aroramage |
Ilima...man, what can be said about
Ilima? He exists. He's the first trial captain. He
specializes in Normal-type Pokemon. What more could you
ask for?
I suppose a better card, BA-DUM,
TSH!!
Ilima the Supporter is basically N-Lite.
His effect forces both players to shuffle their hands
back into their decks, and then each player flips a coin
and draws cards based on the result. Heads yields 6
cards while Tails yields 3. It's not a guaranteed
amount, and there's no main benefit to playing this card
later in the game than earlier, as the chances of either
of you getting the desired result is a 50/50. Still,
that doesn't mean Ilima's absolutely useless; he could
potentially bring you out of a dead hand, and combining
the Tails result with additional draw power from cards
like Shaymin-EX, Octillery (BKT), and Bicycle (PLS) in
Expanded can easily offset the overall lack of cards you
get.
Of course, both players want Heads,
considering that's more cards to play around with than
3, but you win some, you'll lose some. Ilima has the
potential to see competitive play, but I don't think
he'll be played in quite the same way as N. Reshuffling
your hand into your deck does at least refresh the
options you have, and if you have less than 3 cards in
your hand to begin with, well then you stand to profit
off of Ilima anyway! The optimal play is to put Ilima on
the board when you've got little to no cards in hand
while your opponent has a lot, which probably won't
happen that often in your opponent's case but can easily
happen to you.
Give him a whirl and see how he
fits into all of this!
Rating
Standard: 3/5 (there's a bit of
potential with Ilima that's not going to be tapped into
until N's out of the picture)
Expanded: 2/5 (and he is outclassed
by a fair number of other draw Supporters)
Limited: 4.5/5 (but given that he's
in the most recent set to date, he'll probably end up
seeing play sooner or later in the next couple of years,
so be prepared!)
Arora Notealus: Ilima's an...okay
dude. I mean there's not too much to know, but he does
get a bit more development than a couple of the other
captains, so that's a plus of sorts. Nothing too special
honestly...though I'll be honest, the pink hair threw me
off and I thought he was a gal.
Next Time: Graceful, elegant,
slender, dragon.
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21times |
Ilima
(Sun & Moon, 146/159) is a brand
new draw support / disruption card.
After playing this card, both players
shuffle their hands back into their
decks and then flip a coin (I initially
thought this involved a single coin
flip, but I was mistaken – each player
determines his or her own fate).
If heads, that players draws six cards,
if tails three.
I tested this in eighteen matches,
playing six games each with the
following decks:
Darkrai-
EX(Breakpoint,
118/122) Dragonair (Sun &
Moon, 95/149) (spoiler –
Dragonair review tomorrow!)
Tauros-GX
(Sun & Moon, 144/149) Hammers
Decidueye-GX
(Sun& Moon, 12/149) Vileplume
(Ancient Origins, 3/98)
I played Ilima nine times with
the Darkrai deck, eleven times
with the Tauros deck, and seven
times with the Decidueye deck.
I went 2-4 in matches with the
Darkrai deck, but 4-2 with both the
Tauros and Decidueye
decks. I feel that it best
fits with the Tauros Hammers
deck, a deck in which I run a ton of
disruption cards. I ran four
Ilima in each of these decks.
My draw supporters were four
Professor Sycamore (Steam Siege,
114/114) and four Ilima in
each of these decks. I did
actually choose Ilima over
Sycamore three times. I had
only ten cards left in my deck one time
and needed draw support but wanted to
avoid taking seven cards. The
other two times I did not want to
discard all of the valuable cards in my
hand. I did, however, choose to
play Sycamore over Ilima
six times, and there’s no question in my
mind that Sycamore remains the
superior support card, the best draw
support card in the game.
I think my initial reaction to this card
mirrors that of the general population
of players: the variability, the
randomness of this card simply makes it
unplayable. In the month plus
since the release of Sun & Moon,
I have never seen a player use it even a
single time. I certainly had never
even considered playing it in any of my
decks.
But I think I can make a case for
it.
Stick with me here for a second: what’s
the worst part of this card? That
you get three cards and your opponent
gets six. That’s the doomsday
scenario, but that only happens 25% of
the time. If you rationally think
about it, for every four times you play
the card, the worst possible outcome
will only occur one time.
And as for your end of the disaster
scenario, getting three cards – it
occurred to me about three matches into
my testing that if I teched in
Octillery (Breakthrough, 33/162),
then if I flip tails, I can simply use
Abyssal Hand to bring myself up
to five cards. Therefore, instead
of the average return of cards being
4.5, the average becomes 5.5. If
you look at it from this perspective,
this is the exact same average that
playing Professor Birch’s
Observations (Primal Clash,
159/160) provides. Moreover, a
few months ago I did a fairly extensive
study on N (Noble Victories,
101/101). I found that the
average number of cards I drew after
playing N was 5.58 cards, just
slightly more than Birch.
With Octillery, Ilima is
just as good a draw supporter as N
and Birch.
Now, let’s consider your opponent’s side
of the coin. In half of the cases,
you have essentially hit him or her with
an Ace Trainer (Ancient
Origins, 69/98).
Unfortunately, if he or she flips heads,
your opponent gets six cards.
However, referencing my above study on
N, we know that the average
number of cards that your giving your
opponent with N is 5.58, and the
average number of cards your opponent
gets from Ilima is 4.5, a
whole card less than N. Think
of it this way: if you play N ten
times, you’re probably giving your
opponent 56 cards. If you play
Ilima ten times, they’re only
getting 45 cards.
From this perspective, Ilima is a
better card than N.
Obviously, the key factor here is
getting Octillery set up.
Without Octillery, I can’t say
that Ilima is better than N
or Birch. A 1-1 line of
Octillery is inconsistent, but a 2-2
line takes up four card slots, which
seems to be counterproductive and feels
like I’m trying to force Ilima
into my deck. However, with
Octillery on the bench, Ilima
provides you with as many cards as N
or Birch while adding a
level of disruption that Birch
does not have and is better than N.
Rating
Standard: 3 out of 5
Summary
I thought that this was going to be a
slam dunk, no way, don’t play this card,
it stinks, but after testing it and
giving it some deep thought, I think
this might be better than all the
other draw support cards available that
are not called Professor Sycamore.
It’s tough because it’s clearly a case
where my brain is saying, “I think this
could be good, the logic is there,” but
my gut is telling me, “Don’t do it, you
know you’re going to get the doomsday
scenario every time.” Either way,
I’m glad I did this review because it
certainly opened my eyes and pointed out
once again the importance of not simply
dismissing a card based upon my initial
reaction and making sure that I give as
much objective due diligence as I can to
card evaluation.
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On this Pi Day, we
look at Ilima (Sun & Moon 121/149,
146/149), one of the new Supporters based on the
character of the same name from the latest Pokémon
games, a Trial Captain specializing in Normal Types…
which has nothing to do with the card’s actual effect.
There aren’t many relevant effects that apply to all
Trainer cards; only Dowsing Machine, Skyla,
and Trainers’ Mail spring to mind, and of those
three, only the last is likely to really matter for most
decks. There aren’t a lot of general Trainer
counters, nor are there many general Supporter counters,
and what exist for either has (thankfully) never proven
competitive. The big thing here is that, even
before we look at the specific effect of Ilima,
we know he’ll be competing with all other
Supporters directly. It can be easy to forget how
constraining it can be, only being allowed to use a
Supporter once during your turn. As soon as you
do, all your other Supporter cards are effectively dead
cards until your next turn; too many and you’ll clutter
your hand, too few and you’ll be wasted that turn’s
usage. Supporters tend to be more effective in
Expanded, because you have the amazing combo of
Battle Compressor and VS Seeker at your
disposal, at least when not facing an Item lock tactic.
These two allow you easy access to any Supporter in your
deck, whether it is maxed out or a single.
Standard play still features VS Seeker, but low
count Supporters lack an efficient tutor to claim them
from your deck.
Now that we have
firmly established what it will cost us to use Ilima
just by him being a Supporter, let us examine his actual
effect. The good news is that there are no built
in additional costs or restrictions; unless your
opponent actually does run one of those few Trainer or
Supporter blocking effects, you’ll always have
the chance to play Ilima, though that doesn’t
mean you’ll always want or need the effect. Ilima
forces both players to shuffle their hand into
their respective deck. After that, you each
flip a coin; if a player flips “heads”, he or she draws
six cards, while “tails” means that player draws only
three. This means four possible outcomes, each
with the same probability of occurring. If both
players flip “tails”, each will end up with a three card
hand, while if both flip “heads”, each is rewarded with
a six card hand. If your opponent gets “heads”
while you get “tails”, you’ll bestow upon them a six
card hand, while your own will be only three cards.
If your opponent flips “tails” and you flip “heads”,
you’ll leave them with a three card hand while you enjoy
a six card hand. No matter what, both
players will have their hands changed out, potentially
interrupting long term planning. I say
“potentially”, because whether it is the three or the
six card hand, a player may draw exactly what he
or she needs (or what they may use to get what is
needed). Most of the time, you’ll hope to draw six
while your opponent draws three, but sometimes you’ll
need to shrink your own hand size or increase your
opponent’s.
When I assigned
this card for today, I foolishly thought I could do it
justice with a relatively short review. I was wrong.
Besides my own tendency to belabor a point, this card
keeps defying my expectations, which have changed since
first seeing it, to my second time considering it, to
yet a third time looking at it, to now after I’ve just
barely begun to try using it. I actually had to
trade to get a copy, as Ilima doesn’t apparently
like me and as such hasn’t shown up in any Sun & Moon
boosters I’ve opened. As a Supporter, Ilima
competes most with other Supporters, specifically
other shuffle-and-draw Supporters. There are five
Standard-legal options I believe warrant a direct
comparison, plus something quite a bit older that should
prove illuminating, and several that I realized were
relevant as I wrote. Before we get into specifics,
however, I’m going to touch upon the general state of
such Supporters in both Standard and Expanded play.
For Standard, we’ve got room for a third go-to draw
card; Professor Sycamore being the primary
choice, with N being the secondary. We’ll
be discussing N a bit more, as he and Ilima
appear to be in the same vein of Supporters. In
Expanded play, Colress or a more deck specialized
Supporter usually fill the go-to place I have described,
so Ilima will face stiffer competition there.
There are three
things to focus on when seeking which Supporters compete
most directly with Ilima: how it has you shuffle
and draw, how it has your opponent shuffle and draw, and
how the effect relies upon a coin flip. Shauna
is a shuffle-and-draw Supporter still legal for Standard
play. Few decks make use of her, despite
wanting a shuffle-and-draw effect, because she’s
only giving you a five card draw. While not bad,
it has not proven good enough for competitive play.
She may have shown up in a few winning decklists - I
lack the time to comb through all that have been made
available since the release of Shauna - but from
various other shuffle-and-draw effects, it seems like
six cards is the magic number, the point where whiffing
on what you need reaches an acceptable threshold.
It was actually the release of Shauna that proved
this to me, as I’d hoped she’d prove adequate, but after
giving her a try I learned what I just wrote.
The other major
shuffle-and-draw Supporter in Standard also depends upon
a coin flip: Professor Birch’s Observations.
He has you shuffle away your hand and flip a coin:
“heads” means a robust seven card draw, while “tails”
means you only draw four cards. If what I just
pointed out about Shauna wasn’t enough to tell
you that a four card draw is undesirable, remember that
the designers created Red Card, an Item that
forces your opponent to shuffle and draw four cards, and
it actually is a useful bit of disruption more decks
would run if they had the room, and/or Item lock wasn’t
such a threat. Professor Birch’s Observations is
great about half the time; the seven card draw is
usually amazing, and there are some tricks to lessen the
sting of the seven card draw, but he’s just a step or
two above Shauna in terms of successful,
competitive usage. He’s also the only coin flip
based Supporter I recall proving remotely good; a few
gimmick based decks have tried the only other one I
recall, Hooligans Jim & Cas, but that one did
nothing on a “tails”, while “heads” shuffled away
three random cards from your opponent’s hand while
forcing your opponent to reveal what was being shuffled
away. Ilima draws one less than Professor
Birch’s Observations on either result, so if you
don’t need the disruption effect, he’s competition.
At least both he and Professor Birch’s Observations
show the designers learned from Hooligans Jim & Cas;
a Supporter that risks doing nothing just on a
coin flip is a real hard sell. Even with two
desirable effects, it has the drawback of not being sure
which one you’ll get anytime you play the card.
Next, we’ll look at
Ace Trainer, Judge, and N.
These are the three closest to Ilima in overall
effect, as each involves both players shuffling away
their respective hand before drawing a new one. Ace
Trainer has you draw six while your opponent draws
three but it may only be used while you have more
Prize cards left to claim than your opponent. I
don’t recall any Standard-legal cards that can increase
how many Prize cards a player has left in play, so out
of 36 possible Prize combinations, Ace Trainer
may only be used in 15 of the 36. Judge has you
each draw four cards; nothing more, and nothing less. N
has the most variable of results because it has each
player draw a number of cards equal to his or her
remaining Prize cards; that means there are 36
possible outcomes for N! The range is from
each player shuffling and drawing six to each player
shuffling and drawing one card. With all of
these, you know the result you’ll get when you play them
(or if you can use it at all, in the case of Ace
Trainer), but the only totally reliable one is
Judge; you know you can use it and you know while
building your deck exactly how many cards it will draw
for both you and your opponent. That is not the
entire story, however, as N draws that heavily
desired six cards until you take your first Prize.
One Prize taken still means as much draw power as
Shauna, while two means as much as Judge or
Professor Birch’s Observations on a “tails”
result. Not great individually, but collectively
pretty good.
Ace Trainer
and Judge still see some competitive play but are
pretty niche. Ace Trainer is usually used
alongside N, in decks that are slow to take
Prizes or which don’t take them at all (like Mill).
You enjoy bountiful shuffle while messing with your
opponent. In the case of Ace Trainer, it
also helps you use it a lot more often than the less
than half of the time suggested by Prize combinations.
Decks that need to shrink your own hand and/or hit a
specific amount of cards in hand (to combo with other
effects) give Judge a home, usually alongside
N. Four cards, as I’ve already stated, is low
enough that it can be seen as a penalty, but it is high
enough not to be a severe one. Another aspect of
N in general usage is that eventually, the
disruption gets to be strong. Some decks
intentionally include a countermeasure, like Oranguru
or just careful deck thinning, to counter late game
usage of N, which also helps their own
usage of the card. These help Judge as
well, but your exact mileage may vary; N can
leave you with as little as one card, so Oranguru
and its “Instruct” Ability (as well as similar draw
effects) are easier to combo with than Judge late
game. Octillery (XY: BREAKthrough 33/162)
isn’t as easy to include as Oranguru, but its
“Abyssal Hand” draws even more. I haven’t made my
obligatory reference to Shaymin-EX (XY:
Roaring Skies 77/108, 106/108), a card that I can
almost never not mention because of its impact on
the game, thanks to its “Setup” Ability. You have
to luck into a Shaymin-EX after using a
shuffle-and-draw effect, but Octillery can
already be on your Bench.
Where we come back
to Ilima is that the same effects which hedge
against a late game N also help with
“tails” flips. This is good for you when your coin
flip comes up “tails”, but it means your opponent may
also have a way to reduce the impact of his or her own
hand being shrunk to three cards. Still, it is
better for him or her to have to use up Instruct
right away, instead of saving it for after playing a few
cards, or to have to risk a late game
Professor Sycamore that may trash something your
opponent would rather save and/or bring your opponent
much closer to decking out. Ilima is, like
Judge, something you’ll always be able to try, but
unlike any of those three, you won’t know the outcome
until you’ve played the card. So does Ilima
deserve a spot in your deck? Maybe in Standard
play. For Expanded, I think you have enough better
options. Ilima seems decent enough to give him a
shot in Standard, with decks that can work with the
smaller hand and/or are desperate for a way to force the
opponent to draw getting a better return. Mill may
provide the best niche; Ace Trainer always forces
you to draw more than your opponent, so even in a build
that never takes Prizes, it may backfire a little too
often; under such circumstances so would N.
I don’t see much use for this card in Expanded play,
because we’ve got Colress for another
shuffle-and-draw option, while Hugh handles the
niche usage of forcing the opponent to draw or
synchronizing hand size, plus it can force the opponent
to discard cards from hand as well (useful for some mill
decks). For Limited play, any draw is welcome,
though even here the risk of helping the opponent can be
a concern.
Before we move onto
the scores, I want to share with you a card that
arguably does what Ilima is trying: Team
Galactic’s Wager. It also forced both players
to shuffle hand into deck, but instead of Prize counts
or coin flips, the result was determined by
Rock-Paper-Scissors. Rock-Paper-Scissors is known
by many names; I’ll be referring to it as janken because
I’ll need to reference the act a few more times.
Janken is a bit of an odd thing because of how it both
is and is not another simple randomizer. There are
three possible outcomes for each player to pick, each
always beating or losing to one other sign and tying
with itself. The skill factor comes in from
reading your opponent well, not just body language but
also having an idea of how he or she thinks. No, I
don’t mean throwing your own hand sign late, after
seeing what your opponent picked; that’s just flat out
cheating. Team Galactic’s Wager was our number
one card from 2007 for the Pokémon TCG. I think
that was even our first yearly Top 10 list, and its
placement annoyed some of the reviewers; I don’t know if
they were just bad at janken or focused on the fact that
one of the top decks of the time included the kind of
effect that could offset the 3-card draw result if you
hit yourself with it (a legitimate concern!). Ilima
strikes me as the spiritual successor to this card,
sacrificing that bit of janken skill to make things
appropriately luck based: coin flipping can also be a
skill, but the Pokémon TCG does not intend it to be and
has rules to greatly reduce the capacity of a player to
influence the results.
Ratings
Standard:
3/5
Expanded:
2.25/5
Limited:
4/5
Summary
Some players just
cannot stand using cards that require coin flips; we
already have luck-of-the-draw and luck-of-the-matchup
adding variance to the game, so resorting to a
randomizer is the last thing such players want to do.
I still have a bad taste in my mouth from too many
formats where the amount and/or importance of the coin
flips left a bad taste. Some people love trusting
their fate to the coin (or as is usually the case, the
die). We all need to look past that to properly
evaluate Ilima, and I had a hard time of
it. I had to trade to get a copy to test with on
the PTCGO, and few people are running it, so my
first-hand experience is almost non-existent… but there
were a few times when it was handy.
In fact, as a
general usage card, it isn’t bad. Besides bias,
its big problem is there is usually an alternative.
There isn’t much need for Ilima in Expanded play,
but it might be a nice option for Standard. In
particular, I have some mill decks which still need to
give it a go. If your deck is already taking
countermeasures against N (whether yours or your
opponent’s), the big drawback of this card isn’t
so big. I was intrigued when I first saw Ilima
and awarded him a “C+”, then dropped it to a “C-” on the
second look because of the dreaded coin flips.
After going through all that, the numerical Standard
score converts to a straight “C”, marking it as average.
It isn’t good in the typical deck, but it isn’t bad, and
some can really take advantage of it. Plus, if we
get to a point where the top deck is running heavy
Octillery, we really need to remember
Ilima.
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