Pojo's Pokemon news, tips, strategies and more!

Pikachu Anatomy

Pokemon Home

Pokedex

Price Guide Set List

Message Board

Pokemon GO Tips

Pokemon News

Featured Articles


Trading Card Game
- Price Guide
- Price Guide
- Card of the Day
- Professional Grading
- Killer Deck Reports
- Deck Garage
- William Hung
- Jason Klaczynski
- Jeremy's Deck Garage
- Johnny Blaze's Banter
- TCG Strategies
- Rulings Help
- Apprentice & Patch
- Apprentice League
- Spoilers & Translations
- Official Rules
- Featured Event Reports
- Top of the World
- An X-Act Science
- Error Cards
- Printable Checklist
- Places to Play


Nintendo Tips
- Red/Blue
- Yellow
- Gold & Silver
- Crystal
- Ruby & Sapphire
- Fire Red & Leaf Green
- Emerald
- SNAP
- Pinball
- TCG cart
- Stadium
- PuPuzzle League
- Pinball: Ruby/Sapphire
- Pokemon Coliseum
- Pokemon Box
- Pokemon Channel


GameBoy Help
- ClownMasters Fixes
- Groudon's Den
- Pokemon of the Week

E-Card Reader FAQ's
- Expedition
- Aquapolis
- Skyridge
- Construction Action Function
- EON Ticket Manual


Deck Garage
- Pokemaster's Pit Stop
- Kyle's Garage
- Ghostly Gengar


Cartoon/Anime
- Episode Listing
- Character Bios
- Movies & Videos
- What's a Pokemon?
- Video List
- DVD List


Featured Articles

Pojo's Toy Box

Books & Videos

Downloads

Advertise With Us
- Sponsors
-
Links

Chat

About Us
Contact Us


Magic
Yu-Gi-Oh!
DBZ
Pokemon
Yu Yu Hakusho
NeoPets
HeroClix
Harry Potter
Anime
Vs. System
Megaman



Pojo's Pokémon Card of the Day

 

 Super Rod

- BREAKthrough

Date Reviewed:
December 10, 2015

Ratings & Reviews Summary

Standard: 2.9
Expanded:  2.9
Limited: 4.2

Ratings are based on a 1 to 5 scale.
1 being horrible.  3 ... average.  5 is awesome.

Back to the main COTD Page


aroramage

To compliment the Fisherman from last week, we've got a Super Rod to help out with all of your fishing needs! Which pretty much equates to any 3 Pokemon and/or Energy cards in any combination going back to your deck from your discard pile. Not too shabby, though there are going to be few instances where it's really useful. 

Could be useful in getting back Energies you discarded for Sycaper or for getting that one Pokemon you need...granted it puts it back in the deck rather than an easier to access place like your hand or, heck, even the discard pile's not so bad. We've got plenty of ways to actually get stuff out of the discard pile, we even made a card to put things IN to the discard pile. 

Super Rod fills a niche well, but at the moment I can't even think of where you'd use it... 

Rating 

Standard: 2/5 (good effect, but I've got nothing on a deck - what decks like to have their stuff...in the deck?) 

Expanded: 2/5 (about the same here, I do remember running Super Rod to minimal effect once...I guess so I could avoid deck out?) 

Limited: 3.5/5 (in which case, that's not a terrible reason to run it, but it'd be a one-off if that) 

Arora Notealus: Super Rod was always the best fishing rod, but it makes more sense in its previous incarnation from Neo Genesis, which would add an Evolution or a Basic Pokemon directly from your discard pile to your hand, depending on a coin flip. Obviously bringing that back nowadays would be really sketchy, even with the coin flip, but it's still better than throwing stuff back into the deck!

Next Time: I'm the map, I'm the map, I'm the map...I'm very tired.


Otaku

Super Rod (Neo Genesis 103/111; BW: Noble Victories 95/101; BW: Dragon Vault 20/20; XY: BREAKthrough 149/162) goes way back… sort of.  Originally this was a “normal” Trainer (now known as an “Item”) that had you flip a coin: if “heads” you could add an Evolution to your hand and if “tails” you could add a Basic Pokémon.  This card essentially no longer exists because the-powers-that-be decided to re-use the name for a dramatically different effect: shuffling three cards that can be Pokémon and/or Basic Energy cards from your discard pile into your deck.  We’ve looked at it once before here almost exactly four years ago.  A mistake I made then is stating the contemporary Super Rod to just be the old Nightly Garbage Run (Team Rocket 77/82) and Night Maintenance (DP: Mysterious Treasures 113/123; DP: Secret Wonders 120/132; Pokémon Organized Play Series 8 9/17) with the names changed plus the template and wording updated but there are two small functional differences.  Both older cards are “up to 3” instead of three - with Super Rod you can only return one or two if that is all you have in the discard pile - plus Nightly Garbage Run is a “Rocket’s Secret Machine”.  I don’t know if that is part of the name or not (it is printed with a smaller font in parentheses by the name) but it was one of the many underused mechanics.  Nightly Garbage Run never received a CotD but Night Maintenance did here. 

So is this old effect better, worse or about the same as it once was?  I think it is a wee bit better even though one might expect such a card to need to be better to keep up with power creep.  We have Sacred Ash to shuffle five (or all if you have less) Pokémon from the discard pile to the deck, Energy Recycle System to shuffle five Basic Energy cards (or all if you have less) from discard pile to the deck, plus a few more options if we want to go from discard to hand or discard to field; I don’t recall this with this card’s predecessors.  The catch is that they lack the flexibility; if you only need Pokémon or only need Basic Energy reclaimed, these are better options.  The thing is if you need both you’ve got to run one of each, and that means comparing them against two copies of Super Rod (if you need to reclaim both Pokémon and Basic Energy and have one slot, Super Rod wins!): the trade off is recycling four fewer cards but having the flexibility to make the six you do get either Pokémon or Basic Energy. 

There is a rival for this that exemplifies power creep to the most extreme, and it was so good it got banned: Lysandre’s Trump Card.  I think this threw some of the designers’ plans out of whack.  Not too long after Supporters were introduced, we’d get an Item option and a Supporter option and usually the Supporter was about twice as effective but of course, cost you your supporter.  With VS Seeker and Item lock, a Supporter alternative in the vein of Town Volunteers (Aquapolis 136/147), Palmer’s Contribution (PL: Supreme Victors 139/147), Flower Shop Lady (HS: Undaunted 74/90) and others I may have forgotten might still be worth it.  The format is incredibly fast paced, but then again we’ve got Shaymin-EX (XY: Roaring Skies 77/108, 106/108) to help alleviate some of the pressure of burning a Supporter on such a thing.  Then again maybe something bigger is overkill; so many decks are close to two-thirds Trainer and while all the Pokémon are game the Basic Energy cards that are less of a presence in said decks as most rely heavily on Special Energy cards.  So this angle is actually pretty well covered. 

For now though enjoy Super Rod in Standard once again; it never left Expanded where it remains at least a loose staple.  If you pull it in Limited, run it unless perhaps you’re going with a +39 deck: when your deck is built around a single Basic Pokémon and 39 other non-Basic Pokémon cards, you shouldn’t need to recycle anything barring something really crazy happening.  Otherwise you’ll have the room and just maybe will need to delay decking out or recycle something significant to your deck… and with a 40 card deck built from the contents of six boosters plus whatever Basic Energy you want to add, sometimes things show up at the wrong time, get forced into play without proper prep and are in the discard pile when you really need them - a specific Basic Energy, the all copies of the Basic Stage for the one good Evolution you pulled, etc.  For those new to Limited, yes each booster pack has 10 cards, but you don’t get to use them; you select a total of 40 from the contents of the packs plus whatever Basic Energy cards you need. 

Ratings 

Standard: 3.8/5 

Expanded: 3.8/5 

Limited: 4.9/5 

Summary: Super Rod is back in Standard!  If that is a little too concise, then we we have the lower yield, more flexible combination Pokémon/basic Energy recycling card returned to Standard, where it is often a major part of decks.  Not all though as a few are better off with the more specialized (but more powerful) alternatives and some just don’t bother with it at all due to a blistering pace and lack of deck space.  As such, it doesn’t quite rank as high as it once did. 

Again, if this hadn’t been a reprint and thus not legal for our Top 10 list for XY: BREAKthrough, this would have made the list, possibly taken this if we focused more on Standard than Expanded.


Copyright© 1998-2015 pojo.com
This site is not sponsored, endorsed, or otherwise affiliated with any of the companies or products featured on this site. This is not an Official Site.