Today we look at the number nine card
from our Top 10 Promising Picks of
Plasma Freeze,
Team Plasma Badge!
Behold the power of
accessorizing!
Stats
Miscellaneous:
Team Plasma Badge is a Team Plasma
card, allowing it access to their
support.
Category:
For want of a better name, this is where
I point out that this is a Trainer.
While obvious, I needed a place
to point out that Trainers in general
have two pieces of support in the
current format;
Skyla to search them from your deck
and
Dowsing Machine to retrieve them
from your discard pile.
It seemed silly to have to bring
this up in the Usage section as if it
were a specific combo.
Type:
Team Plasma Badge is an Item, a Type
of Trainer.
There are a few ways to block
their usage in Modified;
Zebstrika (BW: Next Destinies
48/99) and
Dragonite (BW: Plasma Freeze
83/116) do so via attacks while
Gothitelle (BW: Emerging Powers
47/98) has an Ability that prevents
Items from being played while it is
Active.
Exploud (BW: Plasma Storm
107/135) has an attack to reveal the
opponent’s hand and discard any Items
found there as well.
Dragonite is new and seems to be
generating a lot of buzz, while the
others have not seen any recent play in
the competitive scene.
I’ll explain later why you can’t
completely count any of them out.
The only worthwhile piece of support for
Items is
Sableye (BW: Dark Explorers
62/108), though its Junk Hunt attack has
proven potent indeed in the right decks,
reclaiming two Items from the discard
pile.
Not every deck can afford to run
a 70 HP Basic Pokémon and have it
attack, or the (D) Energy requirement of
the attack, but those that can usually
do.
Sub-Type:
Team Plasma Badge is a Pokémon Tool,
which gives it just a little more
support than other Items, but also makes
it more vulnerable both because some
effects specifically target Pokémon
Tools and Items in play, as well as the
fact that being in play just gives the
opponent more opportunities to affect it
than a normal Item that would have to be
targeted in the deck, hand, or discard
pile.
It is also important to remember
that as you only can equip one Pokémon
Tool to a Pokémon at a time, there is
effectively a “Tool slot” resource
factor in the game; many a good Pokémon
Tool hasn’t seen play because there was
a better one to run in its stead.
There are multiple attacks that can
target and discard Pokémon Tools in
play, as well as a few that reward
Pokémon Tool usage/punish lack of use,
but none see serious play to my
knowledge, so I’ll focus on
Tool Scrapper.
Tool Scrapper is an Item that
discards up to two Pokémon Tools in
play, something anyone not new to the
game should be familiar with.
Its
use waxes and wanes because the more
everyone expects it and adjusts their
decks accordingly (running fewer Pokémon
Tools), the less are needed and this is
a format where you can’t afford wasted
space in your deck.
There is no similar “support” for
Pokémon Tools that is easy to work into
any deck.
Effect
While it is attached to a Pokémon,
Team Plasma Badge causes that
Pokémon to be treated as if it were a
Team Plasma Pokémon.
This is an effect that has been
longed for since the “affiliated”
Pokémon first started showing up, or at
least since there were beneficial
effects that were applied only to their
own in play.
It is simple and due to the
vulnerability of the card, can’t be
relied upon long term as right now, it
is expected that
Tool Scrapper will remain at least a
piece of tech for the average deck.
For that matter, most Pokémon
that see competitive play are doing good
to last three turns, so unless you are
running multiples, some form of
protection, recursion, etc. this card
needs to be profited from quickly.
Usage
Card Family:
Now that we have BW: Plasma Freeze,
the Team Plasma card family has become a
lot more robust.
Team Plasma Badge benefits directly
from
Metagross (BW: Plasma Freeze
52/116), which can search it from your
deck via its Ability, though that is
pretty selective as most decks won’t be
able to run a Stage 2 just for that.
It can be reclaimed from the
discard pile via
Shadow Triad.
I do not think any other Team
Plasma support benefits it directly,
though as it enables the equipped
Pokémon to access Team Plasma support
that targets Pokémon in play, more cards
help it indirectly.
Combos:
The two major combos I see being
experimented with the most right now are
using
Team Plasma Badge to enable a
Pokémon to receive
Plasma Energy from the deck via
Colress Machine and to enjoy +10
points of damage to Active Pokémon while
attacking thanks to
Deoxys EX and its “Power Connection”
Ability.
Many Pokémon with expensive
and/or under powered attacks are worth a
second glance if they had decent effects
now.
Also worth mentioning is that
Team Plasma Badge would also protect
plain Pokémon from the effects of
Frozen City and how
Snorlax [Plasma] benefits indirectly
from
Team Plasma Badge; it allows you to
support it with non-Team Plasma Pokémon
while still being able to reach the full
potential of its Teampact attack.
Lastly, this would be another
Pokémon Tool that
Garbodor (BW: Dragons Exalted
54/124) could take advantage of… just
don’t try to combo it with Abilities.
Future:
Japan
has some more Team Plasma cards we
haven’t received yet, as well as having
gotten cards that counter-Team Plasma
Pokémon; I don’t think that will ruin
Team Plasma Badge but it would affect
its usage.
There are also a few cards more
cards that support Pokémon Tool usage;
perhaps they will be worth running or
may even reinvigorate what we do have
that does not see much play.
Ratings
Unlimited:
I cannot think of any first-turn-win
decks that would benefit from this more
than their normal support.
This does unlock a lot of combos
that I haven’t had time to explore,
including for some lock decks, and most
importantly there is just a certain
degree of “fun” that comes from creating
a Team Plasma Rocket deck, and that is
worth something to me.
3/5
Modified:
Already there are multiple deck lists
going around where this is a key card;
despite the risk of it being discarded
by attack or
Tool Scrapper, the two major combos
mentioned earlier happen on your own
turn, so you should still have generated
advantage with the card.
A new “pseudo archetype” seems to
have arisen with this card as its
lynchpin.
4/5
Limited:
Reminding us why I need to explain
scores,
Team Plasma Badge is useless unless
you have non-Team Plasma Pokémon and
Team Plasma support it would enable to
you tap (I don’t recall any generic,
beneficial, Pokémon Tool-enabled
effects).
The only reason to run it without
those is to try and psych out your
opponent, which would result in a
minimum score.
If you do have something like
this, the card pretty much becomes a
must run even if the odds of you having
both out at the same time are low.
3.25/5
Summary
Team Plasma Badge
is a card full of promise; I have
already designed a few “Plasma Proxy”
decks myself though they are currently
untested.
Others are farther along than I
am, and reporting enough success to keep
me optimistic and confident that this is
a great card.
On my own Top 10 list,
Team Plasma Badge secured the number
seven slot, two places higher than on
the group average.
