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Pojo's Pokemon Card of the Day

		Sage's Training HS Undaunted Date Reviewed: September 21, 2010 Ratings & Reviews Summary Modified: 2.25 Limited: 3.50 Ratings are based on a 1 to 5 scale. 1 being the worst.  3 ... average.   5 is the highest rating. Back to the main COTD Page
Combos With:

Baby Mario 2010 UK National Seniors Champion	Sage’s Training  Sage’s Training sound like some mystical martial arts ordeal that you have to go through to get special abilities. A bit like Po in Kung Fu Panda. That’s all well and good, but will it give you what you need to win a game of Pokémon, hmmmmm?  Well, it’s a Supporter, and you only get to play one of those per turn, so it had better be good. As with most Supporters, the effect is fairly simple: you get to look at the top five cards of your deck, choose 2 and discard the rest.  Being able to dig through five cards is great. Other draw Supporters (like Professor Oak’s Visit) tend to give you the top three cards at most. Engineer’s Adjustments draws four, but at the cost of an Energy discard. The cost with Sage’s Training can be pretty high too: discarding three cards could be costly, and won’t always be an easy decision, especially if you don’t hit want you want.  In fact, if you are trying to dig for a specific, unsearchable card, the almost unplayed  Cynthia’s Guidance is slightly more useful as that gives you one from seven AND you get to shuffle the others back in. As for straight draw, I’d probably stick with safer options like Uxie, or hand refresh cards like Professor Oak’s New Theory. I could maybe see this working in a really niche deck – such as an insane turbo Legend deck with Legend Box that needs to thin itself as fast as possible. It might even be worth a go in a Garchomp LV X based deck, discarding Pokémon and Energy to get back with Restore.  Those are pretty way out examples though. For more conventional decks, stick with the more conventional Supporter line up of Bebe’s, Collectors, etc.   Rating  Modified: 2 (not worth it, unless you are playing something really weird that can make use of its discarding) Limited: 4 (no problem discarding the rubbish cards here)
Mad Mattezhion  Professor Bathurst League Australia	Sage's Training (HS Undaunted)   Sorry I have been out of comission, I will catch up on the reviews I have missed and plan on really big reviews for Vileplume and Heatran Lv X, I hope you find that they were worth the wait. More reviews later in the week.   I have mixed feelings about this card. It can be brutally effective in the right situation, but those situations are so rare.   What we have here today is a Supporter that allows you to look at the top 5 cards of your deck, then choose 2 of those cards to put into your hand. The tradeoff is discarding the 3 other cards you find, which will be a real pain if you find 3 cards you really need and end up sacrificing 1 or more to the discard (Rare Candy and Special energy immediately spring to mind as worst case scenarios).   The comparison to the failed Cynthia's Guidance is obvious, and the discard penalty makes me think that this card is beyond terrible, especially as it uses up your Supporter use for the turn. The only redeeming light I can see is in fact, the discard effect. Witht the loss of Felicity's Drawing, Gyarados decks have taken a major hit. This card could be used to get those Magikarp into the discard, along with any other cards that need to be discarded from the deck. Sadly, the remaining problem is that this card relies on topdecking, rather then Felicity which discarded from the hand. Maybe in conjunction with Slowking HGSS and/or Chatot G, that problem could be overcome but it is a lot cards for a Gyarados deck to invest.   Also, Sage faces competition form Engineer's Adjustments, which discards an energy to draw 4 cards, which is a considerable boost to decks like NinePhlosion and ShayMega that thrive on discrarded energy. For energy acceleration, the Engineer wins hands down.   Possibly, including Bannette PT alongside the Sage would handle all of your discarding needs (with the added bonus of Bannette's low energy attacks, especially if you use Broken Time Space and Memory Berry to access Shuppet PT's Fade Out attack) in any future decks that depend on certain cards being in the discard pile. Only time will tell, but I don't expect to see this card at tournaments (since Bannette would probably do a better job on it's own, save your Supporter use for something more certain).   Modified: 2.5 (great for the gamblers, but gamblers generally don't make the top end of the player spectrum. Use it if you still love Gyarados and don't have Bannette PT) Limited: 3 (discards probably won't kill you here with all of the deck filler, so the limited search/draw is better than nothing) Combos with: Gyarados SF
	Today we look at Sage’s Training.  This is a Supporter which is allows it to be more potent than a Trainer but at the normal Supporter cost of being limited to a single Supporter usage on your turn.  Given the amount of strong Trainer denial in the current Modified Format, this is for the best.  The effect of Sage’s Training you look at the top five cards of your deck, choose any two of them to add to your hand, and then discard the rest.   So, why use this over a straight draw card that usually clocks in at three or four cards added to your hand?  After using it, you’re only up one card over where you started: that’s Bill or Mom’s Kindness level.  The benefit comes from higher quality, deck thinning, and card dumping.  In a game like Yu-Gi-Oh, this is huge.  In Pokémon, it has been at various times.  Ideally, you’ll add two cards to hand that you want there, and three cards to your discard pile you want there.  It becomes win-win.  Worst case scenario is that you pick up five or your best cards… that you just can’t make use of right now.  With a well made deck, is that even likely?  I guess a draw of five Supporters is possible, but highly unlikely.  There are other unpleasant scenarios, like getting your five least useful cards but as long as a few can be used for something that turn, you’re still coming out ahead.   Last format we saw an emphasis on improving your hand via direct search or shuffle-and-draw Supporters, so that is how I tend to think this format as well.  That might turn people off to this card, since it is closer to straight draw than shuffle-and-draw.  Its real use is for decks that need something in the discard, anyway, so most players won’t be running it.  It is especially useful if you have a card that needs a Pokémon in the discard pile, since there aren’t a lot of ways besides being Knocked Out to accomplish that.   I’d like to comment that the art looks pretty good to me, and more important makes sense with the effect.  The picture looks like a monk of some Eastern religion/philosophy (I am not certain which), and the life and training of a monk seems to reflect this card.  That is to say, the life of a monk will often utilize self-denial/sacrifice to attain enlightenment.   Ratings   Modified: 3.5/5   Limited: 4.5/5   I am still selling my former collectables on eBay.  I’ve had a lot of hobbies over the years, so at various times I’ll have comic books, manga, action figures, and video games on the auction block.  You can take a look at what’s up for bids here.  I usually add new stuff on Wednesdays and Saturdays.  I just added almost 30 Game Boy Advance games this last Saturday!  Just a reminder, Pojo is in no way responsible for any transactions and was merely kind enough to let me mention the auctions here. ;)