Hello, and welcome to Thursday. A bit of a delay, but
still, we have a couple of cards for this week. Today,
we have one of the few new Trainer cards from SV, it's
Palmer's Contribution! Well, technically, it's a
Supporter, but that really isn't the point. Anyway, it
has a simple effect, which is it allows you to shuffle
up to 5 in any combination of Pokémon and basic Energy
cards from your Discard Pile into your deck. Nice.
Basically, it's a Night Maintenance, that's been given a
bit of a boost, which is nice. However, there is a
fairly big difference between the two cards which is
that Night Maintenance is a normal Trainer, so you can
use a Supporter during your turn, whilst Palmer's is a
Supporter, so you can't use another one during the turn
you use Palmer's. So when I said it being a Supporter
wasn't the point, it actually is. Basically, you have a
choice between getting more cards back, but not being
able to search for them with any certainty, or getting
less back, but with the chance of being able to search
for at least one of them. Personally, I prefer the
latter, but both have their own advantages and
disadvantages, that really, depend upon your play style
more than anything.
Ratings:
Modified: Personally, I'd prefer to be able to search
for at least one of the cards I shuffled in with a
Supporter, so between Night Maintenance and Palmer's, I
prefer Night Maintenance. However, you may not mind that
so much, so you may prefer Palmer's, it's basically
personal opinion and playstyle of the player and type of
deck that effect which one is better. 2.5/5
Limited: You don't get many Trainers here, so Palmer's
using up your Supporter for the turn is not a big
problem. It is quite nice here though, since you
probably will be running a lot of single Pokémon, so if
any of them do end up in your Discard Pile, it's nice to
be able to get them back, though getting them back out
may be a problem. Still, it's a very useful card here
though. 4.5/5
Baby Mario Top 4 UK Nats
Palmer’s Contribution
So . . . basically a super Night Maintenance with the
downside of being a Supporter.
Palmer certainly likes to make a generous contribution
towards recycling you deck. Being able to return five
Pokémon/Basic Energy is extremely useful. You can get
back an entire Stage 2 line and the Energy you need for
it to attack, or if you are playing an SP deck, you can
most likely restock a copy of all of your main
attackers.
The fact that it uses up your Supporter can be a
problem, however. With Night Maintenance, you can
shuffle your Pokémon back in and then bring them to your
hand with a Roseanne or a Bebe’s Search. Unfortunately,
Palmer doesn’t give you that option. For this reason, it
may be that it is best used in SP decks, where you have
the Trainer SP Radar to search out Pokémon, though even
here it faces stiff competition from Aaron’s Collection
which actually puts two Pokémon/Energy right back into
your hand. Palmer’s Contribution could well find a home
in Beedrill decks, though, where you can put back any
KO’d Beedrill lines and the use Beedrill RR’s Flutter
Wings PokePower in order to search them out from your
deck.
While we have Night Maintenance in the format, I think
that it will usually be preferred to Palmer’s, simply
because it is a Trainer. What Palmer’s does, it does
very well, though and it might be worth playtesting 1
Night Maintenance and 1 Palmer in your decklists to see
if it works for you.
Rating
Modified: 2.5 (Very useful, but other non-Supporters can
do a similar job)
Limited: 4.5 (you probably don’t have many good Pokémon.
Getting them back is great, and being a Supporter is a
non-issue as you are unlikely to pull more than a
couple)
