Lost Blender #1a – Top 11 Cards of Lost Thunder

aroramage

So we finally come to our third week in the Top 11 of Lost Thunder, and if you hadn’t figured out what’s going on, then today’s card ought to be a major clue or hint or dead giveaway as to what we’re reviewing for the majority of this week. That’s right, our #1 card is actually a group of cards committed to the recently released Lost March strategy!

Lost Blender is the Item that you’ll likely see a lot of in such decks, as it lets you put 2 cards in your hand into the Lost Zone in order to draw 1 card. Normally, this isn’t that great of an effect – you’re removing 2 cards from the game just to draw 1 card, which in terms of card economy, that’s a -2. Generally pretty bad, considering we have cards that can draw you 3 cards, 5 cards, 6 cards, 7 cards, and even 8 cards under the right circumstances.

But Lost March is where Lost Blender can really shine. You’ll see more of the Lost March Pokemon this week if you haven’t already seen them being played around with, but the general gist of it is that Lost March does 20 damage for every Pokemon in your Lost Zone – except for Pokemon <Prism>. So having a card like Lost Blender that can actively put Pokemon into the Lost Zone is pretty good; on its own, it can add 40 damage to each Lost March attack.

Lost Blender’s a big part of the deck as a result, but outside of that, it doesn’t really do a whole lot of good. It’s not necessarily a bad card, but it takes out too much that you need to be benefiting from in some manner that you can’t really afford to play it in other decks, in my opinion. A must-run for Lost March, but a must-avoid everywhere else.

Rating

Standard: 2.5/5 (ultimately a 50/50 kind of score)

Expanded: 2.5/5 (just cause it draws a card and is an Item doesn’t mean it’s good)

Limited: 2/5 (case and point, you might get some Lost March here, but Lost Blender takes away a lot of stuff here that, if you’re not building around that mechanic, you’re going to lose out)

Arora Notealus: Lost Blender was designed to make use of the Lost Zone in ways that we hadn’t really seen before. Most of the time, when the Lost Zone was involved, it was a place to either be removing problem cards that could make things difficult or building up to the Lost World victory condition. Here, we’ve got a few cards in the set that build up on the Lost Zone in different ways – usually as a means of winning the game.

Next Time: Another big combo piece in many Lost March decks!

Vince

Lost Blender (SM Lost Thunder 181/214, 233/214) is an item card that lets you put two cards from you hand into the Lost Zone and draw a card afterward. In isolation, this seems to be the worst card; would any deck would use Lost Blender knowing that they can’t get those two cards back by any means just to draw a card? Definitely not, I would use Acro Bike or Custom Catcher for draw power. However, there are certain cards that interact with the Lost Zone and would love to capitalize it by putting cards in the Lost Zone in the first place.

There are couple things that I can think of that would want to use Lost Blender. Raikou (SM Lost Thunder 79/214) would want a single Lightning energy so that Lost Voltage would do 120 damage instead of 30. With nothing to mess with the Lost Zone, the damage boost will not be disrupted. But there is Ampharos (SM Lost Thunder 78/214) whose ability puts two L energy into the Lost Zone and paralyze the Defending Pokemon, but it is a Stage 2, which makes it harder to get Ampharos into play just for the ability. So it makes sense for Lost Blender to fulfill your duty quicker.

Another example is Lost March variant. As it does 20 damage for each Pokémon (except Prism Star Pokemon) in the Lost Zone, you will want Lost Blender to quickly fuel your damage output. Each Lost Blender will be an effective +40 before Weakness and Resistance, as long as you got two Pokémon in your hand to send those to the Lost Zone. However, there are few Pokémon that can send itself from your hand into the Lost Zone without needing Lost Blender. Trumbeak (SM Lost Thunder 165/214) can put itself from your hand into the Lost Zone via ability, as well as having a chance to put the top card of your opponent’s deck into the Lost Zone if that card was a Supporter card. Not something to heavily rely, but it can be a nice bonus.

Another ingredient for Lost March that doesn’t always need Lost Blender is Skiploom (SM Lost Thunder 13/214), whose ability lets you put this Pokemon and all cards attached to it into the Lost Zone. Then, a Stage 2 Jumpluff will takes it’s place from your deck. With both Hoppip and Skiploom in the Lost Zone, that fuels up Lost March by 40 more damage. Eventually, Trumbeak, Hoppip, and Skiploom will be enough to reach satisfying damage output to OHKO anything in the game…without needing to use Lost Blender at all. Makes it sound like Lost Blender is not essential to this deck.

And then there’s another Pokémon that needs Lost Blender for the sake of lowering your hand size. Pretty unusual, but it greatly helps out Granbull (SM Lost Thunder 138/214) because it’s All Out Attack does 30 plus 130 more damage if your hand has no cards. Put in a Choice Band, and Granbull will be OHKOing things like most Basic EX/GX, while still being worth a single prize. A dedicated Granbull deck would not have any draw supporters but lots of insta-play items.

That’s what I can think of, so looks like Lost Blender will see use in very few decks. It is a combo card, so I can’t give Lost Blender too much credit. Even if you want to use it as draw power, there are better options out there, regardless of what format you’re in.

Ratings:

• Standard: 3/5
• Expanded: 3/5
• Limited: 3/5

Average scores across the board, I cannot being myself to determine if this is a good card or not because it serves a purpose and is good at it….but near-useless on others.

21times
PokeDeck
Central

Lost Blender (LOT 181) joins the growing list of household appliances that are making their way into the Pokemon Trading Card Game.  Yes, along with Metal Frying Pan, Leaf Blower, and the various Rotoms, Lost Blender is just another item you might find lying around the house in your daily life that has somehow made it into the Pokemon TCG.  Well, maybe if you were Ash Ketchum they’d be lying around your house, but at any rate, they’re part of the meta of the card game, and Lost Blender has instantly become a significantly impactful card in the meta.

Lost Blender finds its greatest utility in the Lost March archetype.  I run it as a four of in all of my builds.  Prior to the release of LOT, most people didn’t feel that it was as necessary to run four copies.  My Lost March builds, however, typically include about thirty Pokemon, and Lost Blender is a four of for me to ensure that I can get as many Pokemon in the Lost Zone as quickly possible. 

I’ve had a ton of success with this archetype (36 W 16 L in my last 52 games with it… it took me about seven matches to really figure it out), and I credit that success to being able to get ten or twelve or more Pokemon in the Lost Zone by turn three at latest.  If you’re just running four Trumbeak, a 4-4-4 line of Jumpluff, and a couple of Leles, yeah you shouldn’t be running Lost Blender in your build at all.  But you’re also going to struggle mightily to get to 200+ damage until you’ve probably gone down by two, three, or even four prizes.  Especially if you prize multiple Hoppips and Skiplooms. 

Lost Blender has also found its way into the Granbull archetype, many of which had tremendous success this weekend at the Latin American Regional Championship in Brazil.  I’m not going to rant today – I’m saving up my rantage for Friday – but it’s pretty clear that the designers did NOT expect Granbull to be as good it is.  Again, I’ll defer my vociferation, but in light of Granbull and cards I’ll be complaining about we’ll be discussing on Friday, it certainly looks like the designers of the game need to do a better job of testing cards.  But Lost Blender does help thin out the hand for Granbull decks so they can get down to zero cards in hand.  I’m not sure what count they run, but it seems like they carry at least two, and possibly four.  At any rate, Lost Blender is a card that will only see more usage as we get new cards into the format that have abilities or attacks that involve getting cards into the Lost Zone.

Rating

Standard: 3.5 out of 5

Conclusion

So I’m trying to decide what’s next: Lost Toaster or the Pokemon Microwave?  Maybe a Prism Star Toothbrush?  Alarm Clock GX?  In all seriousness, I almost gave this card a four because I’m sure we’ll get more cards in the future that will benefit from it.  Right now, however, it’s pretty much limited to two archetypes.  Granted, you could run it in decks other than Lost March or Granbull, and it gets you an extra card, maybe more if you have Oranguru (SUM) on the bench, maybe the perfect card with Magcargo (CES).  But right now we have no way to retrieve any cards from the Lost Zone, so if you do run the Blender, you have to be prepared to permanently sacrifice the two cards you banish off to that dim dark corner of the board.

Otaku

As you know from reading the others’ reviews, we are not exactly reviewing our number one top pick from our countdown of the latest expansion.  Why?  We had a group of closely interrelated cards we not only didn’t clearly define (some of us may have meant two cards, some may have meant up to five) but which straddled the line between being so related that you can’t really review the most important one or two without looking at the others but we’d already learned from Japan that some of these cards were indeed being used separately from the others!  So, my imperfect solution was using most of this week to cover the collective that made up our first-place pick individually.  In fact, the numbering is so last minute don’t be surprised if the other reviewers don’t even refer to most of these as “number one”; I originally was just going to call most of them “Special” reviews because… I couldn’t think of anything better and was resisting the simplest, most effective solution.

We begin with Lost Blender (SM – Lost Thunder 181/214; 233/214), a Trainer-Item that has you send two cards from your hand to the Lost Zone in order to draw a card from your deck.  Drawing a single card can be handy, especially when it comes from an Item and is combined with the “Smooth Over” Ability of Magcargo (SM – Celestial Storm 24/168) or the effect of Mallow.  Even in total isolation, it can be good for decks that need radical speed or thinning.  A major sticking point could be the rest of the effect, which is really a cost though the wording did give me pause.  You must send two cards from your hand to the Lost Zone to play Lost Blender from hand, as opposed to “…doing as much as you can…” as is the case with pure effects.  Why am I fixated on such a thing?  It matters for things like the “All Out” attack on Granbull (SM – Lost Thunder 138/214) that might want to simply clear out your hand.  Which is a partially confirmed use for this card; we saw it in a Japanese Granbull list that took ninth-place at the Champions League Tokyo but out of the available results from the Sao Paulo International Championship from November 16th, the Granbull deck that took second seems to have replaced it with Fiery Flint (and the deck runs no [R] Energy).

Technically, Lost Blender makes sense in a wide variety of decks; anything that can spare fodder for the Lost Zone and need to be really fast or combo with Magcargo and/or Mallow.  There may be more reliable options for turbo decks (like Acro Bike), and those two top-decking effects are regularly combined with the likes of Oranguru (Sun & Moon 113/149; SM – Black Star Promos SM13) and Zoroark-GX.  So let us focus on two other decks that actually want certain cards in the Lost Zone.  The first is unproven, or perhaps has already failed, but I’m not giving up hope on it yet: Raikou (SM – Lost Thunder 79/214).  While its 120 HP isn’t as beefy as it once was, especially in a metagame where decks like to run strong [F] Type attackers, for [LC] it can swing for 30 damage… or 120 if you have any [L] Energy in your Lost Zone.  Throw Thunder Mountain {*} (for as long as it can last), Choice Band (maybe Choice Helmet) and Electropower and we’re almost to something worth braving the [F] Weakness.  Ampharos (SM – Lost Thunder 78/214) could be used instead of or in addition to Lost Blender, and while its Ability is useful, I think we’ll need something like an Ampharos-GX to make it worth the effort.

The other deck option is one that did show up in both Tokyo and Sao Paulo: Lost March.  It didn’t place super high, but given the size of the events, making the Top 64 is still pretty good.  Lost March uses either Jumpluff (SM – Lost Thunder 14/214) and/or Natu (SM – Lost Thunder 87/214), and it seems like a slower, less nimble Night March.  It makes the trade-off of its “Lost March” attack doing 20 damage per Pokémon in your Lost Zone excluding {*} (Prism Star) Pokémon.  There are a few tricks this set to help it out, but Lost Blender is one of two generic, easy-to-use options… and you’ll need them to get enough fodder to OHKO some of the more massive Stage 2 Pokémon-GX in the game.

Put it all together, and Lost Blender is so-so generic support that fills a valuable niche in at least identified decks so far… but the most successful of those may be dropping it, and one is totally unproven (arguably disproved in the short term) for Standard Format play.  We don’t have Expanded Format results for it, but I’m honestly intrigued about its use there especially because of how Expanded deals with Night March.  Some tricks will work on both, but anything worried about the discard pile will have a reduced or possibly no effect on Lost March!  I’m cautiously optimistic about it, here.  Of course, it is a must-run for the Limited Format; you’re quite likely to have some cards you can easily spare in your hand but something useful buried in your deck.  If you also pull what you need for Lost March or a Raikou deck, look out!  Yes, Granbull is in this set but emptying out your hand can be quite difficult at a Limited Format Event such as a Pre-Release; decks tend to be Pokémon and Energy heavy.

Ratings

Standard: 3.25/5

Expanded: 3/5

Limited: 3.5/5

Lost Blender is an odd mix of general and niche usage.  It is so-so at the former but excels at the latter, but we don’t yet know how valuable the niche it fills will prove.  Early results aren’t overly promising, but neither are all hopes dashed.  There is also a bit of a paradox; its most obvious use, in Lost March, could use more cards like Lost Blender but if we get too many of those, we may not need Lost Blender for Lost March.  This is probably a card you should snag a full playset for sooner rather than later, but compared to a lot of stuff on this countdown, the priority is much lower unless you’re trying for a deck you already know needs it.