aroramage |
Ever looked over at your old
collection of cards from the B&W and XY eras, come
across a Bianca or a Shauna and wondered, "Man wouldn't
it be great if these were better?"
Enter Lillie, a new draw Supporter
based on that female character in the games that follows
you around the region! In a nutshell, Lillie is simple -
when you play her, you draw until you have 6 cards in
hand. Sounds simple enough, in fact it sounds exactly
like Bianca. But there is one little catch to her, and
that's what makes her unique! If it happens to be your
first turn, you don't get to draw until you have 6 cards
- you draw until you've got 8 cards instead! How neat is
that?
Well...admittedly, it's novel. The
current problem that Lillie faces is the competition
from another well-known draw supporter, Professor
Sycamore. And considering the latest reprint of Sycamore
comes from Steam Siege, he's going to be relevant for at
least the next year - past the next rotation for sure.
So she probably won't be run in high quantities until we
stop getting a "discard everything and draw 7" Professor
Oak-style of Supporter. But I'd keep her in mind, cause
considering that she could end up in your opening hand
frequently enough, she might end up netting you more
than Sycamore ever could.
...but then she'll just be a good
draw up to 6, which depending on what format and what's
printed, she might be okay.
Rating
Standard: 3/5 (she's pretty good
for right now, just outclassed)
Expanded: 2.5/5 (and don't even get
me started on the EXPANDED list of draw supporters)
Limited: 4.5/5 (seriously you'd
think that there would be an archetype alone for Draw
Supporters)
Arora Notealus: I wonder what that
would look like? You get a Pokemon, use its Ability to
grab a Supporter that lets you draw cards out of your
deck, you use the Supporter, and then the attack does
damage based on how much is drawn? That'd be a funky
thing to see, wouldn't it? I wonder if they would be
able to implement such a thing...
Weekend Thought: What're your
thoughts on this week's cards? Do you believe in the
power of Eeveelution? Or maybe you've got your own take
to Ribombee's Ability? Perhaps there's some use to gain
out of it! And what of Gigalith's powers? Think there
will come a time when he'll be really good, or is he
just too clunky? Would you run Lillie over Sycamore or
even at all in your deck? I know you'd run DCE if you
could!
|
Otaku |
We end this week
with Lillie (Sun & Moon 122/149, 147/149),
a Supporter that allows you to draw until you have six
cards in hand unless it is your first turn, in which
case you may draw until you have eight cards in hand.
Trainers are usually among the most potent cards in the
game but aren’t as easy to search out or recycle as
Pokémon or basic Energy cards. There are some
pieces of general Trainer support like Trainers’ Mail
(a card which sees play in many decks) and one or
two general anti-Trainer effects (but none currently
legal are worth using). Most of what will affect
how we use and evaluate this card, however, comes from
it being a Supporter, a class of Trainer that you may
use only once per turn. Yes, anyone not new to the
game already knew that but as with all of my
rambling reminders, it isn’t just that obsessive
need to state the obvious, but how easy it is to know a
fact without applying it. You’ve only got so many
slots in your typical deck you can allow for your
Supporters, and even in Standard, we’ve got many more we
want to run than we have the capacity to include.
Even running four VS Seeker, making room for
enough Supporters (and at the correct individual counts)
to have one worth using each turn is a key part of
building a good deck.
The primary draw
Supporter cards for Standard play continue to be N
and Professor Sycamore; few decks can afford to
skip either, even if they are trying to rely mostly on
one or the other, VS Seeker, and other
draw/search effects for setup and field maintenance.
Yet, with each new set, we hopefully look for something
to join them, because discarding your hand can sometimes
be crippling and often at least a little bit of a
drawback, and N can be too unpredictable due to
it varying with the remaining Prize count and
potentially helping your opponent as much or more than
yourself. It isn’t quite as bad in Expanded, as
there we have Colress and some more deck-specific
options, but in Standard play, we’ve been trying and
make stuff like Ace Trainer, Judge,
Professor Birch’s Observations, or Shauna
work. While handy at times, none of these
are on par with N and Professor Sycamore,
and it really hurts decks that need to build up a
combo (including Evolutions) in hand. Which brings
us back to Lillie.
The effect on
Lillie isn’t completely new. Apart from her
first turn bonus draw, Lillie matches up to
Bianca, and Bianca shares everything but her
name with Professor Birch (a Supporter only legal
for Unlimited play). We also have Shaymin-EX
(XY: Roaring Skies 77/108, 106/108); while it is
an Ability that you can only trigger once, when you
Bench this Pokémon from hand, its “Setup” allows you to
draw until you have six cards in hand. Players
gave Bianca a try; both right away when she first
released back in BW: Emerging Powers, and while
she had a tiny bit of initial success, she’s pretty much
been a non-entity since the release of N one set
later in BW: Noble Victories. With
Lillie, Bianca is now totally obsolete;
hypothetically, someone could try to create a deck where
eight cards with the shared aspect of their effect would
be worthwhile, but given the struggle to justify
including even a single Bianca over the years,
“hypothetical” was me being charitable. On the
other hand, Shaymin-EX has become such a major
factor most decks want to run at least one, but
this is expressly because you can use it in addition to
your Supporter for the turn (or additional copies of
itself).
At best, Lillie
(outside of your first turn), Bianca, and
Shaymin-EX can only draw six cards for you… which
isn’t always as good as it sounds. It isn’t the
amount that is the issue, but the condition; if you have
a zero card hand, enabling you to draw six cards,
wouldn’t you rather have had a Professor Sycamore
available to draw seven? In fact, with a zero card
hand, you still net six new cards with N.
We’ll address the first turn situation in a bit, but
first, let us consider how Lillie compares to
what is perhaps the most fundamental of currently legal
Supporters; the draw three card. While I don’t
recommend using Cheren, Hau, or Tierno
for competitive play, as they simply draw cards (no
other effect), they give us the baseline for pricing
Supporter based draw power. Generally speaking,
trading one card for one card is more or less “fair” in
a TCG; not always, but in the Pokémon TCG right now,
there are definitely some speedy decks that would
consider it for thinning purposes. So when you use
one of the draw-three Supporters, you net two
cards. This provides a pretty decent measuring
stick to use on Lillie. Still not worrying
about first turn, if you have Lillie and at least
six other cards in hand, you cannot even play her.
If you have Lillie and four or more cards in
hand, then she has a lower yield than the draw-three
Supporters, while Lillie plus three only equals
them. I began this paragraph pointing out that
with an empty hand, you’ve got a better option, so you
really need to have just one or two cards in hand for
Lillie to be the best. At least before we
consider her overall performance.
Now for the first
turn business. Lillie has at least the potential
to be one of the best first turn Supporter plays; empty
your hand, draw eight cards. If you get your hand
down to one card, and it is not one card you want
to discard, then she is as good or better than
Professor Sycamore. Being better or worse than
N isn’t as easy to predict; I’ve had opponent’s
wreck me by using N first turn; I may have taken
six cards, sometimes more than I had before the N
because I’d Benched additional Pokémon or my opponent
had some mulligans, but I either drew dead or
significantly disadvantaged hands. On your first
turn, Lillie outdoes or at least equals the
draw-three crowd until you are stuck with a hand
of five or more cards. This really is good,
except there is a problem; what can you do to
improve your odds of utilizing Lillie (and
utilizing her well) on your first turn? The more
copies you run, the more you may have to rely on her on
later turns, but if you run just one Lillie, you
either have to luck into her first turn or burn
some valuable resources to search her out. Due to
the current pace of the game, you can usually assume
your deck lends itself to playing down your hand, so I
don’t expect her to be bad, just not optimal. I
mean, if you can regularly lower your hand down to zero,
one, or two cards then Oranguru might be a better
deal if it doesn’t clash elsewhere; smaller yield, but
reusable (individually, and in multiples).
I have not
been able to test Lillie first hand, one part due
to falling behind everywhere the other part due to the
PTCGO feeling more like a chore than recreation; when
I’ve got downtime, I’m doing things other than playing
on it. Make of that what you will. For now,
I think Lillie is not the best choice for
Standard play, but she isn’t “bad”; even “mediocre”
sounds too harsh, but “adequate” sounds a bit too
positive because she isn’t really that either. In
the end, let us go with “suboptimal”; it isn’t that she
can’t do the job, but that other cards do it
significantly better. The only reason she doesn’t
fare it better in Expanded, I suspect, is because of
even more competition for space and more elaborate
combos that could clutter up your hand. This is
the Format where you’ve got Battle Compressor
(followed by a VS Seeker) or Jirachi-EX to
ensure a single Lillie shows up to play
first turn. Yet, we aren’t seeing the winning
players do that (unless it is in the most recent results
I have not yet read, of course). For Limited and
Theme Deck play, Lillie may perform a bit worse,
but ends up being more valuable; it is much easier to
end up with a cluttered hand here, but all draw
power is at a premium.
We aren’t done yet.
Lillie may have her day, and soon. I don’t
just mean how Standard may eventually see cards like
N and Professor Sycamore rotate out, leaving
a yawning gap for her to fill. Rather, in Japan,
they now have Tapu Lele-GX, and if translations
are correct, then she possesses an Ability functionally
identical to that of Jirachi-EX, but her HP is
170 and she’s got a solid looking attack. As long
as the Ability is correct (even if nothing else is), it
seems like she’s be must-run for most decks, and now
you’ve got a way to add Lillie to hand first turn
in Standard play.
Ratings
Standard:
3/5
Expanded:
3/5
Limited:
4/5
Theme:
4/5
Summary
I’ve had people
telling me Lillie should be in every deck, but I
just don’t see it. At least, not yet. She’s
nice first turn, but a little lacking the rest of the
game, at least when you’ve got alternatives. Some
decks may be able to use her well enough already to
justify her inclusion, and anything that isn’t prone to
a cluttered hand should probably test with her just to
be sure.
Since I’m behind, I
still haven’t finished my review of Lapras-GX,
which the crew looked at
two weeks ago
today. With five voting points, Lapras-GX
would have taken 14th place if our countdown for the top
cards of Sun & Moon had been long enough.
It missed the tie for
12th and
13th place by
two points. While I did review Shiinotic
last Tuesday,
in my haste I forgot to mention that it was our 15th
place finisher with four voting points. Lillie
tied with Skarmory (Sun & Moon 88/149), as
each earned three voting points. As they each
appeared on one of the others’ lists but not my own, I
broke the tie based on my own opinion at the time.
So Skarmory took 16th place while Lillie
only got 17th. As of right now, I’d give it
to Lillie, and her long-term use looks the most
secure. 18th place took secured two voting points and
could be one of the cards that makes Skarmory
useful enough that my original decision looks good…
|
21times |
Lillie
(Sun & Moon, 147/149) is a brand new, never
before seen draw support card.
Lillie allows you to draw cards from your deck until you have six
cards in your hand.
However, if you are fortunate enough to have
Lillie in your
opening hand, you may draw cards until you have eight in
your hand.
Under the right circumstances, with the right deck,
Lillie will
provide fantastic draw support without having to either
discard or reshuffle cards back into your deck.
However, when used in the wrong deck, it could
consistently give you very little or even no draw
support.
I did a study on
Lillie shortly
after it first came out of Sun & Moon.
I wanted to track exactly how many cards
Lillie was
giving me and which decks had the best card draws from
her as well.
Below are the results of that analysis:
Deck_average cards drawn_number of times
Lillie was played
Damage Change Mewtwo_7_2
Decidueye Vileplume_6.5_8
Vespiquen_5.5_2
Decidueye Tauros_5.35_40
Lurantis_5.33_3
Rainbow Road_5_5
Darkrai Porygon_5_2
Raichu Ampharos_5_3
Growlith Froslass Volcanion_5_2
Ho-Oh_4.66_3
Garchomp_4.66_3
Darkrai Dragonair_4.57_45
Tauros Hammers_4.5_16
Decidueye Meowstic_4.5_6
Weakness Box_4.14_7
Exploud_4_1
Decidueye Gengar_4_3
Sudowoodo_4_1
Medicham_3.64_14
Diancie 2_3.62_8
Xerneas Break Dragonair_3_7
Greninja_2.5_2
Grand Total_4.67_183
To put it in a nutshell,
Lillie works best in decks with many “insta play” cards.
You can see it did consistently very well in
Grass decks almost solely because of
Forest of Giant
Plants (Ancient Origins, 74/98).
Generally speaking, in non Grass decks that have
to hold cards (evolutions decks),
Lillie fares
much worse than in the big basic decks.
I would say that the benchmark is at least four
cards per draw.
If you can average four cards per draw, you
should probably play
Lillie in your
deck. The
closer you get to three cards, however, the closer you
get to a card like
Hau (Sun & Moon, 120/149), which most of us
consider to be an inferior draw supporter.
If your deck averages less than three cards, you
definitely
shouldn’t use
Lillie – but I would draw the line at four cards
because even at, say, three and a half, that means there
are a number of times when you’re only getting one or
two cards.
I like playing it in my Grass decks, it’s
definitely a staple, but even still I will almost always
choose Professor Sycamore (Steam Siege, 114/114) over it if I have
both in my hand.
This is where the problem with
Lillie lies –
let’s say you have both
Lillie and
Sycamore in
your hand at the same time, and your hand is full of
cards that you don’t want to discard (sound familiar?
Seems to happen to me a lot!).
If you use
Sycamore, you get seven new cards, but you have to discard several
cards that may be invaluable to you later in the game.
However, if you use
Lillie, but your hand is full of cards, granted you don’t have to
discard any cards, but you might only get one or two
cards in your draw.
Likewise, if you have only
Lillie and
Sycamore in your hand, unless it’s your first turn, you’re going to
use the Sycamore
over the
Lillie every time.
Therefore, while
Lillie can potentially provide better support than
N (Fates
Collide, 105/124) or
Professor Birch’s
Observations (Primal Clash, 159/160),
Professor Sycamore
still reigns supreme as the best draw supporter in the
game.
Rating
Standard: 3 out of 5
Summary
I would highly recommend that you try
Lillie as an
alternative to N
or Birch
or whatever draw supporter you are currently using
(except for
Sycamore).
Track it over twenty or twenty-five plays and see
how many cards it draws for you.
If you get an average of at least four or even
five cards a draw (I got 6.5 out of
Decidueye
Vileplume and 5.35 out of
Decidueye Tauros),
it’s definitely better than
N or
Birch because you don’t have
to reshuffle.
If your average is around three (or less), I’d
definitely recommend passing on
Lillie.
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