Dana – Pokemon Team Up Review

Vince

For this week, we’re looking at the Battle Chatelaines from Battle Maison. Not as a four for one review, but one at a time. First one is Dana, and you can only use her if your opponent’s Active Pokemon is a Stage 2 Pokemon. If it is, then you search your deck for 2 cards and put them onto your hand. How often Stage 2 sees play varies; most of the time, she is useless, but against Lost March and Solgaleo-GX (to name a few), then its usefulness skyrockets. So while grabbing any two cards from your is a powerful effect, being a Supporter and relying on your opponent to have Stage 2 Pokemon diminishes its viability and shouldn’t be heavily relied on.

• Standard: 2.5/5
• Expanded: 2/5
• Limited: 3/5

Otaku

Dana (SM – Team Up 137/181, 173/181) is a Trainer-Supporter that you may only play if your opponent has a Stage 2 Pokémon Active. If they do, you may search your deck for two cards and add them to your hand. Being able to add any card from your deck to your hand is potent, and Dana lets you snag not just one but two cards… but odds are you won’t actually be able to use Dana in most matches. While Stage 2 decks do have a place in the competitive sphere, it isn’t a very large slice of the metagame… and we’re including decks that don’t necessarily want their Stage 2 Active. While you could use an effect to force an opponent’s Benched Stage 2 Pokémon into the Active position and then use Dana, it can’t be Guzma because then you couldn’t use Dana, barring the rare effect that lets you use more than one Supporter in a turn.

Even though fetching any two cards from your deck is great, I don’t think you’ll have the opportunity to use it often enough to justify actually running it. There are some exceptions.  Your local metagame could be full of Vileplume (SM – Burning Shadows 6/147) decks or Lost March decks… but even then, those decks may be able to adjust and keep something else Active.  The other exception is if you are running Morgan (SM – Team Up 149/181) due to that card’s requirements… but more on her later. I will say that even if it turns out Morgan is brilliant, it wouldn’t help Dana’s scores. Morgan wouldn’t lift up Dana; Dana would drag down Morgan. So I recommend against running Dana in Standard, and she seems even less useful in Expanded. Even Limited isn’t for Dana; your opponent might want to attack with a Stage 2 more often, but actually pulling, running, and setting one up is another thing!

Ratings

• Standard: 1.2/5
• Expanded: 1.1/5
• Limited: 1.1/5