Pokemon Card of the Day - Pokemon Tips - Pojo.com

Heidi Craig 2000 WCSTS Champion	Team Magma and Team Aqua Schemer Modified 2.5/5 These are decent search for the modified format. As some of the other search go away these trainers would be pretty good. The do limit you because you have to discard a Pokemon and sometimes that isn't possible. Unlimited 1/5 There is better search for this format. Draft 5/5 They rock for search in this format. The Team Magma vs Team Aqua prerelease's were the first in a long time that had great search and everybody loved it.
x-act	Team Aqua/Magma Schemer First of all, this is not X-Act’s return to COTDing. This is just meant to be a surprise (pleasant or bitter, depending on whether you love me or hate me). As you will probably notice from this COTD, my Pokemon knowledge is very rusty, so you might want to take my advices with a pinch of salt. Heed my advices at your own risk. That said, these cards are interesting. You discard a Pokemon from your hand, and draw 3 cards. Or 4 if that Pokemon was a Team Magma Pokemon, in the case of Team Magma Schemer, or a Team Aqua Pokemon in the case of Team Aqua Schemer. Drawing 4 cards is pretty good, but the cost to do it is pretty high. And don’t even bother to use any of these cards if you’re not playing any Team Magma/Aqua Pokemon… in that case, Bill’s Maintenance is better. Unlimited: In Unlimited they’re not worth it, not even if you’re playing Team Magma/Aqua Pokemon. Stick to the tried and tested card drawing here. 2/5 Modified: Team Magma Schemer makes a (rather convoluted) combo with Maxie. You first discard the Team Magma Pokemon to draw 4 cards, then next turn (because both Team Magma Schemer and Maxie are Supporters) you get it back from the discard pile and put it in play with Maxie. Granted, since you had the Pokemon in your hand, you could have played it with Maxie immediately, but you ruin the opportunity to draw 4 cards. Another card that combos with Team Magma Schemer (and with Maxie) is Team Magma’s Mightyena (the Call For Help one). You could use it to get Team Magma Pokemon quickly with Maxie and/or for sheer card drawing using Team Magma Schemer (or both). Team Aqua Schemer has a similar combo with Team Aqua’s Mightyena (the one with Aqua Call attack). Aqua Call lets you get 3 Team Aqua Pokemon in your hand. This is weaker though because you limit the use of Archie in this way. Thus Team Magma Schemer is slightly better than Team Aqua Schemer here. 3/5 for Team Magma Schemer, 2.5/5 for Team Aqua Schemer Draft: Well draft them. It’s sheer card drawing, and even if you don’t draft too many Team Magma/Aqua Pokemon, drawing three cards is still nice. 5/5
Thundachu	Team Aqua Schemer and Team Magma Schemer Overview: Both cards do the same thing, pretty much. Team Magma Schemer allows you to discard a pokemon from your hand and draw 3 cards, and if you discarded a Team Magma pokemon, you get to draw 4 while Team Aqua schemer lets you do the same, but if you discarded Team Aqua, you get 4 cards. Kind of like a Juggler with Pokemon. Pretty good for getting cards out such as Blaziken ex, as well as it's evolutions, but could come out bad. I actually prefer Team Aqua because IMO, Team Aqua has more better cards which you might be able to draw than Team Magma. Unlimited: No. Use Oak or Bill if you're just using them for Draw power, and if you're using them for search, use Computer Search. 2/5 Modified: Pretty good here. Try and get out Blaziken ex and such, but I still think Copycat and Oracle are better. 3/5 Draft: Any draw power in Draft is good. 5/5 Sealed Deck: Kind of like draft and Draw power is good in both, but if you're sealed decking with EX Team Magma vs Team Aqua, it is espeacilly good, to get out your good cards in your deck. 5/5
Jermy101	These cards are good in decks that use lots of Magma or Aqua cards. Most of the Magma/Aqua pokemon are weak so this trainer would be most usable in fun decks. TV Reporter is pretty much better than this, since you can draw cards and THEN discard 1. Unlimited - No. There are better trainers out there. Plus no Magma/Aqua pokemon are good in unlim. 1/5 Modified - Use TV Reporter. 2/5 Limited - A great card in draft. Anything that draws cards is good. 4/5
Bullados	Advantages: Card Advantage. This is something that we haven’t really had a whole ton of in the Modified format, and it gives the whole scene a very major shot in the arm. Card Advantage for Team Discard. This greatly helps the TATM cards in that most of them really aren’t all that good without some type of giant advantage to using them. Disadvantages: Others are better. This is very simple. Juggler is better b/c it gives you more cards for a much more replaceable commodity, energy. TV Reporter is better b/c you can discard anything, and aren’t limited to Pokemon only. Very limited in abililties. This is just the nature of the card. The very nature of the card makes it virtually unusable in any deck outside of TATM decks. Unlimited: Worthless. None of the TATM Pokemon are really worth using in this format. By default, this makes TA/TM Schemer a little worse. Also, you have to discard a truely precious commodity in Unlimited, a Pokemon, and that isn’t worth 3 extra cards in this format. 1.5/5 Modified: Not much better. It’s only useful in TATM decks, and only TA Walrein is really worth using as a main attacker. In that deck, it’s decent at best, because Pokemon are a very precious commodity in Modified. Don’t use it unless it’s all you’ve got. 2.5/5 Limited: Here, it’s good. All the cards are TATM cards, and individual Pokemon are more expendible because about half of your deck will be Pokemon. Also, draw is very precious in Limited, and you need to run as much of all of it as you possibly can. 4.75/5 (Archie and the Balls are better)
Otaku	Note: these two cards are almost identical, and I’ll often refer to them as one card. They are not, but they are almost identical, only differing in “team allegiance” which affects name and which Pokémon trigger the added effect… Name: Team Aqua Schemer Set/Card#: Team Magma Vs. Team Aqua, #/69/97 Type: Trainer Sub-type: Supporter Card Text: You can only play one Supporter card each turn. When you play this card, put it next to your Active Pokémon. When your turn ends, discard this card. Discard any 1 Pokémon from your hand. Then draw 3 cards. If you discarded a Pokémon with Team Aqua in its name, draw 4 cards instead. Name: Team Magma Schemer Set/Card#: Team Magma Vs. Team Aqua, #/70/97 Type: Trainer Sub-type: Supporter Card Text: You can only play one Supporter card each turn. When you play this card, put it next to your Active Pokémon. When your turn ends, discard this card. Discard any 1 Pokémon from your hand. Then draw 3 cards. If you discarded a Pokémon with Team Magma in its name, draw 4 cards instead. Attributes: This is a Trainer, and a Supporter at that. That means that it’s easy to run, but you will probably drop another Supporter that does the same thing for it so as not to slow your deck down. I don’t think this would have been good any other way. Abilities: Draw Power with a modest discard cost. As long as you have a Pokémon in hand, you can use this. Most of the time, that’s what I end up discarding for TV Reporter anyway, since I don’t run the decks that need Energy in the discard and that’s what I can usually safely chuck. What keeps this from being as good as TV Reporter is not really that, but that you discard before you draw your cards. Of course, this would be hard to do differently-if you discarded afterward, but didn’t have a Pokémon and counted on drawing one… yeah, that’d be a mess. I guess they could have made it so that you just had to show a Pokémon card to your opponent, then stuck in the two draw clauses, then required you discard a Pokémon adding that if you showed one with the Team name, you had to discard one with the Team name, but that’s really complicated. So yeah, this is probably the best way to do it. Uses/Combinations: If you have a good Pokémon count for your deck, especially if there are a lot of the appropriate team’s Pokémon, this is a great source of draw power. Between this, Juggler, and TV Reporter, we finally have good, balanced “pure” draw power (as opposed to “cycling” with things like POR or Copycat). Oh, and to state the obvious, you can use a Town Volunteers to offset the discards quite easily the following turn. There are also some Pokémon tricks that come to mind with this, such as discarding an Omanyte or Kabuto with Underground Lake in play to get those Pokémon in play first turn. Ratings Unlimited: 1.5/5-Only consider it if you are running a deck with the appropriate Team’s theme (and that doesn’t look likely). Modified/2-on-2/TMP: 3.25/5-Note, that’s only because it’s still the lesser form of “general” draw power when compared to the standard fair for this format… but in a Team themed deck treat it like its half a point (.5) higher. Limited: 4.25/5-While still not ridiculously powerful, any draw is usually good in this format, and this is a set where almost every Pokémon is Team affiliated, meaning you can probably almost always get 4 cards with it. Summary A good, balanced source of draw power for modified, but definitely not something you’d use outside of a hardcore Team Aqua/Magma themed deck in Unlimited. -Otaku

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