Discussion Pokémon Search and Card-Draw Engine (Post-Rotation)

TuxedoBlack

TuxedoBlack

Old School Player
Member
What group of cards (and their respective counts) are you considering for Pokémon search and card drawing support post-rotation? I'm currently testing:

4 Cynthia
2 Judge
3 Judge Whistle (early game, 1 card-draw)
3 Lillie - may bump this up to 4
4 Pokémon Communication
2 Tate & Liza

This combination of cards seems to be working "ok" thus far; but, I'm still in the early stages of testing.

Thoughts?
 
I think it's too hard to say in a general sense. Some decks are primarily Lillie based, some are primarily Cynthia. Some decks can make use of judge whistle but not necessarily most I think. I don't really like Judge in most decks, especially with Reset Stamp coming out to take the later game reset place.

I think Pokémon Fan Club and/or Professor Elm's may be more key now, though it's still painful to not have that first turn Lillie, but maybe having one of these plus Lillie in there (particularly post-Tapu Lele GX) may be ideal for many decks. I imagine we'll have to have Pokémon Fan Club for Zapdos for example.

I don't think Tate and Liza will be any more useful now than it was before (basically, not); maybe in Zapdos decks, with the reduced Switch options, but even those I think want a better supporter most turns than that.

What you might find though is a bit more room now that Guzma is gone for more interesting supporters that are more specialized and useful only in limited situations. We'll see.
 
I always found myself using Professor Elm's Lecture for initial set up, esspecially now that Nest Ball and Ultra Ball are rotating making individual search for pokemon during turn 1 not nearly as reliable as the current format, even though we don't have Tapu Lele-GX to search out Elm's anymore. I still think it's going to be an excellent card for post-rotation though, for a couple reasons. Firstly, Elm's puts the pokemon into your hand, not the bench. This is important when you need to search for pokemon via Pokemon Communication, so you can use Elm's, search for 3 pokemon, bench 2 of them, and then Pokemon Communication the third one to search for draw power such as Dedenne-GX to get draw power right afterwards. And speaking of Dedenne-GX, that's reason number 2. Getting a fresh new hand and setting up your bench on the same turn I think is very good. This goes so well with Cherish Ball (Item Card; Search your deck for a Pokemon-GX and put it into your hand, shuffle your deck afterwards.), as it not only searches for your Dedenne-GX when you need it, but it can search out other Pokemon-GX that evolve from the Pokemon you put into play. Specifically in stage 2 decks, you can bench Alolan Vulpix with one of Elm's searches, then have Cherish Ball in your hand to evolve into LOT Alolan Ninetales-GX to search out Rare Candy and another Cherish Ball to search out stage 2 GX's like Dragonite-GX (the new one). Here's what I like playing around with numbers-wise:

-4 Professor Elm's Lecture
-4 Pokegear 3.0 (To open with it as often as possible)
-4 Cherish Ball (4 of them is not overkill, as it unbricks you with Dedenne-GX in your deck and searches out other key Pokemon)
-2, maybe 3 even, Dedenne-GX (For draw power)

I'm currently working on a post-rotation Dragonite-GX deck, and so far it has this engine in it. So far in my playtesting, leading Dedenne-GX kind of sucks but it's still possible to get crazy setup like this. I'm gonna keep trying this and see what else I can do in my list.
 
Optimal engines will depend on the deck, but I will say that Acro Bike is significantly better than Judge Whistle. Running 4 Judge Whistles with a couple of Judges thrown in there is cute, but Judge Whistle is just so underwhelming and I'd rather use Reset Stamp for hand disruption than Judge.
 
Holden Sheeks said:
I always found myself using Professor Elm's Lecture for initial set up, esspecially now that Nest Ball and Ultra Ball are rotating making individual search for pokemon during turn 1 not nearly as reliable as the current format, even though we don't have Tapu Lele-GX to search out Elm's anymore. I still think it's going to be an excellent card for post-rotation though, for a couple reasons. Firstly, Elm's puts the pokemon into your hand, not the bench. This is important when you need to search for pokemon via Pokemon Communication, so you can use Elm's, search for 3 pokemon, bench 2 of them, and then Pokemon Communication the third one to search for draw power such as Dedenne-GX to get draw power right afterwards. And speaking of Dedenne-GX, that's reason number 2. Getting a fresh new hand and setting up your bench on the same turn I think is very good. This goes so well with Cherish Ball (Item Card; Search your deck for a Pokemon-GX and put it into your hand, shuffle your deck afterwards.), as it not only searches for your Dedenne-GX when you need it, but it can search out other Pokemon-GX that evolve from the Pokemon you put into play. Specifically in stage 2 decks, you can bench Alolan Vulpix with one of Elm's searches, then have Cherish Ball in your hand to evolve into LOT Alolan Ninetales-GX to search out Rare Candy and another Cherish Ball to search out stage 2 GX's like Dragonite-GX (the new one). Here's what I like playing around with numbers-wise:

-4 Professor Elm's Lecture
-4 Pokegear 3.0 (To open with it as often as possible)
-4 Cherish Ball (4 of them is not overkill, as it unbricks you with Dedenne-GX in your deck and searches out other key Pokemon)
-2, maybe 3 even, Dedenne-GX (For draw power)

I'm currently working on a post-rotation Dragonite-GX deck, and so far it has this engine in it. So far in my playtesting, leading Dedenne-GX kind of sucks but it's still possible to get crazy setup like this. I'm gonna keep trying this and see what else I can do in my list.
Click to expand...
I do think PEL has a few advantages over Pokémon Fan Club, but I tend I use Basics typically with more than 60 HP. So, PEL will not work well for my decks. As @JumpluffTCG mentioned, one's engine needs to be tuned (pun intended... lol) to the deck.
 
I'm into decks that discard heavily, and I probably still will be post rotation. It may be a meme but my rotom deck operates just fine with only 4 ultra ball pre rotation. It may need to swap out some zebras for dedennes post rotation, but minor details. Massive thinning and redundant recovery could be the way to go, if the next best thing is to be running fan clubs.
 
TuxedoBlack said:
I do think PEL has a few advantages over Pokémon Fan Club, but I tend I use Basics typically with more than 60 HP. So, PEL will not work well for my decks. As @JumpluffTCG mentioned, one's engine needs to be tuned (pun intended... lol) to the deck.
Click to expand...
Right, you could still get them into your hand for effects that activate when they're put onto your hand onto the bench, like Dedenne-GX, Rayquaza-GX, etc. or like you said, search pokemon with bigger HP. I'll be honest, completely forgot about Pokemon Fan Club until now, though I've always thought the difference between searching 3 pokemon and 2 pokemon was always huge enough to consider Elms (and the new Oak's card on that note) worth trying, at least for evolution decks. Though at the same time, now that you have Dedenne-GX to draw immediately after using a supporter, that card should be much better now.
rewster1 said:
I'm into decks that discard heavily, and I probably still will be post rotation. It may be a meme but my rotom deck operates just fine with only 4 ultra ball pre rotation. It may need to swap out some zebras for dedennes post rotation, but minor details. Massive thinning and redundant recovery could be the way to go, if the next best thing is to be running fan clubs.
Click to expand...
Maybe it won't be a meme deck. You have adventure bag to search out your tools, thus thinning your deck, and you can discard them through Sightseer, Dedenne-GX, etc. As well as the fact that SUM Alolan Muk or BUS Vileplume no longer exists for post rotation, so your abilities (unless anyone takes a creative take on CES Slaking) run free and you can run all basics as you please.
 
My initial thoughts going into the rotation are:

4 Lillie/4 Elm/4 Oak from Remix Bout, depending on deck searching options
4 Cynthia
2 Erika's Hospitality

4 Pokegear 3.0 is mandatory for all decks, I think
3-4 Cherish Ball in GX favored decks. 3 if you have other options, 4 if you don't.

Erika is justified by the fact that decks that still have search options (EM Radar, Net Ball, Mysterious Treasure, Cherish Ball) are still going to have good bench sizes, and everyone else who can't do that are going to run off of Professor Elm or Pokemon Fan Club to fill their benches. The handsize requirement shouldn't be an issue, but it's definitely a card that won't save if you brick so that's why I wouldn't go more than 2.


However, doing some more theorycrafting, I think Lillie is going to fall off a lot as a T1 supporter going forward.

Lillie I think loses a noticeable slice of value after rotation due to Ultra Ball -> Lele -> Lillie no longer being a play option. Even if we did still have Lele and not Ultra Ball, the main thing that weakens Lillie after rotation is no discard 2 from Ultra Ball available to every deck in the game to thin your hand. T1 Lillie plays are going to be on average drawing 2 cards less in any deck that doesn't run 4 copies of EM Radar (so Pikachu & Zekrom GX + Zeraora GX decks), in which case you might as well just play Cynthia really, and it's really hard to justify using her outside of Turn 1 without selective hand discard outlets.

Great Catcher might help her out. Most people will likely be trying to get a Dedenne GX out on their bench ASAP, so Great Catcher -> stick a Dedenne GX up front -> Lillie is still a thing, but that depends on your opponent having a GX target you are willing to pull up, whether you're ready to KO it or not, just to draw 2 more cards from Lillie. This also can't be a play if you're T1 going first since there's nothing to grab.

There aren't really any other draw supporters that I feel are influential enough for me to care about running (Sightseer, TV Reporter, even Tate & Liza to be honest). I think Erika is almost always better than all 3 of those. Cynthia and Dedenne GX will hold you out throughout the early game/set up phase, then Erika is powerful midgame draw power that none of those 3 can match. Even though Erika has a dependancy on opponent's board and your hand size, I would still rather play her since you get to keep the rest of the resources you have in hand on top of drawing up to 5 more cards.
 
Agree on lillie falling off, but right now I see sightseer as the defacto replacement, so I think it's influence will increase enough to care about. :p
With it being so hard to search for pokemon, digging and thinning is going to matter a lot more. Sightseer only digs up to 5, but thins out up to... a lot if you have a big hand. Granted some decks have enough search to keep going with lillie and cynthia and a couple erika, but those aren't the decks I like to play, and a lot of other people like those one prize type decks as well. I also like that sightseer is entirely your call, unlike lillie (depends on what you can get rid of) and Erika (depends on your opponent), and if other people are also having a hard time finding pokemon, or just sit around with a green's engine and a tiny bench, Erika goes down in value.

I'm thinking I'd go with 4 Cynthia, 4 sightseer, and 2 Erika at the moment as my theorycrafting standard and 2 dedenne gx if not a shrine build, but maybe lillie is still ok enough to play, depending on the deck.
 
I'm actually leaning more towards Rollerskater as becoming the next best possible draw supporter to add to Cynthia.

Most decks benefit from energy in the discard pile to reaccelerate (there are a whole bunch of accelerate from discard pile attackers coming about). If you run 3-4 Viridian Forest and 4 Rollerskater, you basically have yourself a way to guarantee that you will discard 1 draw 4, which is most likely better than either Lillie or Sightseer in most situations.

And then if you're a fire deck playing 4 Fiery Flint you probably don't even run Cynthia anymore and instead run 4 Welder 4 Rollerskater so you don't ever shuffle draw and instead dig draw every time.

There's a lot to consider, honestly.
 
Yeah, rollerskater is awesome, but no fair, I thought we were talking ultra prism-unified minds only, lol. I didn't even realize the remix bout set list was up here until you said that. Now I've got to go read all of that, and change all of my opinions accordingly.
 
Yeah sorry, lol. I have a habit of building a version of a deck for what's out (or in the case of an upcoming rotation, what's going to be available immediately after rotation) and then building a version of a deck that includes anything I would add based on cards from upcoming sets that might change things up a bit. Helps me be a little bit ahead because I don't have as much time to play TCGs as I would like, so I usually only get to play every other expansion on average.

But ignoring Rollerskater, I think that Lillie + Cynthia will stay in fashion for the duration of Unified Minds. She's still a strong card and there are still games where you can play down to 1-3 cards in hand without Ultra Ball on T1 and then draw massively. I've done that plenty of times in Ray/Zeraora GX specifically.

I think it really will boil down to playing to your easiest to satisfy conditions going forward though. Rollerskater is great, but I don't think it's that good unless you're playing copies of Viridian Forest, Energy Recycle System/Energy Retrieval, or something like Fiery Flint, and you probably want to be running at least 11 energy to consider it at all.
 
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