Name: Poké Blower +
Set: Stormfront
Card#: 88/100
Rarity: Uncommon
Type: Trainer
Sub-Type: Trainer
Text: You may play 2 Poké Blower + at the
same time. If you play 1 Poké Blower +, flip a
coin. If heads, place 1 damage counter on 1 of
your opponent’s Pokémon. If you play 2 Poké
Blower +, choose 1 of your opponent’s Benched
Pokémon and switch it with 1 of your opponent’s
Active Pokémon.
Attributes: This is another normal Trainer
card, like its siblings earlier this week. Easy to
play, easy to run, that is the Trainer way.
Effect(s): If you play one copy at a time, it
is a big gamble for a little bit of damage. Still,
if it’s a 50% chance of taking a prize for that last
10 damage… well we all played Pokémon Reversal
and that was just a 50% chance of getting the
Pokémon up front to KO it with an attack. Speaking
of bench manipulation, the effect when playing two
copies at once is… Gust of Wind! That is
right, one of the ancient “power cards” is amongst
the new “Poke Trainer +” series of cards.
Uses and
Combinations: Staple? As a reminder, I am
returning to the game from a hiatus I didn’t really
want to take, and before that I had a low level of
activity. So it’s possible I missed where this
wouldn’t be a staple, but that seems unlikely. Yes,
that is exactly what I said about Poké Drawer +,
but it is just as true here. Gust of Wind
was named Gust of Win for a reason. Well,
probably a two reasons: someone mistyped it once and
then someone else realized it was cleverly true. I
can’t imagine decks are so all powerful now that
they have no Pokémon they want to keep benched or
set up a bench full of attackers so that forcing up
front an underpowered Pokémon can no longer stall.
This card is why I was so uncertain of how many
copies of Poké Drawer + to run: I can’t tell
if you’d run four of each card, eating up an
enormous eight slots in your deck, or two of one and
four of the other. In Unlimited, you could get by
with just two Gust of Wind because you had
both Computer Search to fetch it directly
from the deck and Item Finder to
recycle a spent copy. That kind of combo doesn’t
exist to my knowledge in Modified (and I glad it
doesn’t) so I don’t know if I’d run four copies of
this so that I could fake a Gust of Wind
twice or if I’d run four of Poké Drawer + so
that I could set up faster and/or trade them for two
copies of Poké Blower +.
Ratings
Unlimited: 2/5 – Unlike the last two cards,
Bench Manipulation has always been heavily available
here. You have Gust of Wind, Double Gust,
and combos that recycle your cards to never really
need to run two to four “half” copies of Gust of
Win. In fact, the first, smaller effect may be
handier here: retreating a Pokémon that just
survived via Focus Band isn’t unheard of.
Modified: 4.5/5 – Like I said, its
predecessor was nicknamed “Gust of Win” for a
reason: bring out the easy kill, or force them to
work to get another beater up front and going. The
real question is if you’ll risk just running two or
work hard to cram two more into your deck.
Limited: 3.5/5 – It scores so well here
because you can almost guarantee something will be
critically injured and hiding on the Bench… so even
that first effect is golden in spite of it being
flip based. So a single copy is well worth
playing. Any additional copies just makes it a must
run.
Summary
Ah, to run four of this and two of Poké Drawer +,
or two of Poké Blower + and four of Poké
Drawer +? One really might have to make room
for four copies of each in a deck. Having what
amounts of two Gust of Wind will pay for the
card investment, as I imagine would two “double”
Computer Search, even if it is harder to pull
off in both cases. I will add that since it can
actually earn a Prize directly, the first effect
here may be the strongest even though it is a flip
and often would be the least helpful.
-Otaku
