aroramage |
Field Blower is the new and
improved Tool Scrapper of today. Back in the Dragons
Exalted set, Tool Scrapper became a useful Tool-disposal
card to get rid of things like Float Stone and
eventually Muscle Band from Pokemon - notably it got rid
of Float Stone from Pokemon like Keldeo-EX and Garbodor
(DEX).
Field Blower improves on Tool
Scrapper's utility and thus makes itself far more
useful. By playing the card, you can not only get rid of
Tools but even Stadium cards, up to 2 cards in total in
play. Now you've got the ability to not only get rid of
your opponent's Choice Band or Float Stone, but also you
can take out their Forest of Giant Plants, Rough Seas,
or any of the other Stadium cards that could see play.
The Stadium Wars can now be fought with Field Blowers!
...ain't that weird to see, leaf
blowers defeating fields.
Field Blower's extra utility will
undoubtedly make it a bigger part of decks and make Tool
Scrapper virtually obsolete in Expanded, and in Standard
it'll remain a strong card to counteract some of the
more popular Tools and Stadiums that come up over the
next couple of years. It's a strong card to be sure, and
it'll no doubt see a lot of dominant play over time,
though there may be cards like Garbodor that might
stifle the amount of Tools - and thus, targets - for
Field Blower's effect.
Rating
Standard: 4.5/5 (being an Item card
right now is alright, all things considered)
Expanded: 5/5 (and having utility
makes it a powerful asset to wield)
Limited: 5/5 (so be sure to keep a
couple of these guys handy in your binders!)
Arora Notealus: Field Blower is,
similar to Garbodor, a bit of a format-defining card.
With Garbodor, people may be incentivized to run less
Item cards, and with Field Blower around, they may try
to run less Tools overall. Most decks that focus on
Stadiums can't really say no to having one, and even if
they could, it just gives the player with the Stadium a
lot more field presence, thus necessitating the use of
Field Blower. It's one of those staple cards that you
can't really just get rid of because part of its aspect
goes down - even if Tools get weaker due to Garbodor's
presence, Stadiums are still a large part of the game,
and while Garbodor may mean you're not running a full
4-of playset of Field Blower, you may still have
incentive to run at least 1 or 2 against your opponent's
Stadiums.
Next Time: And our #1 card of the
set goes out to...another GX? Yet you seem familiar...
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21times |
Field Blower
(Guardians Rising, 125/145) breezes into the meta
from the Guardians Rising expansion set.
This item card allows you to discard not one but
TWO, yes two, stadiums or tools!
And there was much rejoicing throughout Alola!
Finally, after more than half a year, tool
removal returns to the game!
Woo hoo!
I have mentioned in prior reviews and discussions that,
for the last eight months, we have all been living in
this wonderful world where if you attach a tool card to
a Pokemon, that tool card stays on that Pokemon.
It’s been a blissful happy place filled with
Float Stones
(Breakthrough, 137/162) and
Exp. Shares (Sun
& Moon, 118/149),
Fighting Fury
Belts (Breakpoint, 99/122) and
Lucky Helmets
(Ancient Origins, 77/98).
It was so great!
You put a tool on a Pokemon and you never have to
worry about it going anywhere, it just sticks there
forever.
The huge advantage to this is that you can use defensive
tools (Lucky
Helmet,
Assault Vest (Breakthrough, 133/162),
Bursting Balloons
(Breakpoint, 97/122)) as an integral part of your
strategy.
Stick that
Fighting Fury Belt on there and your Pokemon will
forever have an additional forty HP.
Today, however, that has all changed with the
introduction of
Field Blower into the meta.
No longer can you simply play down a tool onto a
Pokemon and assume that it will reside there until the
game has finished.
No, now we have to carefully judge when to put a
tool down as well.
For example, in the case of
Choice Band (Guardians
Rising, 121/145), we have to take special care.
If you put down
Choice Band
before you intend to use it, you run the risk of wasting
it. For
example, a month or so ago, we would get a tool card we
liked in our hand and we would instantly play it down on
the appropriate Pokemon without a second thought.
Now, we have to judge, “Will I actually be able
to attack this turn?
If so, is
Choice Band really going to be an asset to me this
turn?”
Spirit Links now also fall into this category.
In these cases, it’s better to hold the tool
until you really need it because
Field Blower
might be just around the corner to come along and
completely wreck your strategy by knocking it off your
active Pokemon.
Which leads me to my larger point –
are we really
running less tools because of Field Blower?
And how much does
Garbodor (Guardians
Rising, 51/145) factor into how many tools we use?
I had initially thought that
Field Blower
would be a four of in every deck, and I still try to put
four in every deck I can.
I definitely put four in my
Garbodor
decks. If I
had the foresight back on May 5th, I would have tracked
tool usage since the release of Guardians Rising,
but, unfortunately, I failed to have the wisdom to see
the value in tracking that.
My feeling
is that players are using less tools, but I still have
games where I’m knocking off tools and stadiums left and
right. I
have no scientific data to provide support to speak to
the argument one way or another.
So as I mentioned, there are a number of tools now that
have become obsolete… or risky at best if you choose to
employ them:
·
Assault Vest
(Breakthrough, 133/162)
·
Bent Spoon
(Fates Collide, 93/124)
·
Bursting Balloon
(Breakpoint, 97/122)
·
Exp. Share
(Sun & Moon, 118/149)
·
Lucky Helmet
(Ancient Origins, 77/98)
·
Poison Barb
(Sun & Moon, 124/149)
·
Weakness Policy
(Primal Clash, 142/160)
If you run any of these tools, you run the risk of
having them blown off your Pokemon before having the
opportunity to use them.
These defensive tools have undoubtedly seen much
less use, and I have stopped using them altogether in my
decks.
Well, maybe at some point in the future we’ll have a
tool that will prevent our opponent from knocking tools
off our Pokemon.
Rating
Standard: 4.5 out of 5
Conclusion
Initially, I had
Leaf Blower (again, you
know a card
is good when it gets a nickname) as my best card in the
set, but now, especially as tools will probably see
decreased use (especially with the dominance of
Garbodor),
I’ve dropped it just a little.
It’s still at least a two of in just about every
deck and could be a four of in many others.
If we only had 62 cards instead of sixty…
|
Otaku |
The number two ranked card from the latest expansion is
Field Blower (SM: Guardians Rising
125/145, 163/145). I’ve been having a fun time
defending its placement, both to others and myself, and
now it is time to do the same for everyone.
To begin with, Field Blower is a Trainer,
specifically an Item. Its effect is that you may
discard up to two Tools or Stadium cards or one of each
that is in play. The discarded cards may belong to
either player. You have options with this card: if
you need to discard less than two cards, you may discard
only one. You can hit your own side of the field
as well, for less common plays like ditching your own
Spirit Link card to make room for a Choice Band.
If we ever get a way to have two Stadium cards in play
at the same time, this card is even future friendly.
For a moment though, let us consider the past: Field
Blower is nearly a reprint an older card named
Windstorm (EX: Crystal Guardians 85/100). Not
an actual reprint, because the names are clearly
different: the only other differences are minor. Items
didn’t exist at the time, so Windstorm released
as a “normal Trainer”, but retroactively it was
classified as such once the concept was introduced to
the TCG, just like all other “normal Trainers” from back
in the day. Even the effect text is almost 100%
identical, with the one difference being in the
parenthetical phrase: “yours or your opponent’s” versus
“both yours and your opponent’s” but they
actually mean the same thing. Windstorm was
reviewed once by the CotD crew,
here:
I didn’t review it at the time, but I came to loathe the
card. Why? You have an Item card that can
discard up to two cards from play, a two-for-one
advantage only requiring skill to optimize it,
not to utilize it.
The lack of a truly effective means of discarding an
opponent’s Pokémon Tools shaped this format.
Tools could be counted on to remain in play against most
decks, and the “Garbotoxin” Ability found on Garbodor
(XY: BREAKpoint 57/122) steered people away from
running certain decks, because eventually you
were almost guaranteed to run into Garbodor in
competitive play. Now we have an answer to
Garbodor shutting down Abilities, to Exp. Share
safely sucking Energy onto Benched Pokémon, to
Fighting Fury Belt allowing Basic Pokémon to stick
around. Well, technically we had all of this
before, but it was not effective. You had
to use certain Pokémon attacks, or even Rattata (XY:
Evolutions 66/108) if you could manage the timing
(against Garbodor you usually couldn’t). So
I have to be thrilled that not only do we have an
answer to these problems, but it also helps you
deal with an opponent’s Stadium? Nope.
There are a couple ways to approach this, but the short
version is that Field Blower is too good.
It won’t seem “broken” given the insanity already
gripping the metagame, but it is a long way from what I
would call “balanced”. How so? First, Tool
cards can only be played if there is a compatible
Pokémon in play that doesn’t already have all of its
“Tool slots” filled. Second, if that Pokémon is
bounced, KO’d, etc. then the Tool either goes with it or
into the discard pile. Third, many existing Tools
have effects that, even if technically always Active,
don’t really matter until certain conditions are met.
We know from past multiple Tool discarding effects like
Startling Megaphone, Tool Scrapper, and ol’
Windstorm that introducing this kind of effect
rewards certain Tools that didn’t need the help.
What do I mean? Those that tap into the frenetic
pace of the game and can be played in a manner so as to
provide a more or less instant return. This can be
attaching Float Stone on your Active (or combo
piece like Keldeo-EX) only when you’re
going to make use of the zeroed out Retreat Cost this
very turn. It also looks like when you don’t
attach Choice Band until you’re going to attack
and the +30 damage will matter. Even Spirit
Link cards are going to be attached only the moment
before Mega Evolution. Stuff like Exp. Share?
Poison Barb? Half the effect of
Fighting Fury Belt? If your opponent even
discards one of them they get a solid 1-1 trade
of an easy to use resource versus a less easy to utilize
resource. If you dare put two Tools into play you
can’t cash in on ASAP, it becomes a serious advantage
for an opponent if they can pop off Field Blower;
a painless two-for-one. Even when it comes to
stuff you did already make use of, you won’t have
gotten the full value; if you don’t plan on using the
effect of Float Stone more than once, you’d
probably have run Switch instead.
Wait, there’s more!
Now we get to the Stadium affecting effect.
Stadium cards are a once-per-turn play. Part of
their value comes from your own Stadium card being the
easiest, most cost-effective way of discarding your
opponent’s Stadium card. Like Tools, some Stadium
cards carry an instant benefit, while others take some
time or certain conditions to do their thing. Unlike
Tools, Stadiums affect both players; most apply the same
effect to both sides of the field, rewarding a player
for having a compatible deck. Two-sided Stadium
cards apply different effects to each side of the field,
but still can’t be replaced by a Stadium with the same
name, even if you want to switch the effects.
Decks that don’t want to run a Stadium (or for some
reason can’t) have two other Trainer-based options.
The Pokémon which discard Stadium cards haven’t proven
remotely effective in Expanded or Standard play, so we
won’t worry about them. So back to the Trainers,
Delinquent is a Supporter that discards a Stadium
from the field, then forces your opponent to discard
three cards from hand. Paint Roller is an Item
that discards the Stadium in play and then allows you to
draw one card. Your Supporter for the turn is
usually worth a lot to you, which would put
Delinquent at a Disadvantage versus Paint Roller
being an easily spammed Item, except Paint Roller
is not easy to spam. Discarding three cards
from your opponent’s hand can be worth discarding even
an otherwise helpful Stadium, even playing from from
your hand just to use Delinquent; rarely will
that be the case with Paint Roller. While
Item lock is also a factor, that ended up applying to
Delinquent as well due to Battle Compressor
and VS Seeker being natural partners for it.
Now it has Tapu Lele-GX and “Wonder Tag” for
combo purposes. Still, if you needed an
Item to deal with Stadium cards, we have one, it just
wasn’t as beneficial as Delinquent or simply
playing down your own Stadium in most decks.
We didn’t need an easier method to deal with Stadium
cards. Most decks don’t run a lot of Stadium
cards. Even decks that need to run heavy on
Stadium cards, running multiple different Stadiums, tend
to max out at a very rare eight. Usually, it is
more like six, with typical decks running two to four
Stadium cards (even when running different Stadiums
together). Using a Stadium to discard another
Stadium very balanced, and only really caused issues
when something like Giratina-EX (XY: Ancient
Origins 57/98, 93/98) could use its “Chaos Wheel”
attack to prevent it and because of other aspects
of the metagame. Tools also aren’t heavily
played except for oddities like the “Tool Drop” deck
built around Trubbish (BW: Plasma Storm
65/135) and its attack of the same name. While
having fewer targets in the typical deck does mean
Field Blower is less useful, it that isn’t enough to
balance it out, just to keep it from being worth maxing
out in most decks. We’ll probably see the usual
cyclical pattern: Tool/Stadium usage will wax and wane
one step ahead of Field Blower usage for the
general metagame, with the best players being in sync
with these changes and the worst one’s being totally out
of step. Stadium cards will also suffer the
same shift to “active” instead of “reactive” effects,
but with more exceptions.
To give you an idea, Altar of the Sunne removes
the Weaknesses from your Fire- and Metal-Type Pokémon.
Without some zany combo that (I think) requires cards
from Unlimited, you won’t be able to cash in on that
effect during your own turn, and if you are really
counting on it against your opponent, odds are he or she
will save back his or her copies of Field Blower
to make sure Altar of the Sunne isn’t actually in
play to protect your Pokémon. Scorched Earth
allows you to discard a Fire Energy card or
Fighting Energy card from hand in order to draw two
cards from your deck; in the right build, both
the cost and the effect are benefits. Barring some
bad luck, you should be able to use this effect at least
once, right away, even if your opponent uses Field
Blower. For the oddballs, we first we have
Dimension Valley, which shaves [C] off the Energy
costs of the attacks on Psychic Type Pokémon.
While this is something with an ongoing, always working
effect, it only really matters on your turn. Except
decks are usually built around it, so they do not
want to see it discarded, often maxing it out and
running something like Puzzle of Time to reclaim
discarded copies. I’m drawing a blank on a purely
“reactive” Stadium that won’t suffer from Field
Blower, but there is are some oddballs that kind of
fall in between.
Parallel City
is one such oddball. One side has an effect that
reduces the damage done by that player’s Fire-, Grass-,
or Water-Type Pokémon, while the other caps that
player’s Bench-size at three (if the player has more
than three Pokémon on the Bench, he or she chooses which
ones to discard). This effect remains active as
long as Parallel City is in play, so shouldn’t it
be a lot weaker now that there is another way to easily
discard it? Not really; while decks that need
a large Bench are happy they can build or rebuild after
discarding Parallel City, turns out that is only
part of the story. If it is indeed rebuilding,
they are still out any Pokémon they had to discard when
Parallel City first hit the field. Some
folks like to use the shrinking effect on their own
Bench to discard cards like Shaymin-EX (XY:
Roaring Skies 77/108, 106/108); discarding
Parallel City afterward allows them to put more
useful Pokémon back down. Finally, as a two-sided
Stadium, if the “wrong” side is facing you, you may wish
to discard it so that you can play your own copy facing
the opposite direction. All in all, Field
Blower is a net gain for such cards.
Field Blower
is going to be run in Standard, and probably in
Expanded. Using it well will mean reading the
metagame, knowing when to raise or lower your count, and
knowing when it is best to use it. Minimizing the
damage done is about shifting your deck to Stadium cards
and/or Tools you may make use of immediately, and
avoiding having two out at once (if possible).
Some strategies are just no longer viable in the face of
it, though this probably only applies to Standard as
there are already three Tool discarding Trainer cards in
Expanded: Startling Megaphone, Tool Scrapper,
and Xerosic. You’ll need to pay extra
close attention to the Expanded metagame, as instead of
needing more or less Field Blower, you may need
to swap some or all of them out for one of those three.
Except for Tool Scrapper; Field Blower
does everything it can and more. The elephant in
the room is actually a large pile of trash: what about
Garbodor (SM: Guardians Rising 51/145)? Field
Blower can be a risk because it feeds the damage of
that card, but as usual, it is total Item usage
versus the HP/strategy of your deck that really matters.
Plus, Garbodor itself likes Field Blower
because discarding your opponent’s Tools from the field
feeds its “Trashalanche” attack. If Vileplume
(XY: Ancient Origins 3/98) decks make a comeback,
or we are dealing with other Ability based Item lock
(which may apply in Expanded as well), then Field
Blower may actually be more useful than it looks;
Garbodor (XY: BREAKpoint 57/122) is still a
thing, and Field Blower is your best bet in
Standard for discarding the Tool it needs to activate
its “Garbotoxin” Ability. In Limited play, your
opponent is less likely to have Tools and/or Stadium
cards, even less likely to have ones that really matter,
but you also are less likely to have another
means of dealing with them. In the end, that still
leaves Field Blower a valuable inclusion.
Ratings
Standard:
4.5/5
Expanded:
4.25/5
Limited:
4/5
Conclusion
Field Blower
is the kind of card that matters even if you don’t
play it, but odds are you’re trying to include at least
one copy for those matchups where having it is crucial.
Whether we end up in a kind of cycle or usage stays
steady at about one per deck, it matters.
Get an entire playset just in case you’d actually need
them. It scores lower in Expanded because you
basically are choosing which of the current Tool removal
to replace, and some decks can justify the risk of going
without any of these four. Something I failed to
work in above, remember that cards like Head Ringer
and Spirit Links give you even more reason to
discard Tools from your own cards.
Overall, Field Blower received 55 voting points,
edging out Garbodor by just one voting point and
missing a tie with our first place pick by two.
For my own list, Field Blower was my number one
pick. I no longer think it is the number one card
from this set; that goes to tomorrow’s CotD.
I think Field Blower is of similar significance
to Garbodor, so I am okay with either being
second and third. If I am going to choose between
them, I’d say the long-term favors Field Blower.
Lately, single-Prize glass cannons seem to be popping up
every few sets. Tool discarding Trainers? We
went without from the past rotation until now in
Standard, and Expanded has only three others. What
is more, the oldest of those only finally lost all
relevance thanks to Field Blower, enjoying nearly
a five-year lifespan, and nearly two years without
competition in Standard play.
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