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This Tuesday we are looking at something that I wish we
had covered earlier. We’ve mentioned Professor
Birch’s Observations (XY: Primal Clash
134/160, 159/160) in passing, but today we’re giving it
a proper review. This is a new Supporter and in general
players have been longing for another great draw
Supporter while non-draw Supporters have slowly been
making inroads due two
-
VS Seeker
and/or Lysandre’s Trump Card
allowing lower counts to be used
multiple times in a single game
-
Seismitoad-EX
being so popular that decks need to
assign jobs to Supporters that were once
the domain of more efficient Items
The main hurdle is simple; the combination of overly
strong Pokémon, Trainers and sometimes even Energy makes
it very hard to create useful cards that are not
themselves too powerful, and I think our main draw
Supporters emphasize this. In a slower format
Professor Juniper and Professor Sycamore*
would be balanced out because you’d have a hard time
playing out your hand or recovering the cards you
discarded… but obviously we have a format where there
are a lot of great cards that are easy to play out
and/or have a discard cost so that otherwise “dead”
cards in hand have a purpose. Coupled with big, Basic
Pokémon so that you don’t have to deal with (at least as
many) “pesky” Evolution cards that can’t be played out
of order. The other top draw Supporter is N,
additionally potent due to how Prize cards are a poor
measure of the actual game state (until you hit the “No
Prizes” point), the initial six cards drawn are usually
worth the alternative of running something far weaker
(even though you’re risking helping your opponent) and
because disruption ends up being such a potent thing
(especially late game when even if you’re drawing less,
it can be mitigated by the circumstances).
While that lecture might seem a bit superfluous, it is
important in understanding why card effects that have
appeared before (Shauna is just Professor
Oak’s Research with a new name and art) and
performed at least adequately as well as cards that are
actually superior versions of what was once available,
like Cheren and Tierno seeing no serious
competitive play despite being better versions of TV
Reporter, a one time staple even in decks that
didn’t like the discard effect of TV Reporter.
We actually do have a few Ability or attack based draw
effects that are on par with those of the past, but the
nature of the format means only those that can escalate
the abuse see play (and so far even that is only until
the format can adjust to render them insufficient). So…
is Professor Birch’s Observations another
Supporter that is just bad to begin with, another that
might be good but is inadequate or only just competitive
enough to see some play until something better comes
along, or have we at last gotten a “third pillar” for
our deck building, kind of like we had when Skyla
was a more common play?
Professor Birch’s Observations
has you shuffle your hand into your deck and flip a
coin: if the result is “heads” you get to draw eight
cards while if the result is “tails” you draw four
cards. This means it is Shauna with one card
wagered for a two-to-one return. This… is another
Supporter that is adequate enough to see some serious
use, but after you’re running as many copies of N
and Professor Juniper/Professor Sycamore
as you can make room for in your deck… plus I think
after one requisite Colress as well. Decks that
have reason enough to run other Supporters, such as
Fighting decks running Korrina likely won’t have
the room, especially after we add in a Lysandre
or two (and as I prefer, one Lysandre’s Trump Card).
Plus if the deck is good at filling its own Bench, then
a second Colress is a better choice.
You may be wondering why I expect a Supporter to see
some even a little successful competitive play when I
just compared to Shauna... a card that received
good (but not great) scores in
its CotD
but doesn’t see a lot of competitive usage. Well, I was
one of the players expecting Colress (another
Supporter we’ve already
reviewed…
twice)
to be about as good as it turned out. Colress is
also variable, providing as much as zero draw (if
neither player has a Bench) to a massive 10 cards worth
of draw (for two full Benches). In this case it helps
to look at things relative to each other; Colress
mostly only hits its low first turn and while it isn’t
guaranteed to reach its high, much of the time players
have incentive to at least get four Basics on their
Bench (leaving a slot open in case they need to Bench
something specific in answer to the opponent)... but
with Professor Birch’s Observations there is
always a 50% chance of a four cards (which is only two
less than N draws before you take any Prizes) and
a robust seven cards… and if gives you another option
that spares you the choice of discarding important cards
or helping your opponent draw a new hand. You don’t get
the potential payout offered by Colress but
neither do you take as large a risk while simultaneously
getting almost as reliably an amount of draw as provided
by Shauna… and there are always even odds of
getting either result, for better or worse.
Ratings
Standard:
3.25/5 - A decent fit in most decks but usually not the
optimal choice. Where it does fit, it probably only
needs to be run as as single or double but that doesn’t
make it bad.
Expanded:
3.25/5 - As above; while there is a bit more competition
for Supporters, a good deal that might have rotated out
are still legal through reprints and the few that were
actually lost weren’t very important.
Limited:
5/5 - This is draw power. Limited. You run it if you
pull it. If you want to get technical you can stop past
a certain amount of copies but the odds of pulling “too
many” are so low (and universal a concern) even I am not
picky enough to dock fractional points for it.
Summary:
Professor Birch’s Observations is a welcome
addition to the card pool, but by the same note
shouldn’t be mistaken as being some new staple or near
staple. You don’t run this instead of any Professor
Juniper (or Professor Sycamore) or N.
If your deck significantly clashes with one of those,
then you might run it in place of just a single copy (so
three of those, one Professor Birch’s Observation).
If your deck deck doesn’t like Colress, you
might run this instead, but most decks shouldn’t need
more than two Colress. In all cases, this may
also be crowded out by other more important and less
general (if only slightly) Supporters like Korrina
or Skyla. What earns it its score is that it is
that (especially with respect to other draw Supporters)
it at worst is “not as good” as the next best choice
instead of actually being “bad” or even “significantly
underpowered”.**
*Again I’ve got to ask why the powers-that-be didn’t
just issue an errata so that this was a single card
named “Professor” so that we didn’t need a
special game rule about not running the two together and
so that we could have enjoyed awesome alternate art
featuring any Professor from fiction. No, that doesn’t
preclude today’s card from existing, though it might
have followed suit by being “Professor’s Observations”
and again allowing someone to fill their deck with cards
featuring their favorite Professor. Given the recently
revealed Gym Badge promo (where it makes more
sense for them to have different effects) are eight
functionally identical cards but each has its own art
featuring the different Hoenn region Gym Leader’s and
their respective badge.
**For now, anyway; XY: Roaring Skies may shake
things up by offering some alternatives/providing combos
that make Colress better than it currently is but
before the year it out, rotation will likely throw
everything out of whack again.
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