Otaku |
Welcome to a somewhat odd two weeks for Pojo.com. The
short version is that for various reasons, the site is
having a five day weekend: no articles from this
Thursday through next Monday. While not the reason why,
it will give the CotD crew a nice break to recover from
out Top 15 list that wrapped up last week. This week
and next we will be looking at Trainers and Special
Energy from the new set that didn’t make the Top 15,
which is a pretty typical thing for us to do the last
few sets.
Eco Arm
(XY: Ancient Origins 71/98) is one of our new
Items. In general it is good to be an Item; their “one
and done” nature is accompanied by the only cost being
those specific to the card (like Ultra Ball
requiring a two card from hand discard) and that you
aren’t allowed to play them for no effect. There are
some odd exceptions to the second one owing to how the
game processes certain information: like most (possibly
all) search effects, Evosoda may be used to
search for an Evolution you know is not in your
deck, even if your opponent also knows it is not there
(such as through another card effect), because “the
game” doesn’t recognize non-public knowledge like that.
Yeah, I’d just start writing everything so that you can
always fail a search instead because I still find this
concept problematic. On the other hand, “the game” is
smart enough to know some things: you can’t use
Evosoda if none of your Pokémon in play have an
Evolution that exists in the current card pool. In fact
the only reason why all Trainers wouldn’t be better as
Items is because there are some potent Item locking
effects in the game (and they are more numerous and
prominent than Stadium or Supporter locking effects) and
many Stadium cards are useful because as a Stadium they
discard whatever Stadium was already in play and you may
be able to use their effect more than once.
So after all that… the actual effect of Eco Arm
allows you to shuffle three Pokémon Tool cards from your
discard pile into your deck. It is not worded as
“up to” so while you can use it with only one or two
Pokémon Tools in your discard, you must select them them
all if there are less than three and cannot choose less
than the full three. Shuffling three back for a single
Item is less than other Items like Sacred Ash or
Energy Recycler enjoy, but the same amount as
Super Rod and one more than Pal Pad. So in
terms of quantity it falls in the middle, but how about
quality? Sacred Ash is restricted to Pokémon
only, but works on any Pokémon. Energy Recycler
only works on Basic Energy, though that is half the
subclassifications for Energy cards and about half of
the actual Energy cards in the Standard Format as well
(about a third in Expanded). Super Rod can snag
anything that either Sacred Ash or Energy
Recycler can grab so while it grabs less, that makes
it much more versatile. Pal Pad only works on a
single subclassification of Trainers - Supporters - and
while those are an important card Type it was never
heavily played and as soon as VS Seeker was an
option, even the decks running it replaced it: a
Supporter in the hand is worth more than two in the
deck.
Unlike Pal Pad, Eco Arm doesn’t have to
face off against an Item that returns a discarded
Pokémon Tool to hand. I don’t recall there being an
Ability or worthwhile attack to do that either. Infact
apart from Supporters via Versus Seeker, most
Trainers are tricky to get back from the discard pile,
requiring an Ability or attack. As such the real
competition Eco Arm faces is… just running
another Pokémon Tool. Most decks don’t have a method
that is all three of reliable, fast and cost effective
to get the Pokémon Tools you return to your deck back to
your hand. Most decks also don’t need a lot of Pokémon
Tools and both only need (and can only have) so many in
play at one time. As such if you’re not getting the
full three shuffled back into your deck, there is a
decent chance you’re better off just running an extra
copy of said Tool (or another useful Pokémon Tool) in
your deck instead. The big exceptions are decks that
have a serious issue with cards being discarded and
those that have a particular Pokémon Tool that is
advantages to return to your deck. The competitive
metagame may have given us both.
Most decks have a lot of discards because of
Professor Sycamore and Ultra Ball, as well as
cards like Startling Megaphone (which discards
all Pokémon Tools on your opponent’s side of the field).
Pokémon Tool F cards as well as a few other decks that
really rely on a particular Tool or have a good
way of searching out Eco Arm and/or Pokémon Tools
(Oh hello Korrina) have valid reason to at least
consider Eco Arm. So in general for Standard,
this is a functional card but at best average until you
factor in some specific decks. It still isn’t a must
run in those, so I’d say overall it is a little above
average. Expanded adds some more Pokémon Tools to
consider, Tool Scrapper (both friend and foe to
some Pokémon Tools) and while I don’t think it is
remotely worth it, the cards needed to run a Tool Drop
deck. All in all, I’d give just a slight bump here. In
Limited play, it all depends on if you get any Pokémon
Tools. There are four Pokémon Tools in XY: Ancient
Origins but three are Spirit Link
cards. I’d actually lean against using this unless
you also pull multiples of Lucky Helmet.
Ratings
Standard:
3.25/5
Expanded:
3.3/5
Limited:
1.5/5
Summary:
Other than in Limited, Eco Arm is a good solid
card, just not good enough to work its way into a lot of
decks. At the same time most decks have multiple
Pokémon Tools in them and a lot of ways for one to
discard them (with an opponent often “helping” you in
that endeavor), so it isn’t truly “bad”, just “not good
enough”. Add in the decks that like to spam nasty
Pokémon Tools and have an insurance policy for if they
are dealt with and I think it nets a slightly above
average result.
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Emma Starr |
First of all, I’d like to apologize for
disappearing last week. Lots of things happened, Amiibos
were released, etc. However, things should start
returning to normal now. Maybe.
Eco Arm is an Item Card that lets you search for
three Tool Cards from your
discard pile.
Which means that most likely, the Tool Cards would most
likely be attached to one of your fainted Pokemon. If
only there was a better way to make this card work…oh
wait! There is! If you discard the Tools with Battle
Compressor, you can easily use Eco Arm to retrieve them!
There are some downsides to this strategy,
though. First, you’re basically using two cards to find
one Tool Card. It’s not like there are many other
alternatives to this, however. If you really need to
find the Muscle Band, Spirit Link, Rock Guard
(hey, it can be a pretty helpful, underused Ace
Spec!) or Lucky Helmet your Pokemon went down with, Eco
Arm can be pretty reliable, though not the most
efficient at times. Not to mention that you could run
into a stray Vileplume as well, if you aren’t lucky,
rendering you incapable of using either card to get your
Tool.
Modified: 2/5
Expanded: 2/5
Limited: 1/5 (The only Tools in this set are
Lucky Helmet and the three Spirit Links. No access to
Battle Compressor already hurts this, but you could
always run a few multiples of Lucky Helmet if you felt
so inclined, and if you have a Spirit Link in your
discard pile, chances are your EX and Mega are in there
too, and there’s no way to get them back!)
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