Welcome to the second week of the Top 10
Promising Picks of Plasma Freeze; we
crack the top five with
Team Plasma Ball (BW: Plasma
Freeze 105/116)!
Stats
Miscellaneous:
Team Plasma Ball belongs to two
different families of cards, the Team
Plasma family and the “Ball”
family; the former is pretty well known
considering the previous set, the
current set, and the next set have
“Plasma” in their names, while the
latter appears to have been abandoned.
If you look up older cards, you
will see
Apricorn Maker, a Supporter that let
you look for up to two Trainers with
“Ball” in their names in your deck and
add them to your hand.
I miss this kind of support.
Type:
Team Plasma Ball is a Trainer-Item.
Notable interactions due to it
being a Trainer are
Skyla can fetch it from your deck
and
Dowsing Machine can reclaim it from
your discard pile.
Notable interactions due to it
being an Item are mostly against it:
Dragonite (BW: Plasma Freeze
83/116) blocking Items with its “Roar”
attack,
Zebstrika (BW: Next Destinies
48/99) is doing the same through its
“Disconnect” attack, and
Gothitelle (BW: Emerging Powers
47/98) blocking Items via its “Magic
Room” Ability.
Sableye (BW: Dark Explorers
62/108) can reclaim it from the discard
with its “Junk Hunt” attack, probably
the only “positive” Item specific effect
in the game that sees competitive play.
Otherwise, Items tend to perform well in
this game because the minimal investment
required to play (at least based on
general mechanics and not specific card
effects) means that you can afford to
benefit from “small” returns.
Effects:
Team Plasma Ball allows you to
search your deck for a Team Plasma
Pokémon.
This is a simple but efficient
effect, naturally favoring Basic Team
Plasma Pokémon over Evolutions; the
latter will need another search card or
be forced to rely on drawing to get
needed lower Stages as only the highest
Stage of the Evolution line is Team
Plasma Affiliated.
Simple seems pretty good, and
this kind of “affiliated Pokémon
support” has been seen since
The Boss’s Way first released in the
original Team Rocket expansion.
Team Plasma Ball,
as a “search” card is technically a
placeholder; technically you never want
it, you want the card it will search for
with two key exceptions: when you don’t
know what you’ll need in the future and
thus it is better to have it than what
might be the wrong Pokémon, or when you
just need a Team Plasma card.
Normally one worries about being
a “dead card”, but in this case when you
need the effect it is great and when you
don’t, its painless discard fodder as
ultimately your deck doesn’t lose
anything by tossing it at that point,
and if forced to discard it earlier
you’re losing potential speed that may
not even ultimately matter.
Usage
Card Family:
Let us begin with the “Ball”
card family.
Right now, there is no support
specific to it and there hasn’t been
since the game was still being handled
outside of
Japan
by Wizards of the Coast; what purpose
does bringing it up have besides my
obsessive attention to such details?
In this case it is because of the
overlap these cards have in usage;
sometimes undermining each other,
sometimes supporting each other.
Team Plasma Ball joins
Great Ball,
Heavy Ball,
Level Ball,
Poké Ball, and
Ultra Ball.
Ultra Ball
is the preferred form of search as it
can get anything; the two card discard
cost can really hurt, however, and it
isn’t uncommon to see a deck, even one
that has a “combo” with the discarded
cards, run one of the other
Ball Trainers instead of just maxing
out
Ultra Ball.
Great Ball and
Poké Ball are pretty much ignored
because the risk of failing to get what
you need (kind of the point of such
cards), but
Level Ball and
Heavy Ball see play when a deck can
access significant cards with them,
despite being relatively restricted in
target.
Team Plasma Ball
will join
Level Ball and
Heavy Ball in supplementing
Ultra Ball as the primary search for
most decks, provided said deck runs a
decent compliment of Team Plasma
Pokémon; “decent” being relative based
on quantity and importance of the Team
Plasma Pokémon.
Mostly though it will be how
Ultra Ball,
Heavy Ball, and
Level Ball help
Team Plasma Ball in decks that
aren’t built purely with Basic Team
Plasma Pokémon… or that need to discard
cards.
This is probably most important
to Team Plasma Evolution decks, where
Level Ball will almost always be
able to snag Basic and Stage 1 Pokémon
that are meant to Evolve (and thus
aren’t Team Plasma Pokémon) and avoid a
lot of discards.
You can get a run down of Team Plasma
support
here but I will list the highlights.
Shadow Triad likes
Team Plasma Ball because it
increases its own versatility; with a
Team Plasma Ball in the discard
Shadow Triad can now access any Team
Plasma Pokémon in deck or discard pile.
Team Plasma Grunt benefits enough
from having potentially painless discard
fodder and a search card to improve
effective card yields that I finally can
take it as a serious (but unlikely)
candidate for Team Plasma decks.
The last worth highlighting will
seem almost backwards; as a Basic Team
Plasma Pokémon
Deoxys EX is supported by
Team Plasma Ball, but as Power
Connect (the Ability of
Deoxys EX) boosts the damage done to
Active Pokémon by attacks from Team
Plasma Pokémon, and it isn’t terribly
fragile, expect
Team Plasma Ball =>
Deoxys EX to be used as a pseudo-PlusPower.
Combos:
Most have been outlined or at least
implied above, but I want to emphasize
something; outside of where another form
of Team Plasma support interacts with
Team Plasma Ball, the combos are
just updates of what players were doing
with
Ultra Ball,
Level Ball, and
Heavy Ball to get Team Plasma
Pokémon before.
Future:
More Team Plasma Pokémon and support are
coming, but so are counters; odds are
Team Plasma Ball will either
experience a net gain or remain steady,
but exact usage will change.
Ratings
Unlimited:
Team Plasma Ball doesn’t seem overly
useful here, given the classical Trainer
support available from the days before
Supporters and thus cards like
Professor Oak are now reclassified
as “Items” despite modern counterparts
like
Professor Juniper being Supporters.
Even if you come up with a
powerhouse deck that focuses upon Team
Plasma Pokémon, between the raw search
and draw power available, something this
specialized probably won’t matter… and
that was already a big “if”.
1.75/5
Modified:
If you deck runs Team Plasma Pokémon,
either in abundance or in a key role,
this should be your search card for it.
Maybe not completely maxed out,
maybe used in conjunction with other
search, but if your list is “too tight”
to fit it in, your list may truly be too
tight.
I may be in the minority, but I
really don’t like discarding cards in a
format where the best general recursion
I have is
Super Rod and I already expect to
discard a lot from
Professor Juniper.
4.25/5
Limited:
You tend to have a lot of “room” in your
decks in Limited.
Draw and search cards are “must
runs” unless there is some bizarre,
extenuating circumstance… and that isn’t
here.
If you don’t get a single Team
Plasma Pokémon worth running, even if
your deck would otherwise be just a
lucky Pokémon-EX and Energy cards,
Team Plasma Ball will confuse your
opponent and allow you to see/shuffle
your deck, and is thus still worth it.
5/5
Summary
Team Plasma Ball
is the kind of support that Team Plasma
Pokémon needed badly; whether a deck
runs nothing but Team Plasma Pokémon or
a few very important ones, this easy
one-for-one trade dramatically increases
the odds of getting such Pokémon into
hand.
It also combos well with specific
Team Plasma and even general Trainer
support, making it one of those indirect
game winning cards as you will often be
getting either your primary attacker or
some key piece of support.
As such, on my own Top 10 list I ranked
Team Plasma Ball as the number two
because of what of its usefulness
(sometimes importance) in setting up for
some decks; not everything can use it,
not everything should use it, but quite
a few both can and should.
