Discussion Foongus + Poke Balls = Play Ball

Mr. Rhyperior

Mr. Rhyperior

The Drill Pokemon. An evolve form of Rhydon.
Member
One thing that comes up to my mind, when it comes on Foongus' ability that retrieves 3 Poke Balls back when it placed on bench. This is sound noncompetitive to you, but there's something fun that I discovered on the Mushroom Pokemon.
Poke Balls are the ones that has 50% chance of summoning a Pokemon, if you use all 3 and some of those balls where flipped tails, put Foongus in play, get 3 balls, and start using it again to call a Pokemon like Shaymin-EX. You'll get out Foongus in play via AZ, Scoop Up, and/or Ninja Boy. Then, do this thing repeatedly.
What do you think, is this strategy cool or it is a "Nah!" to you. Feel free to share.
 
The problem is, you can only have 4 PokeBalls in your deck, meaning that Foongus is really just a 1-shot card. With that in mind, I don't think it is worth an inclusion.
 
bbninjas said:
The problem is, you can only have 4 PokeBalls in your deck, meaning that Foongus is really just a 1-shot card. With that in mind, I don't think it is worth an inclusion.
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You get the pokeballs back from your discard pile. You effectively have 16 pokeballs if you hit battle compressor on t1. I'm not particularly sold, but it could be a fun engine to mess around with.
 
LightningCloud224 said:
You get the pokeballs back from your discard pile. You effectively have 16 pokeballs if you hit battle compressor on t1. I'm not particularly sold, but it could be a fun engine to mess around with.
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While that is true, its just too flippy. Even with that Foongus, its better to just play 4 Ultra Ball or 4 Dive/Level Ball and a few Ultra Balls. With the speed of the game now, its not really that hard to hit what you want. Lets not forget that if you only play , it can be prized and they take bench space.

If this is their attempt to slow the game for setup decks then they could do a much better job at it. Now that I think about it, m Gardevoir might be able to make use of them.
 
Not that Amoonguss is an amazing card, but if you built your deck around the Foongus/Amoonguss line you have a shot at getting all your Foonguss out at once if you keep chaining them!
 
OVERGRO said:
Not that Amoonguss is an amazing card, but if you built your deck around the Foongus/Amoonguss line you have a shot at getting all your Foonguss out at once if you keep chaining them!
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What's the point of doing that if Amoongus is bad? Yes, with the Foongus engine you'll occasionally hit 3 heads and set up your board very well, but you have just as much of a chance of flipping all tails and wasting your resources. Ultra Ball is superior, it's guaranteed search and provides convenient discard outlets to thin your deck.
 
Gelato said:
What's the point of doing that if Amoongus is bad? Yes, with the Foongus engine you'll occasionally hit 3 heads and set up your board very well, but you have just as much of a chance of flipping all tails and wasting your resources. Ultra Ball is superior, it's guaranteed search and provides convenient discard outlets to thin your deck.
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The point is brainstorming, at least right now. ;)

The Pokémon TCG is all about reliability... except when it isn't. That is how tech started, and plenty of "tails fails" cards have been incredible once the game made their "heads" effects worth the risk.

On its own Poké Ball isn't a good deal. My issue with Foongus is that I need some copies of Poké Ball in my discard or else its wasted. If Items or Abilities go down, so does this combo. It is also wasted if I get stuck with it as my opening Pokémon (Ninja Boy helps). Now when it works, it makes each Poké Ball into a better Dual Ball. With Forest of Giant Plants (and not having Vileplume in play) you might be able to get a very sizable Bench indeed, not just in terms of raw Basic Pokémon but Evolutions. On a separate note, I wonder if this could be useful for decks that need to fill their Bench for Sky Field?
 
Otaku said:
The point is brainstorming, at least right now. ;)

The Pokémon TCG is all about reliability... except when it isn't. That is how tech started, and plenty of "tails fails" cards have been incredible once the game made their "heads" effects worth the risk.

On its own Poké Ball isn't a good deal. My issue with Foongus is that I need some copies of Poké Ball in my discard or else its wasted. If Items or Abilities go down, so does this combo. It is also wasted if I get stuck with it as my opening Pokémon (Ninja Boy helps). Now when it works, it makes each Poké Ball into a better Dual Ball. With Forest of Giant Plants (and not having Vileplume in play) you might be able to get a very sizable Bench indeed, not just in terms of raw Basic Pokémon but Evolutions. On a separate note, I wonder if this could be useful for decks that need to fill their Bench for Sky Field?
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Two Foongus and four Poké Ball in addition to the standard four Ultra Ball could be decent in Despair Ray decks once Karren is released. it provides another out to refill the bench fast after a Despair Ray. You will also want two Buddy-Buddy Rescue to retrieve Foongus from the discard. Ninja Boy would be vital in this deck too to ensure that starting with Hoopa Ex, Shaymin Ex, or Foongus does not slow the deck down at all. Foongus may take the role of a bench recovery engine in this deck but I have not tested it out thus far.
 
One idea I looked at for this Foongus was to use it in an expanded deck of some kind, where there are two curious Amoongus cards: One of them has Sporeprise, which inflicts status conditions (Which was paired with DRX Ninetales back in the day). The other one is the Team Plasma variant, which has the power to create dead hands and can inflict any special condition. Either way, this Play Ball ability could reinvent the way you could utilize those cards, as Foongus no longer becomes a mere benchsitter.

But at the same time, finding a good deck engine that is consistent enough will prove tricky anyways...
 
It seems like the kind of thing that at best gives you a reason to run Poke Ball in a deck that already runs Amoongus. No point in running a Foongus/Ball engine in any other deck - there are options that are more less flippy and doesn't clog your deck with otherwise useless cards. Until we get a viable Amoongus...back in the shoebox you go, Foongus.
 
so to make this engine work the goal is first/second turn have at least 1-2 foongus in hand and 2-3 poke ball in discard or hand, and be able to stream the ability 2-5 times

in expanded we have all we'd need to make the engine somewhat consistent.
main cards: foongus, poke ball, AZ/super scoop up/ninja boy, battle compressor, Skyla/korrina, vs seeker.
problem is most of the space for foongus/poke ball might be better spent on other expanded cards.

in standard we don't have as many options to setup the engine.
main cards: foongus, poke ball, ninja boy, Skyla, vs seeker
without things like battle compressor its hard to get 2-3 poke ball out of the deck quickly and we have limited options to get foongus off the field so it can be reused. these are the main issues in standard to figure out. getting foongus off the field will likely be resolved in the next 1-2 sets as super scoop up is reprinted somewhat regularly though.
 
With regards to getting 2-3 Poké Ball in the discard pile, the answer may be almost stupidly simple: use them. As a search card you can use it to try for Shaymin-EX (ROS), and if you already have one available, then either Poké Ball falls completely (so your hand and Bench don't fill) or it works and you either get something that makes sense for the moment or you intentionally fail the search. In a sense, we trade the "luck" of having two bits of discard fodder for the luck of a coin toss.

Given that we aren't all running Poké Ball already, it is clear that having discard fodder is far more reliable than the coin toss, but doubling it up (especially with tricks like Ninja Boy to reuse the combo yet again) might finally tip things in the favor of Poké Ball. Probably not, but at worst this is an excellent exercise.
 
Nah!

If Amoonguss did more damage, then maybe. Otherwise there are plenty of consistent ways to get the Pokemon you need, depending on your deck. We have both Level Ball and Heavy Ball in the format if you want to go the Item route. Neither require a discard and have guaranteed results. Water decks get Dive Ball. Hoopa-EX can get your Pokemon-EX and can be obtained with a single Ultra Ball (and so can anything else). If you don't need 3 Pokemon-EX but don't want to devote a lot of resources to filling your Bench, use Brigette. Yeah, it's a Supporter, but you have to pay a cost somewhere. Hoopa and Foongus might both be benchwarmers, but Foongus's 40 HP is just awful and that's the real deal breaker here.

If you could get any "Ball" Item cards with it then the argument for using it would be a lot stronger, but as it stands now, it's not worth the spot in your deck.
 
PMJ said:
If you could get any "Ball" Item cards with it then the argument for using it would be a lot stronger, but as it stands now, it's not worth the spot in your deck.
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That would defeat the point of the card, wouldn't it? ;) This seems to be one of those attempts the card design team makes at giving a card that seems like useless filler a purpose, especially an iconic card like Poké Ball. If it worked with other "Ball" cards Foongus might be too good, and certainly we'd just use those instead of Poké Ball. As a Night March and Vespiquen player I'd love for Foongus to get Ultra Ball; it already acts as a bit of a "soft" counter to Karen so once I've already used two copies of Poké Ball this superior, hypothetical Foongus would let me grab three Ultra Ball from the discard for an effective free search for one Pokémon (or up to three if I've got the discard fodder).

I do want to stress that I am not convinced Foongus is a solid play, let alone the next big thing. I am convinced it is far too soon to write it off completely. Again, its the bit of set up support that is Karen-proofed; Foongus gets recycled and in turn can recycle Poké Ball. One Poké Ball means "tails fails", but three means you have to get three "tails". I find probability a bit wonky to properly phrase, but out of the possible outcomes, only one-in-eight is "tails tails tails". If you only needed to search out a single card, you can always fail the extra searches, and this is a format with Shaymin-EX (ROS) so each Poké Ball becomes a chance to draw. Why so important? Because that means you might be able to spare a Supporter usage for something like Ninja Boy once Foongus has done its thing. I already weighed in on the drawbacks/limitations of this earlier, so again I'm just trying to steer us towards a "wait and see" outlook. Now if some of you all have been testing with early copies or proxies, go ahead and let us know!
 
Otaku said:
That would defeat the point of the card, wouldn't it? ;) This seems to be one of those attempts the card design team makes at giving a card that seems like useless filler a purpose, especially an iconic card like Poké Ball. If it worked with other "Ball" cards Foongus might be too good, and certainly we'd just use those instead of Poké Ball.

I do want to stress that I am not convinced Foongus is a solid play, let alone the next big thing. I am convinced it is far too soon to write it off completely. Again, its the bit of set up support that is Karen-proofed; Foongus gets recycled and in turn can recycle Poké Ball. One Poké Ball means "tails fails", but three means you have to get three "tails". I find probability a bit wonky to properly phrase, but out of the possible outcomes, only one-in-eight is "tails tails tails". If you only needed to search out a single card, you can always fail the extra searches, and this is a format with Shaymin-EX (ROS) so each Poké Ball becomes a chance to draw. Why so important? Because that means you might be able to spare a Supporter usage for something like Ninja Boy once Foongus has done its thing. I already weighed in on the drawbacks/limitations of this earlier, so again I'm just trying to steer us towards a "wait and see" outlook. Now if some of you all have been testing with early copies or proxies, go ahead and let us know!
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I get what you're saying, but my point was that Poke Ball as a search card isn't worth it. When Karen gets released stateside, no one will bother playing decks that rely on Pokemon in the discard, so the fact that Foongus acts as a soft counter is a moot point. Foongus does raise the viability of Poke Ball, but not enough that I think devoting 5-6 slots on a risk is worth it when I could just play 4 guaranteed search cards and still have 1-2 slots left over.

No deck wants to be forced to Ninja Boy Foongus out of there just so you don't give up an easy prize. It's got 40 life. That's beyond awful. At least Hoopa can take a hit.
 
@PMJ And I get what you're saying, I just disagree with the ultimate conclusion.

I see the same data, but do not come to the exact same conclusions. I'm going to assume some of your points where I disagree are me just being a bit literal, like the one about HP. 40 is horribly fragile but stuff with 30 HP has proven successful in competitive play, and stuff with a bit more HP is almost as fragile; then there are cards like Jirachi-EX that have 90 HP but give up two Prizes, so an effective 45 HP.

So I am still "wait and see", especially post rotation. There may be a slight metagame shift that makes it work, or it may fizzle as expected.
 
All of the examples you're giving have guaranteed rewards associated with the risk. Jirachi gives you any Supporter you want, getting you out of dead draws. Cleffa gets you a brand new hand and has an un-removable tails-fails damage shield on it. Even the Sweet Sleeping Face babies have a way to possibly keep them safe. Robo Substitute is a prize-free meat shield you can discard at any time. Foongus has none of these safeguards in place and the cards you can get with him have a 50% success rate.

It doesn't even have free retreat. :[
 
PMJ said:
All of the examples you're giving have guaranteed rewards associated with the risk. Jirachi gives you any Supporter you want, getting you out of dead draws. Cleffa gets you a brand new hand and has an un-removable tails-fails damage shield on it. Even the Sweet Sleeping Face babies have a way to possibly keep them safe. Robo Substitute is a prize-free meat shield you can discard at any time. Foongus has none of these safeguards in place and the cards you can get with him have a 50% success rate.

It doesn't even have free retreat. :[
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Once Karren is released it can be a tech with three Pokéball in M Gardevoir decks. Despair Ray discards the bench and Karren shuffles the Pokßemon back into the deck. Nevertheless doing this all over again each turn will require a lot of Pokémon search cards. Three Pokéball could be an addtion to the standard four Ultra Ball to make it easier for M Gardevoir to re-establish the full bench each turn. Note that in that niche use the low HP does not matter since Foongus will be discarded with Despair Ray once he retrieved Pokéball to search for Hoopa Ex and allow him to chain Pokémon to be discarded at the same turn. Any other deck will be better off with a more classic Pokémon search engine but in a M Gardevoir deck Foongus could have its use.
 
The standard Hoopa engine (one ultra ball) is better.
 
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