Mysterious Treasure #10 – Pokemon Forbidden Light Top 10

aroramage

You didn’t miss me too much, did ya? Well good, cause now I’m back in time for the Forbidden Light Top 10 review! Like I’d ever miss it. This list is something where it feels like a mix of things, but that may just be because half of my list made the Top 10, and the rest were other things that either I missed or – even better – underestimated. And considering we had so many people altogether making these lists, it’s always nice to have a few other perspectives on the matter.

Mysterious Treasure is a card I looked at and figured it’d be good, and it’s at the bottom of the list. Go figure. It’s an Item card that lets you discard a card and then add any Psychic or Dragon Pokemon from your deck to your hand. Kind of an odd choice of cards, but considering that this can be a better Ultra Ball for Psychic and Dragon decks, I don’t think anyone’s going to mind too much.

There’s a lot of targets to pick from, some further up on the list, but as far as those outside of the set, you’ve got Dialga-GX and Palkia-GX, Dawn Wings Necrozma-GX, Garchomp for you Cynthia decks, Tapu Lele-GX, Lunala <Prism>, and even M Gardevoir-EX (who is both Psychic AND Fairy) – and that’s just in Standard! So you’ve got a lot of options, and Expanded opens up the field significantly to these kinds of decks – hard to counteract an opponent who’s able to get their strongest Pokemon out for just pitching a card.

And considering what else is in the set, Mysterious Treasure being #10 is just the beginning!

Rating

Standard: 4/5 (within the context of any Psychic/Dragon related deck, this card ought to be really good)

Expanded: 3.5/5 (outside of that, it’s mainly dependent on what Psychic/Dragon cards it can get)

Limited: 4.5/5 (and it also depends on what cards you’ll ultimately get out of the set)

Arora Notealus: I wonder what this is supposed to be. Looks like some kind of ancient slab with little jewels, but I’m not sure what exactly it is? Maybe it’s something that showed up in Ultra Sun/Moon…reaaaaalllllly should’ve played it by now…

Side Reviews: Pachirisu – Sadly Pachirisu doesn’t exactly benefit from this, since there are no Dragons or Psychic-Types that have Nuzzle, though you could run a few and then turbo Energy out onto your Psychic/Dragon Pokemon that you get with this card, so there’s that!

Lucario-GX – still arguably one of the strongest GX cards out there, Lucario-GX pops up occasionally in the Top cuts for different regionals. One of his more notable appearances has been alongside Zoroark-GX in the Top 4 of Sao Paulo, who makes for a pretty good partner all things considered. The deck lost out to Tapu Bulu-Vikavolt and Buzzwole-Lycanroc, meaning that there’s some extra oomph that these decks have that Lucario, even with Zoroark, might be lacking. Of course it could also be Basics vs Stages again.

Lunala <Prism> – see the reason I brought up Lunala <Prism> in the review is that not only is it a good target for this card, this card also makes Lunala <Prism> much more playable as a one-of! It’s great peace of mind to have a card that can effectively get you your one-of <Prism> card with the greatest of ease, and I would at least say Lunala <Prism> is better off with this card than without it. Definitely a good card for Psychic decks now!

Next Time: Unexpected moves with stellar results?

Vince

It’s that time again, where we look at the top 10 cards of Sun and Moon Forbidden Light. This set is filled with some nostalgic features as this set is based on Kalos region, so you’re going to see some of the famous superstars from XY that makes another appearance in this Sun and Moon era, but before you get excited on everything, you all got to know the important and impactful cards first.

Starting with #10 is Mysterious Treasure! And no, we’re not talking about Diamond and Pearl Mysterious Treasures although this card shares the same name as the expansion, thus messing up some search results. This item card makes you discard a card from your hand. Then, you get to search your deck for a Psychic or Dragon Pokemon and put it into your hand.

This is a good search item, except that it would have to be compared with Ultra Ball! Ultra Ball can search for any Pokemon, but you must discard two cards at the process. The discard cost can hurt, even if it’s just one card, since you may need it later on. But besides that, Mysterious Treasure is a card which would be used in 4 copies no less in a Psychic/Dragon deck, like Ultra Necrozma GX/Malamar for instance. Finally, it goes without saying that it will be a must run in Limited if you have such Pokemon.

Standard: 3.5/5
Expanded: 3.5/5
Limited: 4.5/5

Notes: Mysterious Treasure is not a replacement of Ultra Ball, but it is an alternate option that is good in very few decks, and could be used alongside Ultra Ball if the amount of searching is not enough. This card earned 58 voting points, tying with tomorrow’s card.

Next up: My favorite Pokemon and Eeveelution made the list…….barely!

21times
PokeDeck
Central

Mysterious Treasure (FLI 113) makes its debut as the first card we are reviewing from the Forbidden Light expansion set.  There’s no mystery about how good this card is, though, for Dragon and Psychic decks.  You only have to discard a single card from your hand, and you get to search your deck for any Psychic or Dragon Pokemon you want.  And that is PERFECT for the Dragon and Psychic archetype that the designers of the game clearly want to feature and be dominant:

Noivern GX (BUS 160) and Garbodor (BKP 57)!

OK while Mysterious Treasure will clearly be a 4 of in that decklist, I know we’re all really focused on Ultra Necrozma GX and Malamar.  I’ve played a little bit with that combo (I only have one each of Dragon Necrozma and Mal), but it’s been very good for me.  I’ve also seen a number of videos where it seems as good as its billing.  Actually, I think the only game I’ve seen it lose in those videos was to Buzzwole GX (which also gets a ton of help in this set).  I think we’ll have to wait a little bit for the perfect Necrozmamar decklist, but there’s no question that the perfect 60 card list for that archetype will include four copies of Mysterious Treasure.

Rating

Standard: 3.5 out of 5

Conclusion

The only mystery to this card is whether or not it will see play in non Psychic non Dragon decks as another vehicle to Tapu Lele GX.  You could run two Brigettes now and substitute a couple of Mysterious Treasure, which might help you get a different Supporter you need later in the game.  You might also be able to cut a couple of Guzma too.  It’s hard to tell at this point whether that is the optimal strategy, though, it will require some testing, but I could definitely see the possibility of cutting some Supporters in favor of Mysterious Treasure as Mysterious Treasure potentially gives you more choices, more options for which Supporter you want to go get with Lele.

Otaku

Welcome to another of our Top 10 countdowns; if you’re new to Pojo, here’s a brief article explaining what we’re doing and the handful of guidelines which we follow. Out of four individual lists, our 10 place finisher Mysterious Treasure (SM – Forbidden Light 113/131) appeared on three lists and earned a total of 58 voting points. This was four more than 11th place but tied with tomorrow’s 9th place finisher (the die was broken by a roll-off). Mysterious Treasure is an Item card that first forces you to discard a card from your hand; if you discarded it then allows you to search your deck for a [P] or [N] Pokémon and add that card to your hand. Not a bad price to get a Pokémon of your choice, even if you may only pick from two Types out of 11; it helps tremendously that Tapu Lele-GX is a deck staple and also a [P] Type. It seems like a given for any [P] or [N] heavy deck, and maybe even a legit choice for a lot of decks in general… but is it?

This card started out on my personal list but it kept working its way down with each revision until I left it off entirely, and my list was a top 25! Honestly, I do question leaving it out entirely, but even if we assume it should have been on there, I can’t rate it too high. We still have Ultra Ball. You’re discarding TWO cards and not one, but you can pick a Pokémon of any Type. Unless your deck is built of purely [P] and/or [N] Pokémon, Mysterious Treasure misses out on a little to a lot. What if your deck really is nothing but [P] and/or [N] Pokémon, say something focused on the new Malamar (SM – Forbidden Light 51/131) and Ultra Necrozma (SM – Forbidden Light 95/131)? With Tapu Lele-GX and some other [P] or [N] Pokémon for support, this is quite plausible (maybe even probable); shouldn’t you be using Mysterious Treasure here? Well, this particular deck depends on having basic Psychic Energy cards available in the discard pile. You don’t need an endless supply, but using Ultra Ball makes it a lot more likely you can quickly get the handful you need into the discard pile. Mysterious Treasure can still do the job, but it’ll take twice as many. In Expanded, we also have many discard pile dependent combos that may also prefer “overpaying” to get the same card, or else pack something like Exeggcute (BW – Plasma Freeze 4/116; BW – Plasma Blast 102/101) to deal with the costs. In a Limited Format event, you’re less likely to have search alternatives, but also less likely to have a [N] or [P] Pokémon in your deck… though, given the set, it is only a little less likely than in Standard or Expanded.

So, I think I’m just going to accept that I’m probably wrong BUT still warn you to really count the cost of using this card in place of Ultra Ball. If you already have Ultra Ball maxed out, then compare it to the next best search option.  Mysterious Treasure will be the better deal sometimes, but right now it just seems too specialized. Ultra Ball isn’t in danger of rotating come September, and the highest profile Dragon/Psychic deck needs to easily discard certain cards from hand.

Ratings

Standard: 2.8/5

Expanded: 2.1/5

Limited: 3.6/5

Retro

We begin our look into the new SM Forbidden Light Top 10 with a rather peculiar search card. Seems TPCi are beginning a sort of revolution of using new and possibly exciting search methods besides the good time-tested Ultra Ball. But it seems that they are only bumping up the viability of certain archetypes, such as the ones like this one –

Mysterious Treasure.

As it name would rather much imply, this card is so mysterious that it only works on certain Pokemon types. What it does, rather peculiarly is to search any Dragon or Psychic type Pokemon at the cost of discarding one card from your hand. On the looks of it, this seems like nothing special. It only works on 2 types of Pokemon and still comes with a discard property, albeit by only 1 card instead of 2 like Ultra Ball. 

But when you dig just a bit deeper, you discover that one Pokemon is used universally in every deck and it is a Psychic type – Tapu Lele-GX. Yep, that bonkers consistency card that converts pretty much any Item-based search card (or a Pokemon Fan Club as the odd Supporter of the bunch) into a Supporter searcher. For 1 discarded card less than Ultra Ball, we can transform Mysterious Treasure into a Supporter card. There are several advantages on discarding 1 card instead of 2 – most notably if you only wanted to discard only a specific card instead of that junk card and a card that you’ll regret discarding early on, say a Guzma that you have to discard early game. As is, you can just discard something like an evolved Pokemon or an energy and search for Tapu Lele-GX, while still keeping that Guzma, Cynthia or something you’ll need later. 

And the applications for Mysterious Treasure doesn’t stop there altogether – genuine Dragon or Psychic decks will most certainly love the extra consistency Mysterious Treasure gives you. I’ll simply gloss over to the main star deck that Forbidden Light gives – Ultra Necrozma-GX/Malamar. With Necrozma’s 2 somewhat cheap attacks that fires off potentially unworldly numbers that beast becomes a threat when multiple hits the field. However, Ultra Necrozma is a card that needs extreme consistency levels or else it just becomes dead weight. Well now good news since Mysterious Treasure can now search all those Pokemon that gives it consistency – be it the Inkay and Malamar that powers it up or a Tapu Lele that gives the Supporter consistency which powers up its setup phase, or using the Metagross-GX engine similar to how the normal Necrzoma-GX (SM BUS) was used to be paired with upon release. In that case the Wonder Tag play can be used to search for Brigette that can search up to 3 Beldums in play, which only needs to discard 1 card instead of 2 to pay it. Having both Malamar and Metagross-GX as support options leaves a lot of creativity for players to experiment with, and I’m sure that as time goes on we’ll obtain a lot of good decklists for Ultra Necrozma-GX with up to 8 possible search Item cards. 

The biggest problem for this card is that its very deck specific. Think of it like Dive Ball (XY PRC). For decks like Greninja BREAK, Dive Ball is just plain busted as it can literally search all the Pokemon in the deck – sans Tapu Lele if it runs one – with essentially no drawbacks. But as explained earlier, the frog runs other non-Water Pokemon, such as Tapu Lele-GX, Espeon-EX and potentially Drampa-GX as extra consistency. Mystery Treasure is pretty much the same as it only searches 2 types of Pokemon. Besides that, its just simply outclassed by Ultra Ball, even when the latter takes an extra discard penalty. 

However, given the right deck and the right circumstances, nothing beats Mysterious Treasure for the sake of simple extra consistency, and for that reason alone its enough to secure a borderland spot in our Top 10 list, a one off in a majority of decks and a 4 off in some decks. 

Rating: 

Standard: 3.4/5
Expanded: 4.3/5
Limited: 3.9/5