21times |
Wishful Baton
(Burning Shadows, 128/147) enters the meta
through the Burning Shadows expansion set.
This Tool card allows you to move up to three
Basic energy to any benched Pokemon when the active
Pokemon it is attached to is KO’d.
What a card this would have been back last December and
January when
Darkrai EX (Breakpoint, 74/122) and
Xerneas Break
(Steam Siege, 82/114) were running around all
over PTCGO.
I’ve actually had some success with it in
Darkrai GX (Burning
Shadows, 88/147),
Ho-Oh EX (Breakpoint,
121/122), and
Lycanroc GX (SM14; Guardians Rising,
74/145).
It’s a good card that will help you continue attacking
and putting pressure on your opponent.
I like it a lot in decks that only run Basic
energy, and I have been pretty surprised at how
infrequently it gets knocked off by
Field Blower
(Guardians Rising, 125/145).
I wrote back on June 1st when we reviewed
Field Blower
that I had initially thought
Field Blower
would be a four of in any decklist.
Even just a few days before we turned in our
Guardians Rising lists, I actually had it as my
number 1 card.
I since tapered back my view on it, but the
pendulum is now swinging back that way again.
Right now, I believe that if you are running a
deck that is ability dependent, you need to run four
Field Blowers.
Decks that are running
Garbotoxin
Garbodor (Breakpoint, 57/122) carry four
Float Stones
(Breakthough, 137/162) and frequently two copies
of Garbodor BKP.
I’ve noticed
recently that virtually all of my opponents only ran one
or two Field
Blowers (some none!).
I rarely had my tools get knocked off, they
almost always were able to stick.
I also found that if I put one tool out early,
even if I had a second in hand, my opponent would use
Field Blower
straight away to discard that single tool, even if it
wasn’t immediately impacting the game.
Guys, just because you have a card in your hand
doesn’t mean you have to play it!
It’s not like this only happened once, it
occurred several times, and I’m sure it was a big part
of why I was able to liberally use my tools without fear
of having them discarded.
Long story short, right now I would have no
problem including as many tools as you want in your
decklist because people just aren’t running a lot of
Field Blowers.
Two just isn’t enough.
It’s harder to find them with only two, and you
can really get stuck if one is prized or you have to
discard one with
Professor Sycamore (Steam Siege, 114/114) or
Ultra Ball (Sun
& Moon, 135/149).
There were so many games where I’m 100% certain
that my opponent was kicking himself for only playing
one or two Field
Blowers.
Rating
Standard: 3 out of 5
Conclusion
If you’re running a deck with a lot of Basic energy (Volcanion
(Steam Siege, 25/114),
Darkrai EX / GX,
maybe even
Gardevoir GX (Burning Shadows, 93/147),
Wishful Baton
can potentially be a tremendous asset for you.
I would highly recommend trying it out,
especially considering that people are running a limited
number of Tool removal cards.
|
Retro |
Have you ever heard of the move Baton Pass? That
single move which helps boost the viability of a certain
Pokemon just because they can pass the stat bonuses to
the team’s main attacker without them worrying about
having to perform risky stat boosting moves like Swords
Dance and Quiver Dance. Heck even many teams are based
around just Baton Passing stat changes to a teammate!
One of the best examples of this Baton Pass pivots is
Scolipede; since it has the Speed Boost ability, you can
just stall out your opponent and pass your gained speed
boosts to a slow but powerful teammate. And what does
this has to do with today’s card? That’s because that
similar idea has converted itself to a Pokemon Tool
card, in this case; Wishful Baton.
Wishful Baton allows you to conserve energy, in
its simplest sense. Just like Baton Pass, where you can
pass stat changes to a teammate, Wishful Baton
essentially pass up to 3 basic energies to 1 of your
Benched Pokemon when said Pokemon is your Active Pokemon
and is knocked out by an attack. Reminds you of another
Tool card? Well, its similar to Exp. Share, a card which
has seen numerous reprints and is now a staple in energy
scaling based offensive decks. There are several reasons
why this card at points is better than Exp. Share. One,
you can move up to 3 energies from your defeated Active
Pokemon immediately, so the energy conservation power is
better. Two, by moving 3 energies from one Pokemon to
another, you essentially swapped Pokemon; if this Tool
is attached to something like a Lapras-GX (SM
Base Set) or a Darkrai-EX (XY
BREAKpoint) which really loves its energies, you can
essentially keep the majority of the energies on the
field instead of in the discard pile, meaning that the
pressure is still on the opponent by keeping the energy
for the next Pokemon from the bench to attack.
However, although there are multiple reasons why
this Tool might be better than Exp. Share, the latter
card also has its upsides. Firstly, Exp. Share is safer
because you can attach it to the Pokemon in your bench,
which compensates the fact that its slower in its energy
conservation technique. Secondly, you can stack multiple
Exp. Shares in multiple Pokemon so more than one Pokemon
can get the energy from a defeated teammate, unlike
Wishful Baton’s move-all-to-one clause. But these 2 are
bad for the similar reason why passive Tools such as
Hard Charm (XY
Base Set) and Bursting Balloon (XY
BREAKpoint) isn’t played too much anymore. Your
opponent is the one controlling how they will react to
the Tools; they can play Field Blower (SM
Guardians Rising) to remove them, they can just not
attack the said Pokemon, or they can just pass their
turn without attacking, hoping to see how the game goes.
Whilas active Tools such as Choice Band (SM
Guardians Rising) are played everywhere because you
can make use of them as soon as you play them.
Neverthless, I believe that Wishful Baton is an
amazing Pokemon Tool card that might has its usefulness
in some scenarios and decks that mained Pokemon with
heavy attack costs; and is able to give Exp. Share a run
for its money.
Rating:
Standard: 3/5
(It does has its usefulness, but it is easily
counterplayed by denial cards. Play this if you are
brave enough)
Expanded: 3.2/5
(Very useful for many Pokemon that is rather Tool
independent, of which there are many in Expanded; so
Wishful Baton is more useful here.)
Limited: 4.6/5
(This is the best conservation card in the format; many
Pokemon will be blessed with the appearance of Wishful
Baton with no real denial methods here.)
Next in SM Burning Shadows:
You really want to be buff?
|
Otaku |
Another late
review from me, and it was to my benefit; having a
chance to read the others reviews helped me polish my
own points, even come up with a few that they didn’t
mention but which I would have missed if things
they said hadn’t gotten me to thinking. Since I’m
late, there isn’t much point to forcing myself to be
concise, so hopefully, you appreciate a little more
content, even if it is theoretical. If you skipped
Monday’s review, we are long done with counting down the
site’s Top 10 list for SM: Burning Shadows, and
we’ve even reviewed all the cards that made at least one
personal Top 10, but didn’t have the voting points to
make the actual list. Including those gave us an
effective Top 18, and now we are looking at cards
that made 21times’ Top 24 or my own Top 25 lists… mostly
because it was an easy way for me to get some
interesting picks with minimal effort for the next few
weeks. I did take a bit of time to plug them in as
if they were their own separate top 10 but
instead of counting down, we’re counting up… so if
these had officially been part of things, today’s
subject would have been our 20th place pick.
Wishful Baton
(SM: Burning Shadows 128/147) is a Trainer-Item,
specifically a Pokémon Tool. When the Pokémon to
which this Tool is attached is KO’d while Active, you
may select up to three attached basic Energy cards and
move them to one of your Benched Pokémon. There is
a lot to unpack here, and yes I’m going to start
with the most fundamental first. Trainer cards are
essential for a modern, competitive deck, and maybe
barring a lucky gimmick deck that made good, this has
always been the case. In the early days of the
game, players quickly gravitated towards decks that were
50% to 75% Trainer, and those are not
exaggerations; I do mean decks running 30 to 45 Trainer
cards. You know, like now. Multiple
factors caused a dramatic drop in Trainer usage, but it
keeps rising back to its present level. There
aren’t many currently useful bits of general Trainer
support in the Expanded Format, with even less in
Standard. Thankfully, none of the general
anti-Trainer effects in these formats have ever proven
competitive; go back further, though, and they could be
downright tyrannical. Item specific support is
similar, but anti-Item effects have proven
competitive even in the present, let alone the near
past. As a Pokémon Tool, we have another level of
support and counters to consider; regrettably, it is a
similar story as there are a few pieces of Tool-specific
support but more pieces of Tool counters that have
helped define the competitive metagame.
With all that going
against them, you may wonder why would you use Pokémon
Tools at all? That is a good question; the short
answer is that some are simply that potent, the slightly
longer answer is that, not unlike Ace Specs, Stadium
Cards, and Supporters, their existence creates a
pseudo-resource. Essentially, each Pokémon has a
“Tool Slot”, with a few possessing more than one.
When we combine the short and the longer answers
together, that’s the reality; some Pokémon just aren’t
complete without the Tool of best fit. This can
range from simple damage buffs to Evolution aids to
complex combo pieces. Wishful Baton aims to be
the latter. Most of the complexity owes to the
multiple conditions you must fulfill for the effect.
Let’s list them out (even the obvious):
- Wishful Baton must be attached
to a Pokémon
-
That Pokémon must be your Active
-
That Pokémon must be KO’d
-
The KO must be via an opponent’s attack
-
The attack must score the KO via damage
-
You need at least one basic Energy
attached to move
-
You need at least one Benched Pokémon to
receive the Energy
Field Blower
is a loose staple in Standard, and the Expanded Format
features multiple proven and unproven cards that can
discard a Tool or Tools from your Pokémon.
Protecting against all of them is impossible;
there are Abilities, attacks, Items, and Supporters that
all could discard Wishful Baton. Similarly,
the same assortment can also force you to change out
your Active or discard attached Energy. Less
Supporters, the same assortment can even KO a Pokémon
without damage. If we narrow it down further to
just attacks and Abilities, then we get to cards that
can simply negate the effects of Items (including Tools)
or prevent them from being played.
However, when
Wishful Baton works it is amazing! This is Energy
acceleration via Energy retention, and even though it is
restricted to basic Energy it can provide quite a boost
when optimized. When it is two Energy, it is still good,
but when it is only one, you may have been better off
with Exp. Share. Speaking of which, prior
to Field Blower we saw Exp. Share putting
Darkrai-EX (XY: BREAKpoint 74/122,
118/122) based decks on top, at least for a bit.
Comparing and contrasting with Exp. Share brings
up two other facets of Wishful Baton; while it
may move up to three basic Energy cards, it is a
one-time deal. It also means your Active
Pokémon is giving up a Tool slot (probably its only one)
for the effect, instead of being able to use the more
obvious options (Choice Band, Float Stone,
etc.). Darkrai-EX may or may not have been
better off if it had been able to run Wishful Baton
back in the day, and at present, it probably won’t be
showing up in the more recent iterations of the deck.
So what decks should consider it? I don’t have any
specific ideas, in that the decks where it might work
seem to already have better options. In general,
consider decks that lock down Items, as that blocks your
opponent’s most likely means of discarding Tools or
Energy, or decks that can protect their attached cards.
Of course, you also need these decks to use
decent amounts of basic Energy, need two or more Energy
to attack, and not have a better Tool option,
which is what eliminates most decks from consideration.
The closest I can
come are longshots at best, but here we go. The
first is not-quite-general usage, due to how many
decks use attackers with low Energy requirements or run
on mostly (even all) Special Energy; collectively, they
might make a majority. Still, Wishful Baton
might have a future as a “pressure card” or “bait”.
Most decks only have so much they can do to deal with an
opponent’s Stadiums and/or Tools, with a lot of that
centered on Field Blower. Yet, most decks
only have room for one or two copies of Field Blower,
thus you can force them into a painful choice;
have two Tools and another Tool or a Stadium in play,
and Field Blower can’t take them all out at once.
All the targets to be of comparable merit and compatible
infrastructure (at least on your end of things); if the
choice really is obvious, you’re not going to come out
ahead. It might work better to have Wishful
Baton out early, so your opponent specifically tries
for a Field Blower, then reveal the more
important cards later. The problem is that there
are multiple ways a deck might be able to
deal with this trick (or Wishful Baton in
general). Some Ability reliant decks pack four
Field Blower to counter Garbodor (XY:
BREAKpoint 57/122). Your opponent might have
their own Stadium plus Field Blower ready.
Your opponent might be able to KO the Pokémon with
Wishful Baton attached without it being
Active and/or without using an attack that does damage…
and of course, you had to get Wishful Baton on
something with two or three Energy attached ready, up
front, and have it not be better off with say
Choice Band attached so that a 2HKO became a OHKO.
Here are some of
the decks or deck concepts I could come up with that
might be able to make use of Wishful Baton;
the big issue with most of these is they’ve got
something better and/or they aren’t that great anymore
themselves. The aforementioned Darkrai-EX
decks, M Gardevoir-EX (XY: Primal Clash
106/160, 130/106; Generations RC31/RC32), and
Xerneas BREAK decks love keeping Energy on
the field, but you might prefer Choice Band or
Muscle Band for extra damage, Fighting Fury Belt
for extra HP and damage, Gardevoir Spirit Link
(only for M Gardevoir-EX), or Exp. Share
if you want the Energy spread out or being
(relatively) safely collected by Regirock (XY:
Black Star Promos XY49). Entei (XY:
Ancient Origins 15/98) was once a big deal because -
at the time - its attacks could be quickly powered up
and its “θ Double” Ancient Trait could allow you to
focus on soaking damage (with Assault Vest),
doing more damage (Muscle Band), or both (Fighting
Fury Belt). Wishful Baton might be another
viable inclusion, especially as Volcanion-EX can
now handle bumping up damage output.
Primal Groudon-EX
and Regirock both have a key Ancient Trait as
well, this time “Ω Barrier”; it protects them and - due
to how the Pokémon TCG handles things - cards attached
to them from the effects of your opponent’s Trainer
cards other than Stadiums and Tools. I
already mentioned Regirock in “mass Energy”
decks, since it can sit on the Bench safe from
Crushing Hammer, Guzma, etc. with a bunch of
Energy attached, including having an Exp. Share
safe from most Tool removal attached to gather more
basic Energy as your attackers fall. Players
learned that this also opens up some amazing combos, in
part because these are Fighting-Types. Slap a
Focus Sash on these and it is pretty hard for your
opponent to score a true OHKO, and thanks to the
damage buffs of the Fighting-Type, you should be scoring
OHKO’s or at least 2HKO’s yourself. Throw in stuff
like Scramble Switch, Puzzle of Time,
Max Potion, Eco Arm, etc. and something
expendable and disruptive like Wobbuffet (XY:
Phantom Forces 36/119; Generations RC11/RC32)
to buy you time to actually build up your first
attacker, and you had what were at least once strong
decks; I’m not sure how they are performing now, though.
I also already mentioned they favor a different
Tool and hinted that they like to use Strong Energy,
a Special Energy that Wishful Baton can’t touch.
Primal Groudon-EX even needs four Energy,
not just three.
Trevenant BREAK
is another candidate. Your opponent will be
Evolving it from Trevenant (XY 55/146) so
that you have a pseudo-Stage 2 with 160 HP and the
“Forest’s Curse” Ability that keeps your opponent from
playing Item cards from hand while something with
Forest’s Curse is Active. Trevenant BREAK needs
[PC] to use its own attack while Trevenant lends
it an attack that costs [PCC]. Both attacks spread
some damage or damage counters, so something like
Choice Band or Muscle Band aren’t obvious
picks. Bursting Balloon or Float Stone
were more common when I last paid attention, but I’m not
sure what their Tool of choice is right now.
Perhaps the real issue is the decks tend to favor
Double Colorless Energy and Mystery Energy,
which are not compatible with Baton Pass.
They also like Dimension Valley that the attacks
cost just [P] and [PC], respectively. What gives
me a flicker of hope is that the decks also like
to run Silent Hill and if they move away
from the Psychic-Type support and/or Special Energy, it
could open up the deck to some new Pokémon combos.
Pure conjecture on my part, though.
I haven’t gotten a
review up for it yet (oops), but Noivern-GX
caught my eye this set. In Expanded, it has got
Double Dragon Energy, but its stuck using Rainbow
Energy or the desired Basic Energy cards in
Standard. Setting up a Stage 1 with two or three
Energy isn’t too bad, but doing it twice in rapid
succession hurts… and Noivern-GX is about doing
decent-ish damage while locking down an opponent’s
Special Energy or Items. You’ll have to
sacrifice the damage bonus from Choice Band, but
Wishful Baton could allow three Basic Energy to
go from fueling your first Noivern-GX to your
second. If you’re using its first attack to block
Items, then Wishful Baton is safe from Field
Blower (barring an opponent’s use of Pokémon
Ranger or the like). If your opponent’s
damage output is low enough, you might even be sneaky
and use your own Field Blower to chuck a
Choice Band right before your opponent
KO’s Noivern-GX and slap a Wishful Baton
on it instead at the last minute.
Where Wishful
Baton I do not have to guess about
Wishful Baton is in both the Limited Format and the
Theme Format. SM: Burning Shadows has no
Special Energy in it, and both the “Luminous Frost” and
“Rock Steady” Theme decks don’t have any either, so just
focusing on basic Energy won’t matter. You usually
(or absolutely) won’t have another Tool option, either,
nor is your opponent likely to have a means of
discarding Tools or basic Energy cards from your
Pokémon. So attach and enjoy massive Energy
swings… unless you’re running a +39 deck in the Limited
Format (no other Pokémon in play makes this useless), or
you’re just having bad luck. There is also a
chance your opponent can still play around the
effect of Wishful Baton, such as with effects
that Poison.
Ratings
Standard:
1.75/5
Expanded:
2/5
Limited:
4.5/5
Theme:
4.5/5
Conclusion
Wishful Baton
has a potent effect but in the right deck
and under the right circumstances. Even
without discarding it, your opponent has decent odds of
being able to play around it or having a strong
enough deck to power through it. Rely on it too
much, and when you miss the combo your deck falls apart,
but don’t rely on it enough and what was the point?
It faces a lot of competition as the Tool for your
Active Pokémon, some of which can be accessed
immediately so it won’t matter (or matter as much)
if your opponent discards or plays around it. It
isn’t entirely wishful thinking, but I couldn’t find a
use for this card where it was straight-up the best
play.
If you were
wondering, Wishful Baton did not make my
own Top 25, but it made 21time’s Top 24 as his 11th
place pick, tying
yesterday’s
Plumeria. Six dice rolls later because
they tied twice more with the first two attempts,
and Wishful Baton had to settle for being the
sort-of-but-not-really 20th place finisher.
Finally… yeah, I’m just going back to mentioning these
things as part of the “Conclusion”, even if it
necessitates its a second paragraph. The
additional section or altered final heading seemed a
little more clunky.
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