The Art of the One Trick Pony

Why, when, and how to “main” a deck - and when to not

If you follow Twitch streaming you may know that in the past month, variety streamer Ludwig was able to reach Platinum rank in League of Legends, fulfilling a bet and narrowly avoiding having to shave his head despite not being particularly good at the game. A large part of his success was him sticking to his guns and sticking to one specific character out of the 170 available in the game - because he only played that one character, all of his time playing the game led him to becoming an expert at that character specifically and allowed him to make the most out of any situation. Of course some skills are transferable between characters, but there are plenty that aren’t, and spending all of his time as a “One Trick Pony” was not only efficient, but perhaps the only way he could’ve possibly reached his goal.

Following this saga reminded me of my long-held belief that the idea of “maining” a deck is the way roughly 99.9% of players in the Pokémon TCG should approach the game as well, assuming that your primary goal is to win. There are of course other perfectly reasonable alternative goals such as having fun or using the game as a hobby to keep your brain sharp, but let’s put those aside for now.

I could go into numerous different anecdotes about how this concept works across a variety of different competitive activities from sports to fighting games to other card games but the most relevant is of course the Pokémon TCG itself.