Discussion Card Battle Ep.5: Sycamore VS Birch's Observations

The Poke Tactics

The Poke Tactics

Just a Pokemon fan.
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Hello guys. I can't wait to post this Fifth CARD BATTLE thread. After I saw the tutorial video, I was so eager to post this and I can't wait for my goal on my past thread.
Today, we're going to talk about the famous supporter cards in TCG battles, and I don't know if they sell them costful, these are the Professors Sycamore and Birch. How do they differ from each other?

Professor Sycamore - let's you draw 7 cards after you discard the whole cards in your hand.

Professor Birch's Observations - shuffles cards from hand to deck,and has 50% chance for you to draw 7 and 50% chance to draw 4.

This will be an EPIC discussion. So share your opinions with us and tell what is your best card? And also how to use them in meta-game.

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Let's start with mine. I like them both but I prefer Birch than Syca because I don't want discard all of my important cards in my hand due to Syca.
Syca is recommended, for me, for Vespiquen-like decks, but I'm still using it, in case of emergency.
If in deck builds, I use the ratio of 2:3 or 1:3 of Syca(2) and Birch(3) cards.
 
These are both good, but first I want to mention that there is a card that combines the plus of both of these: Professor Oak's New Theory from HG/SS series. It allows you to shuffle your hand into your deck and draw 7 cards. A win-win situation!
Otherwise, I think it really depends on the deck. Some decks you don't want to discard your cards; others, like Night March, you do. So it really depends on what your deck strategy is.
 
Professor Sycamore is better. It allows for a solid seven cards to be drawn, which is more powerful and reliable than any other draw supporter we have.
Of course, you'll ideally need some sort of hand shuffler so you aren't always forced to discard important cards, but more often than not, you're gonna want to draw the entire 7.
 
Juniper all the way. Discarding a few important things is a small price to pay for the most solid option for draw power we have, even in Expanded. The adverse effects can be mitigated with cards like Sacred Ash and VS Seeker and Lysandre's Trump Card, so long story short, it's totally worth it in the long run. Imagine how stupid XY-On would be in a world without Sycamore (and how much more expensive Shaymin EX would be). There was one time where I had Professor Juniper, 2 Garchomp, and 2 Super Rod is my hand, and I had to play the Juniper. And it sucked. But that was only one game out thousands. Sure I've had other games where I've had to get rid of important stuff with Juniper, but it has never been so bad that it left me without options (aside from that one time).
 
In my opinion, Juniper/Sycamore is much better than Birch. The reason behind this is because imagine how rough it'd be to be aggressive with a card like Birch. It'd be next to impossible to gain consistency with the card if your playing an aggressive deck like Vespiquen or M. Rayquaza. Even in expanded, you're not going to rely on Birch like you are Juniper because consistency is even more key as their are more cards being thrown at you at once.
 
Why I'm saying that Birch for me is better than Sycamore because I don't want to draw me closer for being defeat from drawing out cards due to Sycamore.
 
Birch is almost always a disappointment to me. Even when I had 5 supporters in hand that I didn't want to discard all at once. It was still such a tough decision between the 2. I will probably run 4 sycamore in all my decks. With at most 2 Birch.
Besides, chances are I'm gonna use most of my hand anyway.
 
Sycamore wins for the consistency. The risk of getting tails on Birch alone puts it far below Sycamore, although Birch does have a somewhat situational use of allowing you to shuffle cards back into your deck (especially when you flip tails) if you have a large hand and few cards remaining in the deck.
 
Just throwing this out there, but for XY-On, competitive decklists should be somewhere around 4 Sycamore and 2-4 Birch's Observations, depending on the deck obviously. For Expanded, it should be 3-4 Professor Juniper, zero Professor Birch, at least 1 N, and then from there, it can really go in many different directions.
 
Mora said:
Just throwing this out there, but for XY-On, competitive decklists should be somewhere around 4 Sycamore and 2-4 Birch's Observations, depending on the deck obviously. For Expanded, it should be 3-4 Professor Juniper, zero Professor Birch, at least 1 N, and then from there, it can really go in many different directions.
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You can get away w/ 2 Juniper if you run a crazy Battle Compressor engine, but other than that, right on the money from my view.
 
7 > 4, 7

Sycamore is the better card. Discarding your hand does not matter because Pokemon is the sort of game where discarding your hand doesn't matter overly much because of how quick it is. Cards like Ultra Ball make Sycamore's cost go way down and then Sacred Ash, VS Seeker, etc. help you recover if you do end up discarding crucial cards. Not only the speed boost, you are statistically more likely to draw whatever you want of Sycamore 100% of the time, no exceptions.
 
Yeah, you would usually want 7 cards out of the deck, and the coin flip can leave you hanging. But like I said, the deck strategy and makeup can really affect what card you use. Especially if you don't happen to have a lot of cards that allow you to get your good cards out of the discard pile (I don't know why you wouldn't, but it's possible), you don't want to run the risk of discarding those good cards, so the Sycamore (Or Juniper) to Birch ratio would be a little different, don't you think?
 
Professor Sycamore wins, hands down.

Yes there are many situations where you would prefer Professor Birch (though I really would want Professor Oak's New Theory) but overall, the "Discard hand and draw 7 cards" of Professor Sycamore (and before it, Professor Juniper) has shaped the format. It provided even more incentive for "disposable hands" that you can play as low as possible for at least a minor return and then reload. There are several decks that need Professor Sycamore to work properly (not just optimal builds, but realistically functional) because they either need to discard or need to dig until they hit a particular card (or both!). There are decks that need to avoid the massive discards as well however those aren't currently the majority of decks making top cuts.

Professor Birch has the issue of containing a coin flip. I've been playing this game since 1999 and by 2001 I was thoroughly sick of coin flips. The game cut back on them, they started being "kind of" fun again but now I am once again "over them". The game doesn't need any more potential "lucky" (or "unlucky") breaks. Disregarding that, its a decent deal but not enough to really be competitive. The fact that Shauna exists...

Wait, why isn't this Shauna versus Professor Birch? Those are the two rivals: both are "shuffle and draw" Supporters, with Shauna being a plain shuffle-and-draw for five cards versus Professor Birch with its shuffle and draw for four or seven.

So yeah, in Expanded you've got N and also Colress if you need a shuffle-and-draw card. Possibly if you needed a massive amount of draw Supporters you might still need Professor Birch on top of the better options, but not often. In Standard you don't have much of a choice; either Professor Birch or Shauna is going to need to pick up the slack, possibly sparing decks that can make four Shaymin-EX work.
 
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