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Pojo's Pokémon Card of the Day

aroramage	Ahhh, Wally. You...green-loving maniac, you. I like that the fanbase just shoves him into this green-loving mode of sorts, it's kinda funny to be honest! In any case, Wally's a cool cat who starts out as this sickly boy when you meet him, and through his adventures with Pokemon, not only does he get better but he becomes a fairly good Trainer too!...unless you just run Exp Share all the way through ORAS, in which case he's just...yeah...   But today, we're gonna take a look at his card! It's pretty much just an accelerated Delta Evolution in Supporter form: pick a Pokemon, and if it can evolve, get its evolution from your deck and evolve it. Oh, and you can do this on your first turn or the turn you played that Pokemon. That's pretty cool, all things considered, since it can give most any Evolution deck access to Delta Evolution.   You could run this in Mega-decks if Wally wasn't excluding Pokemon-EX from his effect, but there are still a lot of cards you can use this with. I'm thinking a lot of decks that run Stage 1s like Garbodor, Bronzong, and Pyroar can make good use of this card. Some Stage 2 line-ups will work out if you've got the Stage 1 in your deck, bringing another means of getting out that Turn 2 Blastoise or Empoleon. Really the only major drawback on Wally here are that he is your Supporter for the turn, so no crazy Sycaper combos, capish?   You probably could get away with running one or two and using VS Seeker to nab him from your discard pile as needed - nothing like a surprise Evolution! Even Seismitoad-EX can't stop that! But for the most part, you'll be running him with your Stage 1s, as with only a few notable exceptions, it's not really worth running for Stage 2s. Still, Mega Evo decks are the primary "evolution" decks of today - which means I better see some freaking amazing Evolutions down the line here!  Rating   Standard: 3/5 (a good option for Mega Evo decks)   Expanded: 3/5 (about the same here)   Limited: 4/5 (lots more evolutions to work, and you shouldn't have to worry as much about the details of Stage 1 this and Stage 2 that)   Arora Notealus: Wally's such a kind-hearted soul. Maybe that's why the developers made his card more Evolution-based - nothing shows the bond between Trainer and Pokemon better than through evolution, the complete transformation based on their feelings for each other...or at least their ability to level up or use stones or be near a giant rock or something, I dunno.   NOTE: First time I wrote this, I actually completely glossed over the "excluding Pokemon-EX" part of this card, so my review looked favorably on Wally with regards to Mega Evos. Since you can't target Pokemon-EX, though, he's just more of a standard option for regular evolution decks. My sincerest apologies for this complete screw-up!  Weekend Thought: Think any of these cards are worth running in your decks? What decks do you think benefit the most from these cards? Which ones would you pick out for your deck and why? I'm sure you've got loads of ideas for each of them, there's definitely a lot of room for Sky Field and Wally in my opinion!
Otaku	We finish the week with Wally (XY: Roaring Skies 94/108, 107/108).  Wally is a Supporter that allows you to select one of your Pokémon (excluding Pokémon-EX) and search your deck for a card that Evolves from it and put it onto that Pokémon.  The text specifies that you are able to do this the first turn a Pokémon is in play, including the very first turn of the game, when normally Pokémon cannot Evolve, as well as reminding you to shuffle your deck when this is all done.  Though it doesn’t refer to this process as “Evolving” in the text, it still seems to count as Evolving, just from the deck and not the hand.  So you can’t Evolve the Pokémon you just played via the effect of Wally, unless of course you can use another effect that bypasses the rules: for example if you have a Magnezone (BW: Plasma Storm 46/135), its Dual Brains Ability allows you two Supporters per turn and thus you could use Wally to play search out and play the Stage 1 on the selected Basic and then a second Wally to search out and play the Stage 2 on top of said Stage 1.  You won’t trigger “from the hand” Abilities since the Pokémon is coming straight from the deck, but you will shake effects such as Special Conditions. So this card is a combination of search as well as breaking the normal rules for Evolution.  While you cannot Evolve what you just searched out, you can use it to target something you just Evolved; no easy single turn Stage 2 but you can go  Basic => Manually Evolve into Stage 1 => Wally into Stage 2  Unlike yesterday, Wally is very similar to its predecessor Wally’s Training (EX: Sandstorm 89/100; EX: Emerald 85/106).  The first difference you’ll notice is that the older version could only target the Active Pokémon: the text is a bit funny because the TCG ended up with a 2-on-2 (Active Pokémon, not players) format because that was the “new thing” in the video games of the time.  There was a two-player team versus two-player team mode (I believe it was called Team Multi-Player or TMP for short), but it while it was from then official sources, it wasn’t baked into the text on cards.  Despite lacking text specifying it, you could indeed use Wally’s Training to Evolve a Pokémon on the first turn it was in play and the very first turn of the game, though I cannot remember if you were able to use Supporters on your first turn when this card was released (either time).  It is interesting to note that Wally’s Training does not have any restrictions beyond the target to Evolve being Active.  So… is Wally an improvement over Wally’s Training?  I think so; while it would be more useful if it could Evolve Pokémon-EX (thus allowing you to get a Mega Evolution into play faster), I do believe it would cause balance issues, especially with Spirit Link cards and Mega Turbo on top of Shaymin-EX (XY: Roaring Skies 77/108, 106/108).  Said Shaymin-EX is important because it creates a somewhat easy means to draw before or after using your Supporter, which gives decks more leeway to use non-draw effect Supporters.  Wally’s Training was not a heavily played card, at least that I can recall, but it was released in the same set as the original Rare Candy, which allowed you to skip directly from Basic to Stage 1 or Stage 2 and could also break first turn Evolution rules.  This lessened the need for Wally’s Training.  Right now Rare Candy has gone from being something you rely on to get your Stage 2 into play to a single you include so you can get one copy of your Stage 2 into play quickly; the shift is due to the increase of successful Item lock.  Wally’s Training isn’t an Item so it doesn’t have to worry about them.  Perhaps because I carelessly left this article to finish rather late at night (or should I say early in the morning), but I am struggling to think of any specific decks that really need Wally.  Some established decks/tricks get better, but most of the obvious ones have competition.  For example Trevenant (XY 55/146) could lock Items down first turn, but thanks to Seismitoad-EX, we are used to something nearly as fast.  We face something similar with Garbodor (BW: Dragons Exalted 54/124; BW: Plasma Freeze 119/116; BW: Legendary Treasures 68/113), Silent Lab and/or Wobbuffet (XY: Phantom Forces 36/119): is it worth including these in decks that were already good at getting a lock by their second turn?  It appears to be a useful Supporter, the kind for which you pay should you forget to consider the possibility of your opponent running it, but I’m not sure how many decks really need it (if any).  As long as you have an Evolution to search out the card should appear in your Limited decks… and possibly even if you don’t.  You can’t use Wally if you don’t have a Pokémon with an Evolution in the relevant card pool, but you can use it on something even if you know your deck has no target for it.  The only place to really skip it is a +39 deck built around an illegal target; either a Pokémon-EX or something that doesn’t Evolve at all.  Ratings  Standard: 3/5  Expanded: 3/5  Limited: 4.8/5  Summary: I am always leery of generic Evolution acceleration as it tends to quickly throw game balance out the window but for now, given the state of the rest of the format, I am happy to add Wally to our Supporter options.
Emma Starr	Ah, Wally. The little boy whom I assumed would play some really big role in the plot when I first played Pokémon Emerald, all those years back…but actually didn’t do anything too useful, except battling you a few times. But in the beginning of the game, the first Pokémon he catches is a Level 5 Ralts. Whose only move is Growl. I bet that was fun to train…                 Thankfully, many years later, Wally found a solution to this problem, although it is only possible in the TCG. By playing himself, he is able to search for a Pokémon that is the next part of the Evolution line (ex: Basic-> Stage 1, Stage 1->Stage 2. No crazy Rare Candy shenanigans. And no Megas. ), which would normally make him equivalent to a can of Evosoda. But wait! Unlike Evosoda, Wally is so adamant about his training, that he can activate this ability on a Pokémon that was put in play just during this turn, or on the first turn of the game! No other card has ever let you do something like this before!                 So, what does this mean? Well, although Stage 2s are generally not used too often, there are some useful Stage 1s. Pyroar can now block out your opponent’s EXs on the first turn. Garbodor can shut down abilities right off the bat. Bronzong can go looking for Energies in your discard pile early (although looking for discarded energies that early could be troublesome). All in all, there are lots of possibilities where you could use this card to get the leg up on your opponent, and with this, Evosoda has basically become obsolete.                 Standard: 3/5                 Expanded: 3.5/5 (more useful evolutions = more possible uses. Possible Turn 2 Blastoise or Emboar, anyone?)                 Limited: 4/5 (Didn’t pull an EX? No worries!)