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Pojo's Pokémon Card of the Day

aroramage	Sophocles is a strange draw card, but he can be very useful. All he does is discard 2 cards from your hand to draw 4 cards from your deck.  Now I know what you're thinking - if I wanted to discard cards from my hand, I'd use Sycamore. And that's true, Sycamore doesn't have a specification for how many cards you need to discard (if any) so long as you discard the rest of your hand, and then he gives out a flat 7 cards. Sophocles is basically like a more specified version of that - and that can play to his own strengths as well as outline his weaknesses.  Those weaknesses are pretty obvious - you need at least 2 other cards in your hand to play Sophocles, since you can't discard 2 cards if you don't have 2 cards. Sycamore only needed you to discard whatever was left in your hand, so Sophocles is much more limited in his play. Course if you were to discard your hand, you'd want whatever's in it to be stuff you want in the discard, like Supporters for VS Seeker or Energy for any Energy accelerator or even Pokemon if you're working on pushing for more damage with Night March or Vengeance - a lot of which is readily available in Expanded but is slowing down in Standard. That's where we see Sophocles showing up more. While Sycamore will dominate the draw power for now, I imagine that sometime in the future when we don't have the ability to discard 0 and draw 7, we'll look more towards Sophocles with a little bit of hope. After all, he's one of the only Supporters right now with big draw numbers at the moment printed in the Sun & Moon era - the only draw Supporters that offer bigger bonuses right now are Lillie (SM) and Hala (GRI), and those two have additional conditions to draw the most number of cards you can with them.  Sophocles has a small niche spot in the middle of getting rid of cards to draw more cards, and being one of the bigger draw Supporters makes him appealing. He might not be the best option going forward for most decks, but I imagine if there are any that need something in the discard pile, well Sophocles is guaranteed to make that happen.  ...come to think of it, Darkrai-GX and a Dark Energy would be pretty good bonus to discard off Sophocles...  Rating  Standard: 2/5 (he's outclassed currently by Sycamore and other draw Supporters, but potentially he's up to 3/5)  Expanded: 1.5/5 (like I said, outclassed by the other draw Supporters - here, he's just not as good)  Limited: 4/5 (still, draw is draw is draw, so long as you're careful with your choices)  Arora Notealus: I actually imagined Sophocles would do well on my own list, but objectively in the set he's easily outperformed by a lot of the other cards. I think I gave him a little credit somewhere? Maybe. But it's a rough life for a guy in his position. Maybe he'll study up one day and find an Electric Pokemon that'll really spark with this card.  Next Time: Speaking of Supporters, let's talk about the Aether Foundation.
21times	Sophocles (Burning Shadows, 123/147) debuts in the Burning Shadows expansion set.  A draw Supporter card, it allows you to draw four cards… if you discard two cards from your hand.  We all know that some strategies can benefit from discarding cards (Aqua Patch (Guardians Rising, 119/145) and Volcanion (Steam Siege, 25/114) to name two), but in the new post-rotation meta we currently live in, throwing cards away has become less desirable and more of a hindrance now that we longer can rely on VS Seeker (Roaring Skies, 110/108) to pull Supporter cards out of our discard pile.  Last week, players built discarding Supporter cards into part of their strategy.  Today, we really have to think about whether or not we want to throw something away. I have used Sophocles in a Marshadow GX (Burning Shadows, 80/147) deck, and it can definitely help get Pokemon you want in the discard.  However, discarding two valuable resources for four random cards seems like it will probably fall into the category of bad tradeoffs.  To me, I don’t think that giving up two cards to get four random ones is worth it.  You could use Hau (Sun & Moon, 120/149) to get three without casting anything away.  You can probably use Lillie (Sun & Moon, 122/149) and get at least three if not four (and that’s not even counting if you use it turn 1!).  You get seven from Professor Sycamore (Steam Siege, 114/114), although you probably will have to discard more than two resources.  It just seems to be trying to split the difference between these Supporters, but, unfortunately, it just feels like it’s giving up too much to get only four cards.  Maybe if it let you grab an energy or an evolution Pokemon and then gave you four cards, but four random cards just isn’t enough. Rating Standard: 2 out of 5 Conclusion I have little doubt that discarding cards will return as a strategical tenet at some point in the future.  At some point, we’ll get a card that will make it worth our time to put cards into the discard pile again.  Sophocles may see more usage at that time, but it’s just not that good of a card right now.
Otaku	We begin the week with Sophocles (SM: Burning Shadows 123/147; 146/147), a new Trainer-Supporter that has you discard two cards from hand, and, if you do, then allows you to draw four cards.  Decks usually run on Supporters plus we’ve got some Supporter aids like Tapu Lele-GX (more in Expanded).  There are no worthwhile Supporter counters in either Standard or Expanded, and thanks to them being one-per-turn, you need to run many of them in most decks but you need to minimize how many you run because the others are all dead-in-hand after you use one.  You know, same as last time, except now the Standard Format officially lacks VS Seeker.  So is Sophocles worth it?  Professor Sycamore forces you to discard your entire hand but draws seven, and is a deck staple.  Cheren, Hau, and Tierno each can draw three cards, but they’ve never really known competitive success.  Sophocles might have a chance in decks that really need to discard cards from hand, like a Darkrai-GX deck in the Standard Format.  Decks that can neither afford to discard their entire hand nor can afford a shuffle and draw effect (like N), probably because they are trying to build a combo in hand or Evolution in play, also might consider Sophocles.  For now, I think it might be a tad better in Expanded; you need the discard option less but you’ve got Battle Compressor and VS Seeker for added flexibility.  The card’s best prospects are in the future if we don’t get another “big”, generic draw Trainer.  Right now, we’ve got cards like Hala but he requires you have already used your GX-attack for the game.  Sophocles is nice for Limited play, but that’s how it usually is with draw Supporters in this format.  Ratings  Standard: 1.75/5  Expanded: 2/5  Limited: 4/5  Conclusion & Top 10 Background Like - I would assume - most of you, I’m just beginning to get a feel for the new Standard Format.  I haven’t run or run into any Darkrai-GX decks in the Standard Format, and the Evolution focused ones seem to just max out N and try to treat carefully with their Professor Sycamore.  As such, I can’t recommend this card for Standard play, at least not yet; possibly, if we don’t get something better, it will be worth revisiting in about a year when we’ll probably see the last XY-era sets rotate from Standard play, which takes out our two (current) main draw Supporters.  Sophocles earned two voting points, having shown up on one of the individual Top 10 lists for SM: Burning Shadows.  This means it would have been our 15th finisher, had the countdown started at least that high.  Sophocles tied with tomorrow’s CotD, so I was going to roll dice and try to decide which… and I did.  I rolled 3d6 and got “7” for both cards.  I then remembered that Sophocles was my 25th place pick, and decided that was adequate grounds for breaking the tie in its favor.  Of course, I’m not sure if I’d rate it that high now…
Vince	Today we’re looking at Sophocles from SM Burning Shadows.  He requires you to discard two cards from your hand so that you can draw four cards.  I’ve seen familiar effects on older cards such as Felicity’s Drawing (the second option) and Engineer’s Adjustment.  Felicity’s Drawing has two options: Discard one to draw three or discard two to draw four.  Engineer’s Adjustment needed an energy discard from your hand in order to draw 4.   Now, normally discarding cards from your hand is bad because you may not get those resources back.  As Ultra Ball, Dowsing Machine, or Computer Search has taught us, their effects might be very powerful to be worth the discard.  There are even decks out there that would like to have cards in the discard pile.  Just to name a couple…   -Basic Dark/Water energies can be sent to the discard pile to be retrieved via Dark/Aqua Patch. -Eelectrik would want Lightning energy on the discard to the retrieved by its Dynamotor ability. -Bronzong’s Metal Links does the same as Eelectrik but with Metal Energy. -Exeggcute’s Propagation is perfect discard fodder to meet discard costs, and it can be put back to your hand from the discard pile. -Night March would love to have Pokemon in the discard so that Night March will do 40 more damage. -Plasma Flareon and Bee Revenge Vespiquen would like Pokemon in the discard as well. -Marshadow GX would love to have Pokemon in the discard so that it will have access to their attacks. -Darkrai GX’s Restoration puts Darkrai-GX and a Basic Dark Energy from the discard to your bench, rendering the two cards being discarded inconsequential.   Those are some examples which will have a higher gain or breaking even in regards of discarding two cards.  If you don’t have any of those cards mentioned above, then in most cases, Super Rod, Sacred Ash, Energy Recycler, and/or Brock’s Grit are some of the recovery options that you may consider.   I don’t know what the future holds for Sophocles, but it’s a good card.  Professor Sycamore and N are still in the format, so hypothetically if both of them were to leave in the 2018-2019 rotation, then I could see him being used alongside Wicke.  As of right now, don’t hesitate to use him.  In limited, cards that draw cards usually gets a near-perfect score since drawing cards from a 40-card deck has better chances of drawing the card you’ll need than a 60-card deck.   Ratings:   Standard: 3.75/5  Expanded: 3.8/5  Limited: 5/5
Retro	So we start this week’s reviews by…. looking at what pretty much a spoiled brat. It’s Sophocles, the Electric type Trial Captain. Although he doesn’t have the flair or the memorability of say, Sinnoh’s Volkner or Unova’s Elesa, Sophocles is unique in that his trial is his own way, very simple and straightforward. But when I say straightforward, I mean straightforwardly hard. Battle 3 Charajabugs to weaken your team, then suddenly a Totem Vikavolt arrives with its huge 145 SpAtk to clean up if you’re not prepared. And also, he’s so high up on tech that he overloads his grid up and shorts the electricity of his trial place. So Pokémon decided to pay him dividends by making him a Supporter card in this expansion. What he does is simple and straightforward. Discard 2 cards from your hand and draw 4 cards. So obviously he’s a draw supporter. And also, if you look closely, does his effect resemble someone you might be familiar with? Yes, its Empoleon (BW Dark Explorers)’s Diving Draw ability! And what Sophocles does in this regard is it doubles Empoleon’s effect. As Diving Draw discards one card from your hand to grab 2 new cards, Sophocles discards 2 cards from your hand to grab 4 new cards. Obivously, as we can see from the ratio over there, Sophocles wins when you have only 1 Empoleon in your bench. And in what deck that Sophocles can shine in? The best example that Sophocles can be very useful as a two-off in decks are in “Patch City” decks such as Turbo Lapras and Turbo Darkrai. These 2 benefits greatly from the fact that energy acceleration methods are available to them via Aqua Patch (SM Guardians Rising) and Darkrai-GX (SM Burning Shadows) + Dark Patch (BW Dark Explorers, Expanded only). So what you will do is to discard energies or Pokémon that might not be needed in that particular moment, draw 4 cards, hope that there are Aqua Patches and also Max Elixirs in the new cards, then start attaching energies like crazy to your Pokémon (or restore the Darkrai-GX in Turbo Darkrai’s case) and start rolling with your nukes. In this case, using Sophocles as a secondary draw supporter is very good and helps boost the consistency of your game by ensuring that there will be something in the discard pile to play with. However, in other decks, how does Sophocles stacked up against other draw Supporters in the format? Apparently, he has unique properties that can help him get an edge as a great draw Supporter in its own right. I’ll explain as we go along. Professor Sycamore/Juniper (Expanded only) is the best draw Supporter in the format as it can get you 7 new cards in your hand. However, you need to discard your entire hand to do so. Sophocles doesn’t do that; he just need you do bin 2 cards to get 4. But Sophocles NEEDS to discard 2 cards, so if you are stuck in a situation where you have Sophocles as your only card in your hand, your game ends there. Professor Sycamore doesn’t have that problem. N resuffles your hand to give you a new hand, up to a maximum of six, but he also reshuffles your opponent’s hand. In that scenario, N can be a double-edged sword. Sophocles here doesn’t do your opponent any justice; he’s just a Sycamore, albeit a little bit nerfed. Professor Kukui does help boost damage by 20, but he only gets you 2 cards. So in the terms of new Supporter cards, Sophocles is the best of the bunch. We always welcome the existence of draw Supporters, we always do. And although Sophocles here does get hit with the short end of the viability stick, he has unique traits that neither Sycamore, N nor Professor Kukui can do. A reliable draw Supporter that can draw a good number of new cards but has a crippling if condition. And if you feel that your deck is speedy enough to circumvent this side effect, Sophocles is exactly the draw Supporter for the job. Rating: Standard: 3.5/5 (pre SM-on format) / 4.2/5 (post SM-on format. It’s the best draw Supporter in the meta then.) Expanded: 3.1/5 (it does patch up some of the problems that most draw Supporters there had, but it’s not fast nor aggressive enough to compete.) Limited: 4.95/5 (the only Sycamore-like draw Supporter in the format. A crazy card there.) Next time on SM Burning Shadows: The thicc scientist appears….