Misty’s Favor #6 – Top 11 Pokemon Cards in Unified Minds

Otaku

We wrap up the week with our 6th-place pick, Misty’s Favor (SM – Unified Minds 202/236, 235/236), a Trainer-Supporter that lets you fetch up to three Supporters from your deck.  Under normal circumstances, you can only play a Supporter from hand once during your turn; if you’re using Misty’s Favor you’re either planning ahead,  have a means of playing multiple Supporters in a turn, or have another use for the Supporters.  Misty’s Favor is a weaker version of Scott (EX – Emerald 84/106, EX – Power Keepers 81/108), when lets you add cards from your deck to your hand, with those cards being either Stadiums or Supporters or a combination of the two Trainer Types.

Planning ahead is quite risky, even assuming a deck using non-Supporter draw, recycling, and/or search so you can afford to use Misty’s Favor to fetch your Supporters for the turn, the huge issue with planning ahead is that this game discourages it.  Pokémon is a game where the board state is relatively unstable.  Draw cards like Cynthia and Lillie just don’t play nice with keeping cards in hand (relevant the turn after you’ve played Misty’s Favor).  There are also cards like Judge and Reset Stamp (SM – Unified Minds 206/236, 253/236), undoing your efforts and retroactively wasting your Misty’s Favor.

The only multi-Supporter trick that seems worthwhile is also the only Standard-legal option: Lt. Surge’s Strategy.  Besides having more Prizes left in play than your opponent, you’ll also need to play Lt. Surge before you use Misty’s Favor for the combo to work… and it is a pretty poor combo.  You’re burning two Supporters, one with requirements, to search and use a third Supporter from your deck.  I guess this could sometimes be worth it, but most of the time, you’re better off running more of the Supporter you need, using the less-reliable-but-much-easier Pokégear 3.0, or investing in something like a Dragonite (SM – Team Up 119/181) to sit on your Bench.

Misty’s Favor exists for a particular deck, built around a particular combo.  We’ll probably be looking at these cards later, so I’ll just touch upon them here.  Lapras (SM – Unified Minds 36/236) has an Ability that lets you add Misty’s Favor to your hand from your discard pile while Slowpoke & Psyduck-GX (SM – Unified Minds 35/236, 217/236, 218/236, 239/236) has an attack that lets you discards Supporter cards from your hand in order for the attack to do more damage.  Again, there’s more to it, but that’s the only compelling use I’ve seen for Misty’s Favor; recycle up to four per turn to keep discarding, sometimes actually using Misty’s Favor to grab even more discard fodder for Slowpoke & Psyduck-GX.

I didn’t invent this deck; it already made a splash in Japan, where they had the cards needed months before we did.  Of course, it could be a false alarm; between cardpool differences and the fact we usually build around what we see working in Japan, the deck might never amount to anything in the rest of the world.  I think it will, though, and that it could work in Expanded as well, with the usual caveats about there being more cards that can help it but also more cards that can compete or counter the deck.  In the Limited Format, Misty’s Favor just needs to show up before you’re out of Supporters in your deck; you’ll have fewer Supporters in your deck and Reset Stamp is from this set, but Misty’s Favor is still a must-run (and likely to be useful).  Yeah, even if you don’t have any other Supporters; you’ll still get to see and shuffle your deck.

Ratings

• Standard: 2/5
• Expanded: 1.8/5
• Limited: 3/5

Misty’s Favor can be used in any deck, but probably only belongs in something like a Slowpoke & Psyduck-GX deck, with several Lapras as well.  All those years ago, Scott worked out because it also grabbed Stadium cards; you could play a Stadium card for an immediate benefit, then have either two more Stadium cards in reserve, two Supporters in reserve, or one of each.  If your opponent messed up your hand, at least you still got to play the Stadium you wanted and (hopefully) benefit from it.  As you can tell by my ratings, Misty’s Favor didn’t make my personal Top 11 list, though Slowpoke & Psyduck-GX did.

Vince

I had to look back at my rushed submitted personal top 11 list and noticed that I’ve placed Misty’s Favor as my 3rd best card. Either I have to try and explain why I put it there or to accept that it was a mistake in my part.

I always thought search related cards would be at least decent in competitive play so that I can get the cards I need instead of just drawing cards (mostly from the top of their deck) hoping that I would eventually get that particular card. Misty’s Favor is no exception; she fetches you THREE supporters so that you can eventually use it next turn. But the problem other reviewers noticed is that those three cards that you’ve fetched out are dead cards because you’ve just used the Supporter for your turn. Your opponent would try to make you shuffle your hand into your deck, and nowadays Reset Stamp or Judge is there to ruin your day. But if they don’t have those at the time, you would benefit from playing one of your three supporters depending on the situation. Or even better, fetching three Supporters means that Lt. Surge’s Strategy lets you play three supporters during your turn if you are behind on prizes!

Misty’s Favor does have one other Pokémon that interact with this card. Lapras’s Mermaid Call Ability lets you put one copy of Misty’s Favor from your discard pile onto your hand. If you have four Lapras in play, you can bring four Misty’s Favor from the discard pile onto your hand. And what can you do with 4 of them? Perhaps use them as fodder for Psyduck & Slowpoke-GX’s Ditch & Splash Attack for 160 damage. This might not seem a lot if you go by the minimum, but if you want to OHKO anything, you’ll need to chuck 7 or 8 supporters for possible three prizes. I guess that’s how Misty’s Favor would see play, in terms of general usage and specific plays.

In Expanded, there’s Magnezone Plasma PLS whose Dual Brains ability lets you play 2 Supporters in one turn. You could possibly combo some cards in the following order (as long as your behind on prizes):

Misty’s Favor > Lt. Surge’s Strategy > whatever two Supporters you’re planning to play.

This tactic can help you easily thin your deck, improving the odds of drawing the right card you need from the top of your deck. The fact that this tactic could be possible to pull off make me think highly in Expanded, even if it took lots of deck space. In Limited, she can only be as useful if you also pulled that Tag Team.

I guess I fulfilled the burden of why I haphazardly picked her as my third best card!

• Standard: 3/5
• Expanded: 4/5
• Limited: 2/5

aroramage

You all know why people are gonna get this card. IT’S CAUSE IT’S GOT A GREAT EFFECT!!

Misty’s Favor lets you look through your deck for 3 Supporters and adds them to your hand. Pretty simple, but it might seem like this isn’t all the useful. Sure, you get 3 cards into your hand, but you can’t play any of them the same turn you play Misty’s Favor (since they’re all Supporters), and it’ll take 3 turns at least to play out all of them for their benefits. That would require a lot of foresight to effectively use all of these cards, right?

Well that would normally be true, if it weren’t for Lt. Surge’s Strategy. While you have to have more Prize cards than your opponent to use it, Surge’s Strategy lets you play 3 Supporters in total in the same turn, with the Strategy counting as the first. This gives Misty’s Favor a lot of potential, since you can use it just as your opponent is KOing a Pokemon of yours, and then add Surge and 2 other Supporters to play with the Strategy to boost your side back up to fighting fit again!

It’s hard to tell how much we’ll see of Misty’s Favor. I suspect that she’ll end up frequently as a 1-of or 2-of in most decks, as a means of being quickly accessible in some form or another to nab Lt. Surge’s Strategy and the other Supporters needed when times get tough. Of course, there’s a good chance she also doesn’t see much play, for one reason or another (or you could say one card or another). Either way, it’s something to keep an eye on.

…for the effect, guys, the effect!

Rating

Standard: 3.5/5 (definitely a strong card, balanced by what it “draws”)

Expanded: 3.5/5 (I think there are generally better Supporters to run, but the potential to grab 3 of them all at once is pretty good, especially with Lt. Surge’s Strategy)

Limited: 4/5 (get 3 Supporters, get good results!)

Arora Notealus: I wonder what favor Misty’s even asking for in this case. Especially considering it requires 3 other people to help her out, I mean really, what do you need done that takes 3 people? Like moving a couch around? Cleaning that giant pool in her gym? Hanging out by the seaside for a summer getaway? I dunno, I’m just asking some questions!

Weekend Thought: As always, do you agree with our list? What are your thoughts on these cards? Think there are better cards to hit the list? Do you think Blizzard Town’s gonna be worth it? Or are you more of a Giant Hearth person?

Next Time: Piercing through space on dragon wings!

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