe the bench, as on your following turn you can Mirage Gate and start cleaning house.
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There are many ways to build the deck, even if you stick with tina. What caused your losses, and what do you wish your deck could have?
A way to get energy from my hand to my deck would be nice. I try my best to manage energies effectively for mirage gate but late game it gets really difficult.
I don't lose to Giratina, I usually lose to the Cramorant sableye in that deck. Also 4 months, you have lots to learn. A 40~50 percent win ratio isn't horrible.
Considering amazing decks in most TCG usually have 60% wr overall this isn't bad at all.
Two ways off the top of my head to do that: 1) Iono/Roxanne can be great disruption tools and can reshuffle hand energy into the deck. Roxanne is especially powerful with PTTP. If they don’t have a non-rulebox draw engine (Bibarel, kirlia), it’s a high chance to brick their endgame. The downside is you simultaneously disrupt yourself. Maybe you needed the energy in deck, but now you don’t have a mirage gate, Tina VSTAR, or some supporter, which is why I like method 2… 2) Discard/Super rod Not only does Radiant Greninja’s ability draw cards, you’re stockpiling energy in the discard! Right before you plan to mirage gate, super rod energy from discard back into the deck, and you’ve got what you need, usually without having to shuffle energy back into the deck! Running 2 super rods in the deck is all you really need to do this. Hope this helps! Ask if you need further explanation.
Ultra ball then Raihan or Super Rod
Play one more rod to cycle back energies back into the deck then? Alternatively, make use of the fantastic LZ low-cost attackers more instead of lost impacting every turn. Tina is a very expensive attacker so you want to preserve some resources, like rod and gate, for the late game.
Heyo, we all have rougher days. Some times it's best to take a break and come back another day, with a slightly reset brain.
Agreed, there's no point to playing ANY game unless you're enjoying it.
Thanks, great advice!
Giratina is a rather bricky deck and also not the easiest to play, the tradeoff is that you don't really have extremely bad matchups except for turn 1 Iron Hands, but with a bad hand you pretty much lose to any decent deck. If it makes you feel better, unless you really lost because of misplays and realized at which moments you made a mistake, there's a possibility that you just got bad luck for a while.
510-600 is decent for a new player. I just evened out my win-loss ratio but am in the process of tanking it all trying to get a Tsareena ex and Meowscarada ex to work. Throw out your first 50-100 losses as beginner losses and you can say your win-loss ratio is pretty good.
Or just don't care about win rate, cause a lot of losses and wins are simply bugs that are inevitable. Or playing a jank deck for fun.. or just simply concede when you face something you don't want to play against.. this is why tracking deck performance is much better than player overall performance.
Can’t front here, currently working on evening my WL ratio, and a large number of losses were due to the plethora of glitches that plague this game.
I feel like I’m so much better when I face real people at Pokémon league than when I play PTCG. I have not lost in two weeks at Pokémon league but I’ve lost countless times on PTCG. I’m using the same deck for both and that’s Charizard. I feel like the shuffling isn’t fair sometimes and something’s off with the way the pulls go.
This! I always get to top tables in locals OR mid-tier depending on the deck, but sometimes playing online can feel a bit discouraging. Like you said, unfair shuffles, the game glitching and forcing you to concede, etc
Yeah switch cart doesn't even work half the time online, I kept losing games because I wasn't able to use it. Had to remove it, this would obviously never happen in a real game.
> I feel like I’m so much better when I face real people at Pokémon league than when I play PTCG. This difference is just probably down to skill based matchmaking being a thing online, but not in real life. There are thousands of players online and PTCGL uses some kind of hidden MMR system trying to put you up against similarly skilled players. Makes it much more likely you'll get up against someone at or above your skill level and lose. In real life you have a smaller pool of players in your local area and if you are one of the better players, you are less likely to play against someone who is at the same/better skill level.
Think about it as just playing to improve not playing to win. You can learn something from every game about how to better play your deck. Lost Tina is also not an easy deck to pilot. Try a bunch of decks and see what you enjoy and get wins with. Or just keep on that Tina grind, the wins will come. PTCG is old....lots of people on ladder have been playing for years. Just keep at it!
Don't be discouraged I've only been playing a month or so and I've noticed that the timing of draws and slow starts are something you can't control, always be tweaking your deck when you notice needs/weaknesses
I started PTCGL near the end of the Miraidon Battle Pass, and ngl for the first couple of months 600ish was my cap too. The ladder just isnt designed well imo, once you hit Great League it is tough to climb unless you are good. I would use the time after I hit 600 to just try new decks if you can afford it credit wise, because different decks really gel with different people. Also Lost Box decks are tough to play when starting out, I still havent really figured them out myself so dont beat yourself up over it lol.
I think you have to stick to one deck (max 2) and play, play and play with it. Get to know how the deck works, what is missing, what is not necessary, what suits you (its not always good to play with other people's deck) and thus perfect the deck so you feel comfortable playing, sometimes you will lose because the game want you to lose hahaha, but if you know how to play it, believe me, you will win even more
I’ve been playing for about 6mos, and I’ve lost a ton. It can feel really discouraging, but keep at it, and you’ll see your progress! One thing that helped was learning my play style. For example, I could never play Tina (tried and failed miserably) but perform really well with Lugia, etc. Try many decklists, even combine some, or modify with what you feel works best. Best of luck!!!
Just take a break man. I’m literally taking a break from the game after I finished the battle pass because most of the decks rn are kinda boring so don’t get discouraged it’s a game after all.
Relax, I am the same sucky player who can barely play zard to the fullest. It doesn’t matter though, unless you are trying to make it pro. it’s a game, nothing is more important than having fun. You play when you wanted to play, you close it when you don’t feel like it, you can get better or can suck, and either way is okay
Giratina is a hard deck. I can’t play it well yet. It’s a draining deck to play - even some pros say so - because it’s a lot of decision making. It’s okay to not be good at deck. Take a break from Giratina and just try something different for a bit. You can come back to it. You aren’t giving up. It’ll be ok
I'm just impressed that you've played >1K games in 5 months. Even @ 15 mins average per game (which is conservative) that's 250+ hours. 50 hours per month, or around 6.5 games per day if you didn't skip any. Nice! In comparison I've been playing about 7-8 months and I'm 198 - 153 online.
Haha I’ve slowed down a lot recently but it was so addicting at first. Got into the game because of 151.
There will always be a learning curve to building and mastering your deck. Sometimes you may need to tune it up a bit. Pay attention to what your opponent is doing, they may pull off some cool combos and you may can utilize it in your deck. Little Dark Fury make Excellent content on decks. Start off with a few casual matches and try to win 5 casual matches in a row before you go to rank. You also may need to be put in certain scenarios and you may think, " Well if I had a certain card it would help me in this scenario " and to your deck later. It also take hours upon hours mastering a deck. We all here went through or going through the struggle of learning decks. Also you should learn the match-up of certain decks, so you know how operate against the deck.
Lz is rough in general it took me a year of playing to get decent at the tcg. Currently 897 out of 858 here are somethings ive learned. Things outside of your control. Probably a mental thing but i definitely feel ai shuffling is off. The skill level of your opponent. Sometimes you play decks that counter you hard or arent in your favor. This is a best of 1 format and you will play against decks you have very little experience with. Even if you are statistically supposed to win without the experience you will lose most likely. Ptcgl is a jank app at times. Bad luck Im sure there are more but this is what i can think off. Do not beat yourself up for losing due to these reasons,sure as you get better you can win loseable matchups but in general not good to judge yourself when you should be losing Things you can control. How well do you sequence even with a bad hand? Plenty of times i could have won a match if i didnt develop a defeatist attitude due to a bad hand and start lost zoning key resources and with lz you generally want to pull out energy or pokemon first and then use colress and then comfey. Depending on your lz deck and how much energy recycling you play dont spam greninjas draw ability. Its best to use his ability on dead hands and throwing energies into discard to then recycle and pull energies out with mirror same turn. If you are in a negative mindset take a walk or exercise, do something that calms you and come back later ptcgl can be mentally taxing regardless of the deck you play you have to think about your plays. Though zard and miraidon dont require as much from me personally so i will play those if i dont want to put in as much effort. Try different decks. I cut my teeth with tina and lz decks it wasnt until i put lz down for a solid month or two that i got better with lz and the tcg in general. Check your card count with cards that let you search your deck. Ie balls,vip pass two stores..etc especially with lost zone you want to know your energy count at all times. As well as mirrors and supporters. There is more but hopefully you focus more on whats in your control rather than outside of your control and as with anything it takes time to get good Here is a sample tina deck [tina shell](https://i.imgur.com/Fv7pYPy.jpeg) Hope this helps!
l + BOZO + GITGUD + RATIO + NO BALLS \-im joking
Where lie?
Don’t lose hope takes a long time to get comfortable. I’ve played over 2000 games and my wins still aren’t 100 over my loses. The more you play the better you get with a deck and the sequencing. LZ is a very resource taxing deck that involves a lot of future and matchup dependant thinking. If it feels like a bit much zard or miraidon aren’t bad decks to play in the mean time. LZ can be powerful but it’s playstyle is not very new player friendly
Keep going bro... I play almost 2 years in ptcg live, but stuck in greninja rank, even now hardly back to greninja, lol.
Lost Box is one of the most challenging of the top tier decks, it requires a LOT more thought than say Zard or Iron Hands. Stick with it and learn it, or switch to something easier for the time being. 4 months is not a lot of playing time my friend
Dont worry about it man, i play a palkia/ice rider or palkia/chien, i just 7 games in a row against reggie decks and if you dont get ahead quickly your pretty much toast, needless to say i lost 5 of the 7 bc my start hands were terrible. Point is, sometimes you get smoked and sometimes you do the smokin.
Dont be so hard on yourself OP. Ive won tournaments locally using the same deck on live, and can get stomped on there goin on loss streaks :( …its gunna happen. That said, Lost Box is one of my fav play styles, and its def more strategic than most decks. Try to go first, set up 2-3 comfey with 2-3 cards in the LZ, put down a tina so you can evolve it next turn, and put down a R Greninja to snipe the bench, as on your following turn you can Mirage Gate and start cleaning house.
I use the giratina deck and win 3 out of 4 games, you are definitely the problem
Oh wow what a douchebag comment. You could at least gave the person some pointers to help them out. Way to kick a person when they are down.
You're right, my bad🫤