SavageTarantino
What's Good SE players, I'm glad everyone enjoyed my first Article for the forums & I hope it helped a lot of players out, if you haven't read it I Suggest you take a look at it Here http://www.shadowera.com/showthread.php?p=220130. Today I Present you with a 2-part Skill Assessment Article.
Some Players are fond of saying that TCGs take “no skill.” If asked to expound upon that and explain their opinion, such individuals may claim one or more of the following: that luck and OP cards keep skill from really mattering; that “it's just a money game”; or my personal favorite, that “all you need to know are the right moves to make and you'll win.” As if knowing the right moves 100 percent of the time somehow didn't require any skill in the first place.
A few reasons come to mind for why people might say that Yugioh or Shadow Era doesn't require or reward skill. I never like to generalize, so I certainly won't say that everyone who's of this opinion fits one singular mold. But in my experience, most people who claim that there's “no skill in Yu-Gi-Oh!” are either trying to look cool, or simply aren't that skilled themselves. Often both. Regardless of the Reasoning behind their opinion, I can make one definite statement: anyone who says that Shadow Era doesn't take skill is completely wrong.
There's a reason why there are "Elite Teams" Such as A1 who continue to Top Tournaments time and again since this game began, and it's not because they have magic powers, secret cheating techniques, or a backpack full of rabbit's feet. They aren't luckier than the rest of us: they aren't more willing to break the rules, nor are they performing some sort of dark magic between rounds. Skill is what makes the difference, tempered by determination and the guts to show up to every tournament they can.
The determination and sheer guts? That's on you. But the skills? Well those, I can help with.
But Not If We Don't Know What Skill Means
Whenever the Question of skill in Yu-Gi-Oh! is broached, the conversation almost always revolves around the Question of what skills the game demands: what the 'S'-word really means and Im sure its the Same for Shadow Era. Identifying and understanding those skills is the first step towards developing them: if you don't know what you're trying to improve, you can't become a better Player. I think everybody could give you a different answer to the Question “what is skill,” but in these two articles I'm going to present mine: fifteen interlocking fields that you can develop to become a better competitor.
I'm going to go in-depth to describe all fifteen skills and how they interact with each other, but I'm also going to classify each one as chiefly strategic or tactical. Those are two words that get bandied about and are often used incorrectly, so if you don't know the difference, here goes: strategy is what you plan to happen. It's theoretical, and it's usually relegated to the time you spend preparing for your games. Tactics aren't theoretical: they're realistic instead, and they concern what actually happens and how you deal with it. When you build a deck, you're strategizing. When you make on-table decisions about what to do with that deck, you're making tactical choices. Recognizing the difference between the two can help you focus on the things you need to improve, because most Players are stronger in one of the two areas moreso than the other. Knowing which skills are strategic and which are tactical helps you decide how best to spend your time.
So let's get to it!
Metagame Knowledge – Strategic:
The First step? Well, I suppose if you're ready to start putting one foot in front of the other, then you need to learn about the world you're walking into. At any time in the Shadow Era universe there are near-infinite possibilities for decks that could be played. However, reality tends to refine those possibilities down to a handful of decks run by most competitive players, surrounded by several more decks that remain on the casual or rogue (I dont mean the "Rogue Class") outskirts. There are possibilities, and then there are realities: metagame knowledge is concerned with the latter. When someone talks about a metagame, they mean what's actually being played in a particular place at a particular time: it could be a continent-wide region, a state or county-wide area, or in Shadow Era Case the Internet or the Forums. Regardless of scope, to understand a metagame is to understand both what is possible for you personally, and what other Players are actually likely to play.
In order to select the right strategy and build it accordingly, you need to know all about the deck you're constructing. You also need to know everything about the decks that you're likely to come up against. This knowledge can be built a number of ways:
-Tournament experience and playtesting is great because it gives first-hand knowledge
-Discussion with other Players lets you benefit from shared knowledge
-Experience and familiarity with a range of possibilities allows you to speculate and form forward-thinking theories
The more you know about the strategies you'll face, and the strategies you could play yourself, the better you'll do when selecting and building your deck. This is TCG strategy at its most fundamental.
Matchup Knowledge – Strategic:
In addition to knowing the top decks you'll encounter and the possible decks you could run, you also need to know how those decks interact. It's not enough just to understand the individual strategies: you need to be able to compare them, and understand their strengths and weaknesses when they're pitted against eachother. Sometimes a strategy may seem strong against the majority of the decks you could encounter, but one weak matchup might be enough to make it a bad choice. At the same time, any given deck is likely to be a great choice if it has good matchups across the board. That's rare, but with enough matchup insight you can Build your deck with certain "tech" choices to create just that kind of ideal situation.
Making Reads – Tactical:
Moving from those strategic skills, we can look at some of the universal tactical basics. No matter what you decide to play, and no matter what your opponent is running, the Shadow Era! TCG is a game of incomplete information. Chess is a game of complete information: you know where all the pieces are at all times, and you know what they all do. Shadow Era! isn't like that: it's filled with unknowns like your opponent's in-hand cards; their face-down cards (in the Hunter Classes Case); and the cards left in their Deck. If you can accurately predict what cards your opponent has in Play, in their hand, and in their deck, you obviously have a tremendous advantage.
Making accurate reads requires metagame knowledge, so that you'll know which cards your opponent is likely to have in his main deck. Matchup knowledge can help you puzzle out your opponent's side deck as well. When it comes time to try and make reads about your opponent's hand and face-down cards, things become more tactical: you need to try and leverage the knowledge about your opponent's deck into more immediate information. You do that by applying deductive logic and familiarity with your opponent's play sequences, and asking yourself Questions about previous events in the game is often the easiest way to accomplish this.
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