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Welcome to another “doubleheader”: our third place pick
out of the top 10 key cards lost due to the pending
rotation is a tie between Heavy Ball and Level
Ball. Once again, the review crew agreed that if we
reviewed one we might as well cover the other; Heavy
Ball and Level Ball have so much overlap that
even though their actual effectiveness has been
significantly different (Level Ball has seen much
more success than Heavy Ball), the review for one
would read like the review for the other with the names,
effects and a few key bits changed. If both made the
list it would seem redundant and if only one did, it
would seem wasteful not to just mention the other.
In my case, Level Ball was a lock for the list
while Heavy Ball was iffy. Before delving
further into that, let’s review. You can read the
original Heavy Ball reviews
here
and the original Level Ball reviews
here.
Heavy Ball is an Item that allows you to search
your deck for a Pokémon with a Retreat Cost of three or
more and add it to your hand, while Level Ball
does the same except for Pokémon with 90 HP or less.
Both cards made the Top 10 list for BW: Next
Destinies with Heavy Ball taking the fifth
place slot and Level Ball the sixth place; while
its no guarantee our collective list was correct, it
does help to remember that said reviews date back to
HS-On, when players still had access to Pokémon
Collector (a Supporter searched your deck for up to
three Basic Pokémon to add to your hand) and Dual
Ball (an Item that had you flip two coins and then
search your deck for a Basic to add to hand per
“heads”). That means snagging smaller Basics was
already pretty well covered.
Thanks to more and more “glass cannon” and
“switch-hitter” style attackers popping up, as well as
Pokémon Catcher receiving an erratum so that
small Bench-sitters (or switch-hitters that return to
the Bench) weren’t a bit less vulnerable, Level Ball
managed to easily surpass Heavy Ball. You’ve got
tiny titans like Accelgor (BW: Dark Explorers
11/108), Bench-sitters like Aromatisse (currently
there is only one), and useful “tricks” like
Exeggcute and Jirachi-EX. Heavy Ball
has proven useful as well, just with less universal and
or useful targets, in part because of how Evolution
lines work: if an Evolution has 90 or less HP, the Basic
form will rarely have more HP, but it is quite common
for lower Stages to also have a lower Retreat Cost.
Still Heavy Ball has proven useful snagging
Dusknoir (BW:
Boundaries Crossed
63/149; BW: Plasma Blast 104/101) in recent
times.
Both cards do have competition; Ultra Ball is
pretty much a staple unless a deck can exclusively get
by with Heavy Ball, Level Ball or a
combination of both. The two card discard required to
use Ultra Ball is steep enough that it is common
practice to augment/substitute Ultra Ball which
whichever of Heavy Ball and Level Ball can
snag a decent amount of a deck’s Pokémon, and some decks
even run all three. While the format might seem like it
would discourage Pokémon compliant with either Heavy
Ball or Level Ball due to the dangers of
getting stranded and easy of OHKOing 90 HP (let alone
smaller) Pokémon. This actually is a concern, but most
decks have other reasons (like ditching Special
Conditions and/or attack effects) that cause them to
include tricks to lower Retreat Costs or even bypass
manually retreating altogether, and damage output is so
fast and so high that pretty much nothing is truly safe
from being OHKOed, with 100 HP not significantly safer
than 90 (without Level Ball, 70 to 110 don’t
often distinguish themselves from each other).
If they had remained, Heavy Ball and Level
Ball would have definitely been welcome in BCR-On
and should see play similar to what they do now in
Expanded, unless that metagame is significantly
different from what is expected (again, it isn’t
something with which I’ve got even secondhand
experience). If you pull them in Limited, Level Ball
is almost guaranteed a spot in your deck while Heavy
Ball is probably making it in: search is great here,
Items are great here, so Item-based Search is great!
Ratings
(joint)
Modified (NXD-On):
4/5 - Heavy Ball is probably up to half a point
lower, while Level Ball alone matches the score.
They aren’t for every deck and the scores assume that;
Item based search that has no additional cost is amazing
and without their targeting restrictions (besides being
functionally the same card) they’d have perfect scores!
Modified (BCR-On):
N/A - If they were legal, I expect them to score as
above.
Expanded (BW-On):
4/5 - As for NXD-On, except Heavy Ball is at most
a quarter point lower, and scoring them even is even
more accurate and less a review contrivance: while I
could easily be wrong, some of the high Retreat Cost
cards we lost due to the previous rotation will be
present, creating more decks that can really make use of
Heavy Ball. Still not specific Heavy Ball
compliant tricks equivalent to Jirachi-EX or
Exeggcute.
Limited:
4.95/5 - No use in a deck built around a single, big
Basic Pokémon but everywhere else, it is unlikely you
won’t have something to target. Yes, for both cards: I
had to review the set and I realized there are a lot of
Stage 1 Pokémon that have a Retreat Cost of three that
have a Basic Pokémon with the same Retreat Cost.
Summary:
Both of these cards will be missed, and I believe this
approach is overall beneficial to the game: support that
turns a negative into a positive under controlled
circumstances. I also like that they appeared in the
same set instead of being spread out; the slow release
of Type based support has been one source of imbalance
in the game.
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