aroramage |
OH GEEZ I OVERSLEPT, WHAT'D I
MISS?!
"Heavy Boots."
...oh. Never mind then.
So for today's card, we take a look
at Judge. This card actually is a reprint of a card from
the Unleashed set back in HGSS times, though with
updated art. The effect remains the same; both players
shuffle their hands into their decks and draw 4 cards.
It's kinda like if N and Colress met in the middle, and
N was all like, "Alright, we need someone to even out my
ability to reduce the opposing hand to nothing with your
ability to increase the player's hand all while not
being overbearing on either side."
Judge is a pretty...fair card. 4
cards isn't a lot to pull out wacky combos with various
Item cards without extra draw power (which if Sycamore
is one of those 4 cards makes this whole thing a bit
moot) while at the same time not being too restrictive
to limit play. It's a bit of luck and a lot of
disruption, since both players start out with a whole
new hand.
So I'd say it's a fair one-off in
some decks, maybe more if the idea of disrupting the
opponent's strategy is big enough for a player to run
over other valuable Supporters. Use it more like you
would Sycamore to avoid the negative mishap, and things
will go smoothly for you!
Rating
Standard: 3/5 (a fair draw card
with good disruptive potential, just competing for deck
space)
Expanded: 2.5/5 (we've got N for
disruption and Colress for draw power stuff, so...I'm
gonna say "eh?")
Limited: 5/5 (draw is draw is draw,
even if it is reshuffling)
Arora Notealus: You'd think there'd
be more of a presence with judges in the games. Sure, in
the anime, you'll usually see them in Pokemon Contests
and Gym Battles, but judges in the video games usually
only show up for the competitions. Then again, I suppose
you don't really need someone on the side going, "FOUL!!
You can't use Thunder Armor in a single battle!"
...seriously, though, Thunder
Armor. You look it up.
Next Time: FISHING!!
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Otaku |
Time
for Judge (HS: Unleashed 75/95; XY:
BREAKthrough 143/162) to be put on trial! This
is a reprint of a Supporter first seen in the HS-block,
with an effect that forces each player to shuffle his or
her hand into his or her deck, then draw a new hand of
four cards. Trainers are a major part of all
competitive decks with your once-per-turn Supporter
being the driving force of set-up, give or take
Shaymin-EX (XY: Roaring Skies 77/108,
106/108) for an alternate means of draw power and a few
non-draw Supporters because of their potency in other
areas (like Lysandre or Hex Maniac).
Thanks to VS Seeker (and to a lesser degree
Battle Compressor) it is a great time to be a
Supporter, even if said simple combo is vulnerable to
Item lock.
Four
cards is not a lot compared to what other Supporters can
draw for you; it is one less than Shauna, a card
that is mostly used by those with nothing better, though
in Standard play that has meant the occasional
appearance in something meant for competitive play due
to the lack of Colress, N and a few others
Expanded still enjoys… or (rarely) for a particular
deck’s need of a stable shuffle-and-draw Supporter (as
opposed to all the variable ones). Professor Birch’s
Observations is the chief rival of Shauna
under such circumstances (and usually the one I favor)
because on “heads” it shuffles and draws a very good
seven cards… but on “tails” is only draws four. Judge
is not the card you want when you’re trying to dig for
something or just need raw card advantage. The
four cards it leaves the opponent with is the effect of
the Item Red Card; this is useful less for
control and more for disruption as it gives your
opponent four chances (five including his or her next
draw) to get something to jumpstart his or her deck/hand
again. Still decks are packed quite tightly and it
is quite possible to draw dead, hence why we gladly
trash our hands with a card like Professor Juniper
or Professor Sycamore to draw seven. So you
can think of Judge as either “Shauna Minus
One Plus Red Card” or “Professor Birch’s
Observation On A ‘Tails’ Plus Red Card”.
So is that any good?
Red
Card
isn’t amazing but it is about as potent as I want to see
in terms of hand control, at least in a format where so
much is riding on you being able to refresh your hand
from your hand each turn. Obviously it would
be better for you if the card drew more for you and less
for your opponent but we know where that leads:
Ace Trainer. If you need yet a third
clunky, comparative way of describing Judge it
can be “Ace Trainer Evened Out But Without The
Prize Requirement”. If you are running a control
strategy (especially one that still takes Prizes),
Judge is a must. If you want to rely on an
attack like “Instant Freeze” on Glalie-EX, which
for [WCC] does 100 more damage (base damage of 50) when
both players have the same hand size, again it is a
must. In Expanded N does almost everything
Judge does except be “stable”, and outside of the
previous two exceptions, I can’t think of a good reason
not to just go with N even though it can be
better or worse than Judge.
In
Standard, I am thinking a single copy is probably a
loose staple just because we still don’t have that third
major draw Supporter. To be fair we only do in
Expanded (and did in the previous Standard format)
because we had enough combos for Colress to pay
off more often than not; it was never the equal of
Professor Juniper, Professor Sycamore or N.
With the other options being Shauna or
Professor Birch’s Observations, building your deck
to accept a four card hand while messing with your
opponent might be the right approach. There is of
course the re-release of Skyla as well, but even
when Skyla usage was at its height it still
seemed like we wanted just one more draw Supporter so
still, at least one copy of Judge is probably a
really good idea in Standard. If you need more,
there is (or at least was) a budget deck I’d run into
somewhat regularly on the PTCGO in Standard, built
around Metagross (XY: Ancient Origins
50/98) and its “Machine Gun Stomp”. The deck
relied on draw power that didn’t mess with your hand (so
no shuffling, drawing or requiring your hand be below a
certain size), allowing Machine Gun Stomp to reach OHKO
levels. Any effect that shuffles the opponent’s
hand away tends to ruin it so N meant it was a no
go for Expanded, but in Standard, it could be
surprisingly effective.
In
Limited play any draw power tends to be precious and
potent; even though you (and your opponent) are more
likely to be at the mercy of your four card hand, it
beats relying only your manual draw for the turn.
This greatly inflates its score but at the same time, it
communicates the truth that if you pull this, you run
it! I also think the disruption is more effective
here; of course they are less likely to draw into their
own Supporter to rebuild their hand there is also how
you just don’t usually have to worry about hand
disruption here, unlike in Expanded or (to a lesser
extent) Standard play. Maybe that is why it is not
in either of the Theme Decks released alongside XY:
BREAKthrough?
Ratings
Standard:
3.5/5
Expanded:
3/5
Limited:
5/5
Summary:
Judge isn’t a mind-blowingly awesome kind of card
but it is pretty solid overall, aided by the lack of
competition in Standard. It isn’t the greatest
itself, rather the Supporters that are clearly better
than it are already going to be in your deck and this is
just filling in the last bit of your Supporter count.
Certain specific tactics will appreciate it more, so
even where it is crowded out for general usage Judge
warrants a good, solid score. XY: BREAKthrough
has a lot of cards that are good-but-not-great and if
Judge hadn’t been a reprint, it would have made at
least my own Top 15, probably somewhere in my Top 10.
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