Peony – Chilling Reigns
Date Reviewed:
June 20, 2021
Ratings Summary:
Standard: 3.00
Expanded: 3.00
Ratings are based on a 1 to 5 scale. 1 is horrible. 3 is average. 5 is great.
Reviews Below:
Otaku
Peony (SW – Chilling Reign 150/198, 197/198, 220/198) is our 13th-Place pick. This Trainer-Supporter requires you discard your entire hand to use it. Then you search your deck for up to two Trainer cards. Trainer cards aren’t the easiest things to search out, and Peony guarantees two of them. Is it really worth discarding your whole hand? The obvious answer is obvious; it depends on the hand and the cards being searched out! A solid point of comparison, though, can be had through Professor’s Research… or its predecessors, Professor Juniper and Professor Sycamore.
The “Discard your hand and draw 7 cards.” Supporters have always been “good” cards at least. Often, they were the primary draw card, and helped define the metagame. Which brings us to managing that seemingly massive cost. If all you have left in your hand is Peony, then Peony is pure advantage. The same if all you have in your hand are cards you want in your discard pile. How about if you have one card in hand you don’t want discarded? If it is something you cannot win without, then Peony is awful. If it is something you can do without, though, we’re still looking at a bargain. Even discarding two such cards still seems like a solid deal… unless you don’t need any Trainers this turn, or need a Supporter to use immediately.
If Peony searched out any cards, I think its potency would be much more obvious. Yes, that would clearly make it more powerful, but it also makes the PokéMath a bit easier. It’d be a double Computer Search in Supporter form. Which still wouldn’t be a must-run for every deck, but far simpler to understand and evaluate. As is, we can almost fake it. Peony can be used to snag a Quick Ball and a surplus Trainer. You had to empty your hand before, so ditch the spare Trainer to pay for Quick Ball, then get your new six-card hand.
Why not just run Professor’s Research? Or Piers? In the case of the former, who says you aren’t? In the case of the latter… versatility. I gave that example as one particular use for Peony, bailing you out of a totally bad hand. It also works if you just need to get a Rare Candy plus a Stage 2 from your deck. I keep stressing that Peony cannot fetch Pokémon or Energy, but it can grab Evolution Incense, Energy Spinner, and various other search Items with little to no cost. As long as you can avoid tossing any vital pieces for Peony, it can help with miscellaneous combos, like snagging a double Turbo Patch.
Peony isn’t for every deck, but it isn’t as specialized at it might appear… because we’re already used to needing brutally efficient hands in most of decks. I’ve already named just a few of the cards that explain why; Crobat V, Dedenne-GX, Professor’s Research… there are quite a few potent “discard your hand and draw” or “draw until” effects. I think Peony is better in Expanded, though not enough for it to show up in the scores. Not as good as it could have been if certain cards weren’t on the Banned List, but when you can run a single copy, fetch it from your deck with something like Tapu Lele-GX, and recycle it with VS Seeker, it does wonders for most Supporters. Peony is no exception.
I had Peony as my 9th-Place pick, but I’m not disappointed or mad that it showed up in 13th-Place. Peony is one of those cards that could easily exceed my expectations or fail to meet them. Making it near the bottom of the countdown is enough. It still has been brought to the attention of my readers, so if you have a deck where it works, you know about it. It is also a very combo intensive card; we get some nice Items to search or recycle Special Energy (as an example), and Peony’s potency increases significantly.
Ratings
- Standard: 3/5
- Expanded: 3/5
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