Otaku |
Professor Oak’s New
Theory
(HeartGold/SoulSilver 101/123, Call of Legends
83/95) is our second subject this week because I found
it to be the second most influential of the generic
cards in the Legacy Format. If you skipped
yesterday’s
review
and are wondering what the Legacy Format is you can read
an article covering it in some detail
here.
Of course some folks either can’t or won’t be able to
read another article at this time, so the short version
is that it is a format currently unique to the official
Pokémon Trading Card Game Online (PTCGO), but one I was
surprised to find I really enjoyed and which I would
like to see allowed for at least side events in Pokémon
organized play. Professor Oak’s New Theory has a
simple enough effect for a Supporter, shuffling your
hand into your deck, then drawing six cards. This
is the same effect as Shauna (and the much older
Professor Oak’s Research), except drawing one
more card. This didn’t overly impress Baby Mario
when he reviewed the card
six years ago
but by his Shauna
review
he was missing it… and that path actually explains why
Professor Oak’s New Theory is so important to the
Legacy Format.
For years we were
holding out for a third core draw Supporter. We
had Professor Juniper (later Professor
Sycamore) and we had N (which we later
regained). Professor Juniper/Professor
Sycamore set the pace of the game because even if
discarding your hand could be painful, the raw power of
a fresh hand of seven cards just meant we learned how to
lessen that pain. Already potent strategies that
relied more on Basic Pokémon, low Energy counts, and
abundant Items so that playing down your hand was easy
both feed and feed off of Professor Juniper being
the standard of draw power. N wasn’t bad, but it
wasn’t just draw but potential disruption, and it wasn’t
stable in either respect. Early game it was better
at the draw and late game it was better at the
disruption, but I know I got in the bad habit of
counting on my opponent’s use of N to buffer
riskier plays or at least improve my overall odds of a
good set up (until I started taking Prizes, anyway).
Cards like Ultra Ball were useful because… well…
it is a good card in the first place, but you could toss
stuff that would go to waste anyway with Professor
Juniper or that you were worried would do more harm
than good by remaining in your deck. N makes
deck thinning very valuable due to the risk your
opponent can shrink your hand down to just a few, random
cards.
In Standard and
Expanded, we eventually received Battle Compressor,
VS Seeker, and (a little bit later) Shaymin-EX
(XY: Roaring Skies 77/108, 106/108). We no
longer needed a trifecta of potent draw Supporters,
which was good because we never quite got it (Colress
came close, but was simply unreliable in a different way
than N). With Junk Arm joining
Ultra Ball and N still threatening to trash
your hand, one might think Professor Oak’s New Theory
wouldn’t add much, it anything to your typical deck.
Going against what seems logical (at least at first), it
turned out that a stable form of shuffle-and-draw power
was exactly what we had been waiting on (and never
received) in back in the day, and what we receive in the
Legacy Format. With Junk Arm one might
think that it would be less of a problem tossing stuff
for Professor Juniper, but it isn’t. With
Junk Arm and Ultra Ball run in most decks
as multiples, you only have enough discard fodder if you
also run Exeggcute (BW: Plasma Freeze
4/116; BW: Plasma Blast 102/101) or absolutely
need a massive amount of basic Energy or Pokémon in your
discard pile… and notice how I just talked about running
stuff. Even with those, you dedicated deck space
to them and often have other risks associated with them,
like opening with a 30 HP Basic in a format where
Hypnotoxic Laser plus Virbank City Gym is
still a possible (if not popular) early game play;
getting donked in a format without first turn attacks is
embarrassing.
Even with Junk
Arm some Items are so valuable that you can’t afford
to discard them too casually, and of course Junk Arm
itself is one of those major exceptions. If you’re
running Random Receiver exclusively so that
Junk Arm can fetch it from the discard pile, then
sure toss it as soon as possible or use it if you have a
shuffle and draw Supporter already in hand - doesn’t
matter if you immediately toss the Supporter you just
searched out back in. Each Pokémon Catcher,
Hypnotoxic Laser, etc. is at least potentially
precious as you can’t be sure how many you’ll need in
total; for sure once you have one in the discard pile
(for your Junk Arm needs) you don’t need any
others being wasted. Some of the TecH Junk Arm
revitalizes is also hard to predict; nothing like
tossing Tool Scrapper or Lost Remover when
(for whatever reason) now your opponent starts playing
key Pokémon Tools or Special Energy cards
(respectively). Yes N is an option for this
as well, but you could only run four of it and sometimes
it would backfire. Professor Oak’s New Theory
increases your deck’s chance of stable, reliable opens
and maintaining a good hand the rest of the game.
Typical deck builds
in the Legacy Format will have three or four
Professor Oak’s New Theory, which is all you’ll be
running of N or Professor Juniper. Colress
still sees some play as well, so you might be running 10
draw Supporters but only three of each of the big names.
Other Supporters are still useful for deck setup and
maintenance as well, so being used so heavily with so
much competition further underscores that Professor
Oak’s New Theory is just that important.
Frankly it makes me wish Professor Oak’s New Theory
(or new card, same effect) was still Standard/Expanded
legal; while we have many added options, it would still
be great to have another (and I suspect a single would
become a staple). In Limited play this is a must
run should you pull it. Of course, that means
you’re participating in a Limited event using
HeartGold/SoulSilver or Call of Legends
booster packs. Or dedicated enough to Limited Play
to set up something with opened product to simulate it.
Ratings
Standard:
N/A
Expanded:
N/A
Limited:
5/5
Legacy:
4/5
Summary:
Jirachi-EX, Junk Arm, Random Receiver
and/or compatible Pokémon search, on top of a trifecta
of great draw Supporters give the Legacy Format a flow
that is just so… stable overall. Some of these
could be lost and it wouldn’t change much, but I don’t
think Professor Oak’s New Theory is one of them.
It isn’t the most important part either, but there is a
reason why even with Professor Juniper and N
I am still scoring thi a four out of five (and worrying
I lowballed it). While many decks could get by on
the other two major draw Supporters alone, they would be
diminished and then there are many that just couldn’t.
They can’t handle the unpredictability or discarding the
hand so often.
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aroramage |
No surprises, but otaku was just
telling me that I did make a couple little mistakes in
my review on Junk Arm. Course it's probably easier to
address them in hindsight, and if you really want an
in-depth look at Legacy, check out the article he wrote
up on it.
Anyway, onto Professor Oak's New
Theory! It's an older card for a new trick on an old
idea. See, the old Professor Oak was a lot like Sycamore
and Juniper are nowadays - you discard your whole hand
and draw 7 cards. Under his New Theory though, you end
up shuffling the rest of your hand into your deck and
then draw 6 cards.
Now in a format that includes all
the sets up to the XY series (that is, every set from
the HGSS era going to Legendary Treasures but stopping
at the XY Base Set and not including those cards), this
does lead to a slight conflict of interest - Professor
Juniper is in this format too. So which one's better for
you? Well if we were looking at them from any regular
casual scenario, Juniper is probably the better of the
two. Not only does it draw 1 additional card more than
Professor Oak's New Theory, but it also makes sure you
won't actually see those cards again by discarding them
instead of shuffling them back into the deck, meaning
you're likely to see those cards back again.
That being said, since technically
they're not the same card effect, Professor Oak can run
his New Theory with Professor Juniper, meaning there's a
bit more of a give-and-take between the two. You're less
likely to deck out if you play with Professor Oak, which
is good if you want to prevent an auto-loss or need to
preserve your deck against a Durant Mill, and since he
only counts as a Supporter, he won't get stopped by
cards that hit Trainers like Professor Juniper. Not that
I can think of too many off the top of my head from the
Black&White era, but there's no doubt there's something
in HGSS that it avoids.
Course you could just use him like
you would with Sycaper and draw 6 fresh new cards. No
big deal there.
Rating
Legacy: 4.5/5 (still a very solid
card only beaten out by Juniper, though your deck may
thrive on one better than the other)
Limited: 5/5 (but let's face it,
having both around is really nice)
Arora Notealus: I wonder what
Professor Oak decided on that changed his theory in the
first place...maybe it's got something to do with that
Imposter Oak that was skulking around...
Next Time: Get out your
paintbrushes, we're gonna paint the town!
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