Baby Mario
2010 UK
National
Seniors
Champion |
#5 Battle Compressor
I must admit, I am a little surprised to
see this card feature so highly on our
top 10 list. Battle Compressor is
undoubtedly a good card that can do a
lot of useful things, but it hasn’t
really had much time to prove its worth
since it was released in November.
Battle Compressor is an Item which puts
stuff in your discard pile. This can be
a good thing in and of itself, as it
allows you to get rid of stuff you don’t
need (for example a
Garbodor line against a deck that
doesn’t use Abilities) so that you don’t
draw into it during the game. Perhaps
more important, though, is the way that
Battle Compressor works with other
cards. Together with VS Seeker, it can
be used to grab whatever Supporter you
need for the current situation: a very
powerful effect, and less risky than
using Jirachi
EX to do the same job. There are also
decks which need to get cards in the
discard to work properly, and they will
love Battle Compressor more than
anything. It can fill the discard with
Pokémon to fuel the attacks of
Flareon PLF
and the Night March Pokémon, or it can
dump Energy which can then be attached
via something like
Bronzong PHF’s Metal Links
Ability, or an attack such as
Yveltal XY’s
Oblivion Wing.
This is one of those cards that can be
useful in any deck, but won’t really
ever be a general staple, as it will get
squeezed out for reasons of space.
Between all the Muscle Bands, Lasers,
Enhanced Hammers, and Head Ringers,
competition for places is fierce.
Nevertheless, Battle Compressor is
worth
experimenting with as a kind of mini
Supporter-search engine, and is pretty
much a ‘must run’ for decks which like
to exploit the discard pile.
Rating
Modified: 4 (useful card, but not so
useful that it won’t get bumped from
lists)
Expanded: 4 (Eels will like it, I
assume)
|
aroramage |
Funny how a lot of these cards are coming out of the
most recent set, huh? Well, in the case of Battle
Compressor, the #5 spot on our countdown is well worth
it. In fact, it's the best Item on the list - well,
except for Tools *wink wink*!
Battle Compressor has a seemingly useless effect that,
as I mentioned upon reviewing it a few weeks ago, has a
wide and versatile set of uses. It can accelerate any
deck that wants to dump Energies into the discard pile
for boosting its members include Bronzong with Metal
Decks, Blacksmith for Fire decks, and in the case of
Expanded Eeleketrik and Dark Patch. It can combo with VS
Seeker to grab any Supporter you want from your deck in
essence, all the while thinning out your deck and
assuring consistency! And if you've played any Night
March or Flareon (PLF) decks, you've probably seen them
run Battle Compressor to dump Pokemon to power their
attacks!
Amazing, right? So with a card as powerful as this at
only #5, what cards could possibly top that? Pretty
scary!
Rating
Standard: 4.5/5 (all of those consistent decks, man!)
Expanded: 4.5/5 (same thing here)
Limited: 4.5/5 (even with a smaller pool of cards to
grab from, this card is still wildly beneficial)
Arora Notealus: Combo pieces are just so much fun and
add a little complexity to an otherwise simple game. I
guess that's why I like Battle Compressor so much - it's
simple, yet complex and strategic, rather than just
brutally strong!
Next Time: I know I've seen you hanging out in some cafe
before...
Happy Holidays/Christmas/Hanukkah/Kwanza/Festivus to you
all!
|
Otaku |
Welcome to the second week of the Top 10 Cards Of 2014
Countdown! If you’re new or just haven’t been reading
this blurb until now, the lists were collected and
averaged out from the CotD crew to create the rankings
for the master list. As with our Top 10 lists for
individual sets, reprints are excluded: without this
rule cards like Double Colorless Energy place (if
not place high) most years. For my own list, my main
guideline was card impact. I evaluated the card
according to breadth of impact (how widespread its
usage/response to its usage was), depth of impact (how
deeply it affected the decks that used it/needed to
counter it) and time of impact (how long did it affect
how we played in 2014).
Our first CotD for this week is our number five pick,
Battle Compressor (XY: Phantom Forces 92/119)
and to be honest, its another one that is kind of a
cheat. What do I mean? The short version is that this
provides deck thinning to any deck all by itself,
provides a potent Supporter Engine vulnerable to Item
lock in most decks and in some specific decks, enables
some amazing plays that usually involve sending Energy
to the discard pile where another card can then attach
them to Pokémon in play. So why did I call this a
cheat? Well, this is something of a proxy for what
might have topped the list otherwise: VS Seeker.
For more details, you can read the original review from
a little over a month ago
here.
Breadth:
Almost any and every deck can make use of Battle
Compressor for deck thinning. It is a simple part
of general TCG strategy, transcending the game of
Pokémon. In fact Pokémon makes use of it less than some
of the other TCGs I’ve played, so you know there has to
be more or else Battle Compressor would be niche
use only. Enter VS Seeker, a card I use heavily
and that from what I can tell, others use as well
(though maybe not the three or four copies I risk). You
really shouldn’t have to make room for VS Seeker
to combo with Battle Compressor because you
should already be running at least two copies of the
former. This gives you a somewhat flexible two Item
combo (Battle Compressor has to be played first)
to turn VS Seeker into any Supporter you run,
though if using VS Seeker on a different turn
from Battle Compressor, your mileage may vary.
Did I mention Battle Compressor also affects
Expanded? That specific decks also have key combos that
use it? When you put all of it together, this might be
the single card with the greatest potential breadth.
Potential, not proven, which is why (for example) when
I made a Breadth “sublist”, it still didn’t come in as
number one. For me this card is a loose staple;
sometimes it gets bumped but only when it absolutely
will not fit, putting it in the company of some cards
we’ve already reviewed and some we will be getting to
later on the list. This too might have been
presumptuous on my part, as it isn’t like I’ve got high
level competitive results to back up my claims.
Depth:
Echoing what was said in the previous section, turning
every VS Seeker in your deck into a searchable,
variable Supporter is huge. Again the combo is not
foolproof; sometimes you’ll still get a VS Seeker
early game before you can ditch ditch any Supporters
(with or without Battle Compressor) or will be
staring down a Seismitoad-EX blocking your Items
via Quaking Punch. So far the pair allows most of my
decks to flow better, including making it much less
risky to include either lower Supporter counts in
general or to include more specialized Supporters (I
don’t recommend both). The reason this is so deep is
that some of these options can really change how your
deck functions. A good general example is that you have
the option of ditching a Lysandre early on so
that whenever you really need it, instead of trying to
keep one safe in hand or hoping to draw into it at the
right time, you just need to burn one of your VS
Seeker (or if running it, Dowsing Machine).
While this still might telegraph the play to your
opponent, its more effective than using Skyla and
less luck reliant than having a Computer Search.
Personally, I’ve long struggled with recovering from
disastrous-but-necessary discard with an early game
Professor Juniper or Professor Sycamore. You
know, like when you’ve got three of whichever one of
those two you’re using in your opening hand and a Basic
you at least suspect won’t survive your opponent’s next
turn and no other search or draw. I’ve also struggled
as decks just run out of steam if not actually threaten
to deck out, so you’ll usually see me Battle
Compressor to toss the lone copy I’m running of
Lysandre’s Trump Card. Battle Compressor is
both a potential counter and potential ally to
Lysandre’s Trump Card; either player can use
Battle Compressor to “un-recycle” some of the cards
that were shuffled back into the deck, but most
importantly allowing you to quickly toss Lysandre’s
Trump Card into your discard pile where its just a
VS Seeker away if you need it, and out of the way
when you don’t (namely the rest of the time).
Getting to more specific deck usage, it has provided a
small but significant improvement to key decks that had
resources they wanted in the discard pile. You still
can and should use previous options like Ultra Ball
and Professor Juniper/Professor Sycamore
but for cases like the new Night March Decks, it is
pretty much a necessity to get the requisite number of
“Night Marchers” into your discard to fuel your attacks.
Time:
This is of course the weakest area for Battle
Compressor. It is a new card, so even if this had
become an instant four-per-deck-staple, it would lose
out to cards that got to shape so much more of the year.
For the close of the year, its had an influence as
described above, but with more time it would be less
ambiguous whether its as important as I think it is or
if its going to be another card some people swear by but
most just take a pass on running.
Ratings
Standard:
4/5
Expanded:
4.25/5
Limited:
5/5
Summary:
Obviously I am still heavily in favor of this card, but
I failed to find adequate proof that I was right. I
tried to allow that I’m wrong about what it does for the
game in general in my review, but the bias is still
pretty clear. The value of Battle Compressor to
specific decks is clear: if you’ve got something you
want to get into the discard pile ASAP, you run multiple
Battle Compressor. On my own list, Battle
Compressor took the fifth place slot as well: three
of the cards above it were similarly “general usage”
while one was not. One of those cards (Startling
Megaphone) we already reviewed as the others didn’t
think as highly of it. The other card to beat it was my
number six pick… but more on that when we get to it in
the Top 4.
Merry Christmas!
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