Otaku |
Ninth place for our
Top 20 Cards Lost To Rotation list goes to AZ (XY:
Phantom Forces 91/119, 117/119). Like
yesterday’s
Blacksmith this is a Trainer and Supporter.
So general Trainer aid and counters apply, which is
pretty good considering the former includes stuff like
Trainers’ Mail while the latter includes nothing
particularly competitive. Supporters themselves
have support, as well as counters, and the divide may be
even more stark. VS Seeker makes it so much
easier to run a diverse assortment of Supporters, with a
full four count allowing you an effective eight copies
of a Supporter worth maxing out while a Supporter only
worth running as a single could still be reused up to
four times. You also aren’t forced to choose which
when building your deck but can make up your mind on the
fly, only restricted by your discard pile and any Item
locking effects your opponent throws at you.
Supporter counters have never proven competitive, at
least in recent memory. The actual effect of AZ
is self bounce: select one of your in play Pokémon and
return it to your hand with any attached cards being
discarded. AZ does return entire Pokémon
lines (if present): even if you have the BREAK Evolution
of a Stage 2, it will return the Basic, Stage 1, Stage
2, and BREAK Evolution to hand. If you used a
Rare Candy or similar trick to skip part of the
Evolution line, that will not be returned to your
hand. For players who remember the earliest days
of the game, AZ is like the Supporter version of
Scoop Up, working the same way except
Scoop Up was a “normal Trainer” (Item) and could not
return Evolutions (you could target them, but only the
Basic would return to hand while the Evolved forms were
discarded).
Why has AZ
proven useful? Bounce allows you to ditch
everything on a Pokémon. Usually you don’t
like discarding the attached Energy and Tools, but
sometimes even those you want gone (like with an
opponent’s Pokémon Tool F cards). Usually you
do like getting rid of all damage counters, Special
Conditions, and effects (attack, Ability, or other) on
the Pokémon. AZ is able to target any of your in
play Pokémon, so it can also get something out of the
Active slot, giving you another switching card. AZ
works regardless of whether or not you have a Bench: a
misplay is on the player, but AZ effectively
being a non-option because you lack a Bench (and thus
would lose if you used it) is a legitimate limitation to
the card. When first reviewed
here,
we (Baby Mario, Aroramage, and myself) were not overly
impressed with AZ. I gave it the highest
marks, but we weren’t too far apart. We all
recognized that in specialized decks AZ could be
awesome, but expected it to prove suboptimal (at best!)
in general usage. We were thinking about how it
could be great in decks where you needed to spam
coming-into-play Abilities or could bounce a high HP
target (preferably a Basic) but also manage to re-ready
it (or a replacement) the same turn. Turns out
this was not a niché proposition but soon to
(collectively) become a common part of the average deck.
Battle Compressor,
having released alongside AZ and VS Seeker
cemented the age of low count Supporters. Shaymin-EX
(XY: Roaring Skies 77/108, 106/108), as well as
useful draw/search Items both old and new (Acro Bike,
Bicycle, and Trainers’ Mail) lessened
reliance on your Supporter as your source of draw power.
Together, these meant you could not only afford to burn
your Supporter on something like AZ more often
than in the past, but that you had an efficient means of
getting AZ from deck to hand (usually via the
discard pile) for when you did need it fast. The
heavy Shaymin-EX usage also rewarded including a
copy of AZ, as you could bounce Shaymin-EX
either to reuse the Ability or to simply get it out of
harm's way (and without resorting to attacking with it).
Crobat (XY: Phantom Forces 33/119) with
Golbat (XY: Phantom Forces 32/119;
Generations 31/83) was used to back up various
attackers, whether to provide spread or to effectively
up the damage against the opponent’s Active. Since
it was both the Stage 1 and Stage 2 you wanted to return
to hand, Super Scoop Up and AZ were
preferably to Devolution Spray. Several
vicious attackers that were able to rebuild in a single
turn became almost commonplace. Deck that could
quickly attach/reattach Energy might pack this as an
alternative to Max Potion that VS Seeker
could recycle and which Item lock could not block, but
the number of strong attackers that used a single Energy
(whether a Double Colorless Energy or something
itself easy to recycle) kept growing. Use of
Pokémon to wall also increased; Wailord-EX for
its stall/mill deck but also things like an opening
Aegislash-EX or Wobbuffet (XY: Phantom
Forces 36/119; Generations RC11/RC32).
Even tricks like bouncing your own Vileplume (XY:
Ancient Origins 3/98) to re-enable Items, before
playing Oddish, Gloom, and Vileplume
down again that same turn thanks to Forest of Giant
Plants.
So… that also
explains most of why it will be missed in
Standard as well as why it remains important for
Expanded play. Were it to be suddenly reprinted,
sure some of those tricks I mentioned are no longer
Standard legal, but enough remain that AZ would
be welcomed, especially in light of
the only other
generic bounce (Super Scoop Up) also having left Standard play.
Nearly a must run for Limited play as well; skip it if
you’re trying to build a deck around a single, strong
Basic (like a Pokémon-EX). I mean that you
literally are running only that one Basic
Pokémon, a +39 deck; you cannot bounce without losing.
So for all the decks that are using more than one Basic,
of course you include this. All the general usage
combos are more likely to come up and probably more
likely to swing the game than in Constructed play, and
you won’t have another Supporter you could be using
instead most turns. If you pull it along something
like the Crobat-Golbat line (which is in
this set), you might have a real power play. The
only reason I’m not ranking it as high as I did for
Limited play the first time is because I approach
scoring for that format a little differently than I once
did. It still scores quite high, it is just that
it has a legitimate risk of not showing up at the right
time.
Ratings
Standard:
N/A
Expanded:
3.75/5
Limited:
4.35/5
Summary:
AZ is one of the three main forms of bounce used
in Expanded play (the other two are Scoop Up Cyclone
and Super Scoop Up), and until the September 1st
rotation a single copy was more or less a staple in
Standard play as well. I probably should have had
us bundle AZ and Super Scoop Up together
as a two-in-one review; I mean they were close enough in
the countdown.
AZ
amassed 31 voting points, two above yesterday’s
Blacksmith and three below tomorrow’s pick.
This is another card I think we collectively lowballed;
I had AZ as my fourth place pick because again,
it is either a loose, near, or once-per-deck staple.
Some decks did skip it, but most I remember wanted a
copy (sometimes two), and that is before we got to the
decks that really focused on bounce (and might run even
more copies).
|
Zach Carmichael |
Today’s Card of the day is AZ
from Phantom Forces. Much like Super Scoop Up
but in Supporter form, AZ allows a Pokemon to be
brought back to your hand, but unlike its Item
counterpart forces you to discard whatever was on it,
whether it be Energy or Tool cards. It became a one-of
staple in most competitive decks in Standard because of
its versatility, acting both as a switch and heal card.
While Olympia from Generations is in some
ways a replacement, AZ will be sorely missed in
the new Primal Clash-on rotation.
Many decks in Standard revolved
around AZ as part of their strategies. For
example, Golbat and Crobat from Phantom
Forces provided constant damage spread thanks to
their “Sneaky Bite” Abilities. AZ enabled these
cards to be used multiple times by devolving them in an
instant, potentially setting up combos where you could
play back down multiple bats in a given turn. Right
before the rotation, a Vileplume “Toolbox” deck
emerged at Regional and National Championships, using
attackers like Jolteon-EX and Regice to
counter most of the format’s popular decks. Because
Vileplume had such a high retreat cost and locked
yourself from playing Items, players would max their
counts of AZ to get around this. A clever play,
it allowed you to scoop up your Pokemon in a pinch and
let yourself use Items freely, only to play down
Vileplume and put the lock in place once again
thanks to Forest of Giant Plants. This deck is
still seen in the current format, but clearly it is much
weaker because AZ is no longer with us. Players now use
Manaphy-EX’s “Aqua Tube” Ability and play Rainbow
and Water Energy as a way to retreat freely, as
well as Olympia, but these cards just aren’t the
same as AZ.
AZ will continue to see play
in Expanded. Again, it serves as a one-of in most decks
because its effect is simply too strong not to include
it. Being able to scoop up a damaged Pokemon is huge,
allowing you to prevent unnecessary prizes being taken
and freeing your bench space. Vileplume decks are fairly
popular in Expanded, as are Seismitoad/Crobat decks.
Wailord-EX is a natural partner to AZ, too.
Being able to heal off damage from its massive 250 HP is
huge (it ultimately finished 2nd at this past
US Nationals and took the tournament by complete
surprise), but this deck isn’t really played in Expanded
due to mass amounts of Vespiquen and Item lock, not to
mention that Karen was recently printed,
preventing Wailord-EX from stalling to the point
of decking out your opponent.
Ratings
Standard: N/A
Expanded: 4/5
Limited: 4/5
Summary: AZ was a
great utility card in Standard and was used in nearly
every competitive deck. Olympia is a sufficient
as a switch card, but otherwise it is lackluster
replacement. Vileplume Toolbox decks will continue to be
popular, but unfortunately they take a huge hit in
consistency from losing AZ, now having to rely on
the clunkiness of benching Manaphy-EX and playing
Water Energy to provide a means to retreat with
“Aqua Tube.” Here’s to hoping we will see a number of
reprints in Evolutions and other upcoming
expansions, as many of these cards rotating will be
greatly missed.
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