aroramage |
To compliment the Fisherman from
last week, we've got a Super Rod to help out with all of
your fishing needs! Which pretty much equates to any 3
Pokemon and/or Energy cards in any combination going
back to your deck from your discard pile. Not too
shabby, though there are going to be few instances where
it's really useful.
Could be useful in getting back
Energies you discarded for Sycaper or for getting that
one Pokemon you need...granted it puts it back in the
deck rather than an easier to access place like your
hand or, heck, even the discard pile's not so bad. We've
got plenty of ways to actually get stuff out of the
discard pile, we even made a card to put things IN to
the discard pile.
Super Rod fills a niche well, but
at the moment I can't even think of where you'd use
it...
Rating
Standard: 2/5 (good effect, but
I've got nothing on a deck - what decks like to have
their stuff...in the deck?)
Expanded: 2/5 (about the same here,
I do remember running Super Rod to minimal effect
once...I guess so I could avoid deck out?)
Limited: 3.5/5 (in which case,
that's not a terrible reason to run it, but it'd be a
one-off if that)
Arora Notealus: Super Rod was
always the best fishing rod, but it makes more sense in
its previous incarnation from Neo Genesis, which would
add an Evolution or a Basic Pokemon directly from your
discard pile to your hand, depending on a coin flip.
Obviously bringing that back nowadays would be really
sketchy, even with the coin flip, but it's still better
than throwing stuff back into the deck!
Next Time: I'm the map, I'm the
map, I'm the map...I'm very tired.
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Otaku |
Super Rod
(Neo Genesis 103/111; BW: Noble Victories
95/101; BW: Dragon Vault 20/20; XY:
BREAKthrough 149/162) goes way back… sort of.
Originally this was a “normal” Trainer (now known as an
“Item”) that had you flip a coin: if “heads” you could
add an Evolution to your hand and if “tails” you could
add a Basic Pokémon. This card essentially no
longer exists because the-powers-that-be decided to
re-use the name for a dramatically different effect:
shuffling three cards that can be Pokémon and/or Basic
Energy cards from your discard pile into your deck.
We’ve looked at it once before
here
almost exactly four years ago. A mistake I made
then is stating the contemporary Super Rod to
just be the old Nightly Garbage Run (Team
Rocket 77/82) and Night Maintenance (DP:
Mysterious Treasures 113/123; DP: Secret Wonders
120/132; Pokémon Organized Play Series 8 9/17)
with the names changed plus the template and wording
updated but there are two small functional differences.
Both older cards are “up to 3” instead of three - with
Super Rod you can only return one or two if that
is all you have in the discard pile - plus Nightly
Garbage Run is a “Rocket’s Secret Machine”. I
don’t know if that is part of the name or not (it is
printed with a smaller font in parentheses by the name)
but it was one of the many underused mechanics. Nightly
Garbage Run never received a CotD but Night
Maintenance did
here.
So is this old effect better, worse or about the same as
it once was? I think it is a wee bit better even
though one might expect such a card to need to be better
to keep up with power creep. We have Sacred Ash
to shuffle five (or all if you have less) Pokémon from
the discard pile to the deck, Energy Recycle System
to shuffle five Basic Energy cards (or all if you have
less) from discard pile to the deck, plus a few more
options if we want to go from discard to hand or discard
to field; I don’t recall this with this card’s
predecessors. The catch is that they lack the
flexibility; if you only need Pokémon or only
need Basic Energy reclaimed, these are better options.
The thing is if you need both you’ve got to run one of
each, and that means comparing them against two copies
of Super Rod (if you need to reclaim both Pokémon
and Basic Energy and have one slot, Super Rod
wins!): the trade off is recycling four fewer cards
but having the flexibility to make the six you do
get either Pokémon or Basic Energy.
There is a rival for this that exemplifies power creep
to the most extreme, and it was so good it got banned:
Lysandre’s Trump Card. I think this threw
some of the designers’ plans out of whack. Not too
long after Supporters were introduced, we’d get an Item
option and a Supporter option and usually the Supporter
was about twice as effective but of course, cost you
your supporter. With VS Seeker and Item
lock, a Supporter alternative in the vein of Town
Volunteers (Aquapolis 136/147), Palmer’s
Contribution (PL: Supreme Victors 139/147),
Flower Shop Lady (HS: Undaunted 74/90) and
others I may have forgotten might still be worth it.
The format is incredibly fast paced, but then again
we’ve got Shaymin-EX (XY: Roaring Skies
77/108, 106/108) to help alleviate some of the pressure
of burning a Supporter on such a thing. Then again
maybe something bigger is overkill; so many decks are
close to two-thirds Trainer and while all the Pokémon
are game the Basic Energy cards that are less of a
presence in said decks as most rely heavily on Special
Energy cards. So this angle is actually pretty
well covered.
For now though enjoy Super Rod in Standard once
again; it never left Expanded where it remains at least
a loose staple. If you pull it in Limited, run it
unless perhaps you’re going with a +39 deck: when
your deck is built around a single Basic Pokémon and 39
other non-Basic Pokémon cards, you shouldn’t need to
recycle anything barring something really crazy
happening. Otherwise you’ll have the room and just
maybe will need to delay decking out or recycle
something significant to your deck… and with a 40 card
deck built from the contents of six boosters plus
whatever Basic Energy you want to add, sometimes things
show up at the wrong time, get forced into play without
proper prep and are in the discard pile when you really
need them - a specific Basic Energy, the all copies of
the Basic Stage for the one good Evolution you pulled,
etc. For those new to Limited, yes each booster
pack has 10 cards, but you don’t get to use them; you
select a total of 40 from the contents of the packs plus
whatever Basic Energy cards you need.
Ratings
Standard:
3.8/5
Expanded:
3.8/5
Limited:
4.9/5
Summary:
Super Rod is back in Standard! If that is a
little too concise, then we we have the lower yield,
more flexible combination Pokémon/basic Energy recycling
card returned to Standard, where it is often a major
part of decks. Not all though as a few are better
off with the more specialized (but more powerful)
alternatives and some just don’t bother with it at all
due to a blistering pace and lack of deck space.
As such, it doesn’t quite rank as high as it once did.
Again, if this hadn’t been a reprint and thus not legal
for our Top 10 list for XY: BREAKthrough, this
would have made the list, possibly taken this if we
focused more on Standard than Expanded.
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