Tag Call #5 – Top 11 Pokemon Cards in Cosmic Eclipse

Otaku

When making our lists, we had to use translations, so 5th-place Tag Call (SM – Comsic Eclipse 206/236, 270/236) was on our schedule as “Tag Whistle”.  Tag Call is a Trainer-Item that lets you add up to two TAG TEAM cards of your choice from your deck to your hand.  Notice it says “cards” and not “Pokémon”: you can also snag the five TAG TEAM Supporter cards released in this very set!  Just getting two TAG TEAM Pokémon would have been nice, Cherish Ball not withstanding, but reliably snagging a Supporter…

…well, we do need to see if those Supporters are any good.  They’ll all be reviewed sooner or later, so we’ll just touch upon them, but I’ll run through them quickly here.  Know that all of them have one primary effect and an optional,  secondary effect.  All the secondary effects require you discard a certain amount of cards from hand to use it.  You can skip the primary effect if you don’t meet the criteria, like a search effect when you have no cards left in your deck, but only if you then choose to use the secondary effect.  At a glance, we have:

• Bellelba & Brycen-Man – Force both players to discard the top three cards from their deck.  If you discard three cards from your hand, you force both players to discard down to three Benched Pokémon.
• Cynthia & Caitlin – Put a Supporter from your discard pile into your hand, but it can’t be Cynthia & Caitlin or something discarded for the secondary effect of this card.  If you discard a card from your hand, you also draw three cards.
• Guzma & Hala – Add a Stadium from your deck to your hand.  Discard two cards from hand to also add a Special Energy and Pokémon Tool.
• Mallow & Lana – First effect is a Switch.  If you discard two cards from your hand, heal 120 damage from the Pokémon you moved from the Active position to your Bench.
• Misty & Lorelei – Add three [W] Energy cards from your deck to your hand.  If you discard five cards from your hand and have already used your GX-attack this game, your [W] Pokémon can use their GX-attacks anyway.
• Red & Blue – Search your deck for a Pokémon-GX that Evolves from your one your Pokémon in play, then play it directly onto that Pokémon.  If you discard two cards from your hand, you get to search your deck for up to two basic Energy cards and attach them to the Pokémon you just Evolved.

Individually, some of these are awesome while others not so much.  As a “TAG Engine”, they look very good indeed.  Which is why I expect Tag Call to see a lot of play in Standard, and probably even in Expanded.  The latter has more competition and counters but think of a TAG Engine backed by four VS Seeker…  If you’re fortunate enough to pull this at a Pre-Release or other Limited Format Event, run it!  Yes, even if you have nothing to search out with it; search is an excuse to see the current contents of your deck.  If you do have even one TAG TEAM card, it is just that much better.

Ratings

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

Tag Call might actually be the best card in this set.  Personally, I had it as my 2nd-place pick, but its so good it almost was my 1st-place.  Yet I can understand why it ranked this low; there are enough other similarly good cards that even I wasn’t sure if Tag Call should be #1 or a few places lower.  Definitely get a full playset of Tag Call!

Vince

Wouldn’t it be nice if the card name remained to be Tag Whistle? Maybe, but the 5th best card of the set is Tag Call, and I think this is one of those cards which could be essential to certain decks but unneeded on others. It lets you search for two Tag Team cards can put them onto your deck.

Up until Cosmic Eclipse, the Tag Team cards that you saw were two or three Pokémon into one card, and they gave up three prizes if they’re knocked out. However, we also saw Tag Team Supporter cards in Cosmic Eclipse, so that also can be searched by Tag Call. I won’t be going through each and every single Tag Team Supporter cards in this review, but know that Tag Call can search for both Tag Team GX Pokemon and Supporter cards. I do not see any Tag Team item or Stadium cards, though that would have been pretty interesting to have.

Ratings:

• Standard: 4/5
• Expanded: 4/5
• Limited: 4.5/5

Conclusion:

Albeit a short review, Tag Team does its job, and it does it very well. Try to track down a play set of those, as Tag Call is perhaps one of the reliable search cards that the format needs for a while.

aroramage

They really will make an Item for just about anything, won’t they? What between the leaf blower, the dumbbells, and now a whistle? Can’t even just stick to fancy stuff like Pokeballs and Catcher machines!

Tag Call is an Item that lets you add up to 2 Tag Team cards from your deck to your hand. Pretty simple, and on the surface it wouldn’t be that special outside of grabbing those Tag Team-GX from your deck to load up on your offense – or to start fueling with stuff like Pikachu & Zekrom-GX. What isn’t obvious though is that this does just say Tag Team cards, meaning this also includes the newly introduced Tag Team Supporters in this set.

You might recall that this was brought up back around Blastoise & Piplup-GX, and I wouldn’t be surprised if the others have mentioned them as well. Tag Team Supporters are aesthetically similar to Tag Team-GX, in that they feature two different characters on the same card – in the case of Supporters, this is in the form of Trainers instead of GX where it’s Pokemon. There are several Tag Team Supporters in the set, but let’s borrow Misty & Lorelei as the example. There are usually two effects on these cards – one of which acts like the regular Supporter card, and the other which comes about from fulfilling a cost of discarding other cards when you play it in the first place. With Misty & Lorelei, you get to add 3 Water Energy to your hand from your deck, and you can also discard 5 other cards when you play it to allow your Water Pokemon-GX to use its GX Attack again this turn. Pretty crazy, huh?

So what does this mean for Tag Call? Well you’ll have a variety of options to choose from to add to your hand, but I will say that I’d be hesitant on putting this in. Sure, it’s helpful for those times when you’re looking for the Tag Team-GX, if you hadn’t already gotten them – or maybe you’re thinking about running less of those so you run this to compensate – but it is something that can be a dead card late in the game, assuming you’ve drawn into them already. Not to mention, despite being Basic Pokemon themselves, Tag Team-GX are expensive in their attacks, especially if you’re aiming for the GX Attack, and that can be difficult to work with the later in the game you get to. And don’t get me started on the varying quality of some of these Tag Team Supporters, because as with Pokemon not all are created equal.

Rating

Standard: 3.5/5 (useful in the early game set-up, but not so much down the road with some exceptions)

Expanded: 3.5/5 (certainly does have its perks though)

Limited: 3/5 (I guess if you get some Tag Team cards, you could try it out, though the format isn’t great for them)

Arora Notealus: Tag Call missed out on my list when I made it, though I suppose it isn’t really by much – I had another card that I believed to have more potential than this, but I wouldn’t say this is a bad card either. The diminishing returns you might have later in the game are strongly contrasted by the benefits you get with drawing it in the early game, but we’ll have to see what decks can flex around and accommodate for that type of advantage. Not to mention you’d probably want to run some Tag Team Supporters to really take advantage of this card’s power.

Next Time: Combining together into an even more powerful Tag Team-GX, the greatest trinity in all of Pokemon arrives!