Lana
– Burning Shadows #117
Date Reviewed:
October 25, 2017
Ratings Summary:
Standard: 1.75
Expanded: 1.75
Limited: 3.88
Ratings are based on a 1 to 5 scale. 1 is horrible. 3 is average. 5 is great.
Reviews Below:
 aroramage Cause you know what we really needed? Another Water trainer! I mean, don’t get me wrong, Water’s one of the starter Types, it’s the Type with the most Pokemon in it, but come on, we’ve got…I dunno, 14 types? We can SURELY use up 8 for Gyms and 4 for the Elite and manage somehow NONE of them to be Water…like Johto did. Just saying. It’s alright, no hard feelings towards Lana, she’s not even a Gym Leader anyway – she’s a Trial Captain! And she’s got a pretty neat trial in and of itself, so I can’t be too harsh on that. What I CAN be harsh on if I want to is her Supporter ability, which allows you to heal 50 damage off of EVERY Pokemon you have that has Water Energy attached to it. Obviously, you’re not just throwing this into your weird Dark/Fairy hybrid deck that runs Rainbow Energy cause you’re so cool, no, nothing like that…that’d be weird. So Lana’s mainly a Water deck support, and 50 damage is a pretty substantial amount to heal. That could easily pull a potential 2HKO into a 3HKO move if played at the right time! But it is a slower Supporter that you’d play if you don’t need to draw into your other cards right then and there. Remember, most Supporters people use in competitive play aim to draw more cards…unless they’re like Acerola or Guzma, which everybody’s likely using anyway. So having a Supporter that aims to heal things off, while useful, is likely only being run as a one-of to tech against these sorts of things. Not to mention Water overall hasn’t been particularly strong – modern Water Toolbox can do well, but it’s not on the same tier as things like Garbodor, Golisopod-GX, or Gardevoir-GX. …cause it’s not on the G-Ti-okay… Lana may help out in times of trouble, but she isn’t necessarily Water’s priority right now. What Water needs is some stronger stuff to put into their builds to come back on top! COME ON, GUYS, GO MAKE CLUB MASTER AMY PROUD AGAIN!! …why do I feel like no one’s gonna get that. Rating Standard: 2.5/5 (powerful healing option, just not at the right time) Expanded: 2.5/5 (still very solid, could be run as a one-of) Limited: 3.5/5 (probably just need some slower formats to work with) Arora Notealus: Kinda wonder what a Full Art version of her would be like. Then again, I wonder what a few Full Art versions of other Supporters that haven’t gotten one would look like. Tierno never got the Full Art love either… Next Time: Back in time, an impenetrable horrifying wall! |
 21times Lana (Burning Shadows, 117/147) makes its debut in the Pokemon Trading Card Game in the Burning Shadows expansion set. A Supporter card, it allows you to heal fifty damage from any Pokemon that has any Water energy attached to it. I have tested it, and I can confirm that also includes Splash Energy (Breakpoint, 113/122) and Rainbow Energy (Sun & Moon, 137/149) as well. Still, this card has a very limited scope and probably would only really help Lapras GX (Sun & Moon, 35/149), Primarina GX (Sun & Moon, 42/149), and Ninetales GX (Guardians Rising, 22/145). I found that I didn’t use it that much with Greninja (Breakpoint, 40/122) when I briefly tried teching it into my Greninja decks as many times your Greninja doesn’t have an energy attached to it. Also, most Greninja decks don’t run Tapu Lele GX (Guardians Rising, 60/145), although I know that Greninja deck that placed seventh at Vancouver about a week and a half ago did, and that makes it more difficult for you to get Lana when you need her. It does apply to any Pokemon, though, it doesn’t restrict its affect to only Water types, so it would work on Tapu Lele GX or Talonflame (Steam Siege, 96/114) as long as you had a Water energy attached to them. This would also really limit the various spread decks that are currently running around – a couple Lanas could wipe out several turns of damage from Tapu Koko (SM 31) or Necrozma GX’s (Burning Shadows, 63/147) Black Ray GX. Overall, however, I think that Lana’s effectiveness is somewhat limited even in Water energy decks. If you get Lana early in the game, it will probably just clutter up your hand or wind up being Ultra Ball (Sun & Moon, 161/149) or Professor Sycamore (Steam Siege, 114/114) fodder. Moreover, if you only have one damaged Pokemon, it will only heal fifty damage. Pokemon Center Lady (Generations, 68/83) heals sixty and removes a Special Condition. Considering that this card might get discarded more than it gets played and that other healing cards might be more useful than it, Lana just falls into that category of Supporter cards that aren’t necessarily horrible but are too limited to see use even as a one of. Rating Standard: 1.5 out of 5 Conclusion As I mentioned above, situations exist where Lana could have great value. If you have a Water deck going up against a spread deck, or if you have three or four Pokemon that have some damage from being moved in and out of the active position (not uncommon with Manaphy EX (Breakpoint, 32/122)), Lana could work extremely well. Unfortunately, if you can’t guarantee access to her, if you might have even discarded her earlier in the game, Lana simply won’t be available to you often enough to justify running her. |
 Otaku Time for a Trainer! Today we are looking at Lana (SM: Burning Shadows 114/147). She’s a Trainer-Supporter that heals 50 damage from each of your Pokémon with any [W] Energy attached. It hasn’t been that long since we reviewed a Trainer, so we’ll just breeze through the fundamentals. There are few cards that affect all Trainers in the modern cardpool; the only one I can clearly remember off the top of my head is Skyla, a solid Supporter that used to be great. Counters that apply to all Trainers exist, but in the modern game haven’t amounted to anything (the past is much scarier). All Supporters compete with each other for deck space, as once you’ve used yours for the turn, the others are all dead-in-hand until the next turn. You’ve got some great Supporter support in the forms of Tapu Lele-GX and VS Seeker, and once again there are some counters but they just don’t seem to work well enough in recent years. Lana provides healing that mostly favors decks that run on basic Water Energy, but any source of [W] Energy will work: Rainbow Energy, Splash Energy, etc. It doesn’t matter how many [W] Energy are attached to a Pokémon; as long as it has at least one attached, 50 damage is healed from it. That also means you can heal several Pokémon at once; with no Bench-size altering effects, Lana could flush away up to 300 damage. With Sky Field granting you an eight Pokémon Bench instead of a five, the number jumps to 450! Each of these pros has an opposing con we must consider. Most decks don’t run a lot of sources of [W] Energy, if any at all, making Lana a waste for them; specialization isn’t bad, but it does affect how we score the card. Most decks can’t afford to spread their Energy around; it will be centralized on just one or two Pokémon. If your Bench-size is capped, or just not large, how much you can heal shrinks accordingly. I haven’t named the three biggest issues yet. Water-Types already have some nice healing options; nothing exactly like Lana but a few – like Rough Seas in Expanded – that come close. There are also some nice general options as well, with their own tradeoffs. For example, running Pokémon Center Lady would only heal 60 damage from one Pokémon, but it also removes all Special Conditions (if present); both are Supporter cards. The next big issue is that damage spread, while part of some competitive decks, isn’t a major part of all or even most decks. Instead, most of your opponent’s will be shooting for OHKO’s and 2HKO’s; the former means there is nothing to heal, while the latter means Lana is only useful for healing 50 damage. The third and final problem (for Lana, anyway) is that there are quite a few cards that prevent your opponent from damaging your Bench (some more thorough than others). If you’re really worried about your Bench, protecting them may be more cost-effective than just healing them. Together, I’d say this makes Lana a very niche card. The big requirement, next to [W] Energy already being in the deck, is that it needs to do some self-damage or be able to move damage counters around. Some form of [W] Energy compatible acceleration wouldn’t hurt, either. You get something like that, and Lana might have a place in Expanded or Standard. Otherwise, stick to her in the Limited Format and Theme Format. Things tend to be slower in either of these and retreating something injured to the Bench to deny the opponent a KO is a much more viable strategy here. You also probably won’t have access to any of the other tricks to protect your Bench, so when you put it all together, Lana becomes a good pull unless you can’t work some [W] Energy into your deck. She can be found in the “Luminous Frost” Theme Deck, where she isn’t always a power play, but even just healing 50 from your Active is welcome. Ratings Standard: 1.5/5 Conclusion I wasn’t too impressed by Lana going into this, and I am less impressed by the end than when I began. I will confess, though, that I am behind in reading official tournament results; if Lana is proving valuable already, enjoy a laugh at my expense. I just think I’d prefer a copy of Pokémon Center Lady or Rough Seas or protection for my Bench instead. Lana got a review because I generally prefer we review Trainers – even ones I think are longshots – and because 21times had it on his 23rd place pick on a Top 24 list. What is funny is that his 24th place pick, as well as both my 24th and 25th place picks, were reviewed earlier. |
 Vince Today, we’re looking at Lana, a Supporter who heals 50 damage from each of your Pokemon that has any water energy attached to it. The amount of healing may not be stellar, but that could still change the 2HKO to a 3HKO. To get the most out of her effect, you would have to make all of your Pokemon have at least one Water Energy. If you do, then you could be healing a total of 300 (450 with Sky Field) damage from your Pokemon. I don’t think she’ll see much play, unfortunately. Even Fairy Drop didn’t see much play either… Ratings: Standard: 1.5/5 |
