Is there a good way to use the Sage's Training/Junk Arm engine?

[Minty88]

I ask this because, I'm really trying to understand this game better. I built a fun little counter/tanking deck for league, and I used Sages Training to because I figured it would speed things up and I could discard what I didn't need for the match up.

It seems like for speed you can run something like:

4 : Collector
3 : Communication
4 : Research Record
4 : Sage's Training
4 : Junk Arm
2 : Juniper
1 : Poke'gear 3.0
1/2 : FSL
total : 22

The deck set up decently fast, and I really liked the pure speed of juniper+sage's, but sometimes it would bite you in the butt. Having two of the same, non-item, card in your sage's even after a research record.... for example.

The prevailing engine looks more like this (from what I can tell):

4 : Collector
4 : Communication
4 : PONT
2 : Juniper
4 : Junk Arm
0-2 : Cleffa/Manaphy
Total: 18-20

So where is the place of a Sage's Training engine? And for that matter, what was it about last format that made its trainer/search/draw engine SOO much more efficient?

Also, will Recycle and Super Rod increase the popularity of Sage's Training?

 

[#1weavile]

I like sage's training where you would discard energy when you wanted to such as with reshiram typhlosion (better to use junk arm here). Sage's is good in some decks, but maybe in the future it will open up to more as recycle and super rod become more popular. The discard pile might become the next deck with all the discarding and "searching the discard" cards.