Baby Mario
2010 UK
National
Seniors
Champion |
#8 Pokémon Fan Club
Anyone who has come into the game post BLW-on won’t have
seen this type of card before, but they used to be a
virtual staple. Pokémon Fan Club is a card in the
tradition of its original version, Holon Mentor,
Roseanne’s Research and Pokémon Collector: a Supporter
that gets you multiple Basics.
This isn’t quite
a straight reprint of the old Fan Club, because that put
the Basics straight on to the Bench, rather than into
your hand. For most purposes, the new version is an
improvement as it allows you to search for, and then
use, the Abilities of cards like
Jirachi EX and Exeggcute
PLF, which would not be the case if they went right from
the deck to the Bench. Even so, Fan Club is strictly the
worst of the Basic Searchers we have had (Roseanne being
more flexible, while Mentor and Collector got you three
Basics).
Will it see any play though? Right now I kind of doubt
it, and the main reason for this is our utter dependence
on draw Supporters. It’s so important to be using
Juniper or N on turn 1, that I am not sure many players
will want to give that up to get a couple of Basics in
hand, especially when we have some pretty good
Item-based search in the shape of Ultra Ball and Level
Ball. Players may remember back in the day when people
began to reject Collector in favour of the
flippy Dual Ball Trainer,
even in decks like Eelektrik which needed to bench
multiple Basics quickly. Hitting that first turn draw
was just too important to pass up.
I do think Fan Club will get a lot of play eventually,
especially if we see more and better Pokémon with
‘coming-into-play’ abilities like
Jirachi EX (fingers crossed for another
Uxie LA). For now though, I
think it’s a good card that players will most likely
feel they can’t afford to run.
Rating
Modified: 3.25 (sooner or later it will likely be
important)
Limited: 4.75 (fantastic search in this format)
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HEZ
Intro to
Unlimited 150 |
8. Pokémon Fan Club.
Unlimited 150 review.
We start this week’s U150 reviews with a card that’s
already received a lot of attention in this format and
not good attention either. It’s not because it’s a bad
card, but because the designers in Japan have decided to
rewrite yet another old card, something they've been
doing more and more since the Black & White team began
work.
The original Pokémon Fan Club put 2 Pokémon straight from your deck
onto your bench, rather than into hand. This does mean
effects like Uxie’s Set Up Ability (or Jirachi EX’s
Ability for a more recent example) won’t trigger but it
has the upside of getting around some negative effects
like Miasma Valley, giving it a niche use above the
otherwise superior Basic searching Supporters like
Pokémon Collector or Roseanne’s Research.
The main problem is the removal of an important synergy from the
format, the old combination of Sableye (Stormfront) and
Fan Club. Sableye makes an excellent starter with its
Impersonate attack which searches your deck for a
Supporter and uses it, for free. With the old Fan Club
you could get 2 more Pokémon benched turn 1, ready to
evolve next turn or just to avoid a donk. Sableye is
still a very versatile starter but players may now be
more inclined to use a Call for Family Pokémon instead
like Emolga.
This card could easily have had a new name to give Standard decks a
Basic Pokémon searcher without hurting Unlimited
formats. The artwork even depicts Pokéfan Family from
the XY games!
Rating: 2 (A unique Supporter is demoted to an
inferior Roseanne’s or Collector.)
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