Ultra Ball
(first printed in Dark Explorers,
102/116) has dominated the meta for
several years, and you’ll find it in
many top tier decks today. To give
you a little perspective, every world
championship deck in the past five years
has run at least two copies. In
each of the past three years, the world
championship deck has carried four
copies of this, the most powerful of all
Pokemon search tools.
We all know that every Pokemon search
ball has some kind of limitation placed
on it. Ultra Ball, however,
differs from all other Pokeballs in that
its limitation can actually benefit the
player under the right circumstances.
The Ultra Ball player commonly
uses the card to free up room in his or
her hand. If you have three cards
in your hand and play Ultra Ball
to grab a Shaymin-EX (Roaring
Skies, 106/108), you can draw the
full six cards from your deck.
Even better, players commonly use
Ultra Ball to grab Hoopa-EX (Ancient
Origins, 36/98) to grab two basic EX
pokemon and Shaymin-EX.
Of course, as we all painfully know, you
must discard two cards when playing
Ultra Ball, and you must discard
these two cards prior to going to find
the Pokemon you desire.
Fortunately, we have a wide variety of
retrieval cards available to us to bring
back cards out of our discard pile.
Ultra Ball, like most other
Pokeballs, also provides the tremendous
opportunity to scan through our entire
deck. This provides essential,
vital information in developing in game
strategy. If no one has ever
mentioned this to you – or if you’ve
never thought of this – please realize
that ALL of the top players take this
opportunity to look at what’s missing
from their deck. It’s very
easy (especially on PTCGO) to simply
click the Ultra Ball, select the
cards to discard, and then click on the
Pokemon we want to put into our hand.
DO NOT STOP THERE! Take this
opportunity to at least look at
your Pokemon (including any broken
evolution chains) and how many Energy
cards you have. If you’re playing
PTCGO, you can fairly quickly run
through your deck and identify what
cards you have prized. I have a
spreadsheet that contains all of the
decklist for the deck I’m playing open
while playing PTCGO, and I put the
number 1, 2, (or – gulp – 3) in column
B, immediately to the right of the list
of cards in column A. This tells
me exactly what is prized, and I can
easily flip between the spreadsheet and
the game by pressing ALT-TAB
simultaneously. In real life, it’s
not that easy, but I promise you that
the best players count their missing
cards and can tell you exactly what they
have in their prizes. That’s part
of what makes them the best, what
separates them from the majority.
Granted there’s a ton of variability in
Pokemon due to the various aleatoric
aspects of the game, but this is
something that the best players are
doing. If you want to compete with
them – if you want to significantly
improve your win percentage – count your
missing prize cards! (And thus
endeth today’s sermon.)
Without a doubt, Ultra Ball rules
as the most useful Pokeball available
today, and its full art reprint in
Sun & Moon means that it will remain
part of the meta for years to come.
With the upcoming expected rotation of
Shaymin-EX and Hoopa-EX,
combined with the introduction of
Timer Ball (Sun& Moon, 134/149)
and Nest Ball (Sun & Moon,
123/149), we might see less usage of
Ultra Ball; however, the much
anticipated Tapu Lele (release
date of May 5th as part of
the Guardians Rising expansion)
probably will ensure that Ultra Ball
will be a staple of the majority of
decks well into the next rotation.
Rating
Standard: 4 out of 5
Summary
The most commonly used of all search
cards, Ultra Ball allows a player
to search through his or her deck and
find any Pokemon they desire. It
may not be the best option for every
deck, but it will be invaluable in the
majority of decks you play.
