Name:
Team Galactic’s Wager
Set:
Mysterious Treasures
Card#:
Rarity:
Uncommon
Type:
Supporter
Sub-Type:
Supporter (Hey, they feel the need to print it twice on the card. XD)
Text:
You can play only one Supporter each turn. When you play this card, put it
next to your Active Pokémon. When your turn ends, discard this card.
Each player
shuffles his or her hand into his or her deck, and you and your opponent
play “Rock-Paper-Scissors.” The player who wins draws up to 6 cards.
The player who loses draws up to 3 cards. (You draw your cads first.)
Yes, I am chiming
in on what was apparently the number one card released last year. I did a
quick review of it
here alongside the other CotD reviewers. According to my understanding,
Pojo-sama looked not just at how we rated the cards we sent in, but how
often they appeared in the lists. I am pretty sure this card appeared on
all our lists (my only other picks to appear were Lucario and the
other Team Galactic card, Team Galactic’s Mars, for those
interested). What makes this card so special? Hand disruption,
Pokémon style! For some reason, I find playing Janken (Rock-Paper-Scissors)
to be extremely fun. It is a game of luck and yet of skill: two thirds
chance you won’t lose, unless you know how to read your opponent. I mean
the legal way: some people you can just tell how they’ll throw. You can
always try something simple like saying “Show me rock!” right before you
start doing it. I mean, who is going to listen to you and throw Rock? So
just throw Scissors and you’ll either tie or win. Unless your opponent is
familiar with this trick (I learned it from the Hunter X Hunter
manga).
The important thing
is that you can often play your deck, let alone build a deck, so that a
three card hand isn’t especially crippling. I mean, if you drop your hand
to three or less important, useful cards (with zero being ideal), then it is
clearly worthwhile to play. What about your opponent’s hand? Aren’t you
risking giving your opponent some Super Special Awesome new hand? Well,
yeah, but this is Pokémon, not Yu-Gi-Oh (or most other card games for that
matter): Pokémon has abundant search/draw opportunities. It also can draw
several cards in a single turn to generate field advantage in the form of
field building (something that feels lacking in many games I am familiar
with, where it is just easier to tear down than to build). So if they’ve
been searching out pieces they needed for their bench set up and are just
waiting that turn to Evolve them, send it all back to the deck. Odds are at
least one won’t show up again. So what if they get a replacement searcher?
They still have to use it. Using a Supporter or Trainer uses it up. Using
most relevant Poké-Powers means that you have to wait another turn to use it
again, slowing down their progress. In fact, Supporters have the worst of
both worlds: burn a Supporter and their “once-per-turn” usage. All while,
if you played smartly, you got yourself some more cards to set up with.
This card is highly
luck based in that it is a shuffle and draw card. That kind of semi-random
result is inherent to how Trading Card Games function and shouldn’t be held
against the card, and people don’t seem to be. The ability to probably
trash someone’s hand while possibly improving your own is huge. We learned
this with the much more potent Rocket’s Admin and the less used but
still pretty strong Desert Shaman. Last I checked, Pokémon was still
a game of large hands… or at least without threats like this they swell to
sizes that even Pokémon players find hard to believe (7+ cards). With
Team Galactic’s Wager, the possible outcomes range from each player
getting horrible to brilliant hands, and with skillful play you can maximize
the likelihood of the positive results for yourself and minimize the
positive results for your opponent. All this before factoring in that it is
wonderful for the recently reborn Hand Disruption decks.
Ratings
Unlimited:
3.5/5 – Why so high? When I last reviewed this card I gave it a one out of
five. Why did it go up two points? Well I did some mental exercises and
realized that the combo potential allows the three card result to become a
death sentence: simply put if you can pull this off when your opponent’s
resources are low (probably early or late game), the standard patterns of
Unlimited can take hold. That is, you play out your hand so that only this
is left, use it, and even with just the three card result, probably snag a
Professor Oak, or Computer Search or Item Finder and
rebuilt your hand and keep the building going, or you get the old-school
Hand Disruption and tear down your opponent’s hand, or if you are
exceptionally lucky, both. Then there are all the times when you get the
six card result and your opponent gets the three cards: in Unlimited that
almost guarantees you can build as any well made Unlimited deck would while
simultaneously destroying the opponent’s hand.
Modified:
4/5 – Just read the review as this is a bit hard to summarize.
Limited:
5/5 – It is draw power no matter what and might ruin your opponent’s hand
(or help you avoid decking out late game).
-Otaku
