Youngster – Scarlet & Violet 198/198
Date Reviewed:
May 7, 2023 (to be posted May 7th)
Ratings Summary:
Standard: 2.50
Expanded: 1.50
Limited: 5.00
Ratings are based on a 1 to 5 scale. 1 is horrible. 3 is average. 5 is great.
Reviews Below:
Vince
Today, we’ll be looking at Youngster (Scarlet & Violet 198/198, a Supporter card which lets you shuffle your hand into your deck, then draw 5 cards. This effect happens to be identical to Professor’s Oak Research (E-Card – Expedition 149/165; EX – FireRed & LeafGreen 98/112, EX – Dragon Frontiers 80/101), which was first printed with this effect. Another card with that identical effect would be Shauna, another Supporter that debuted in XY Base Set and has her recent reprint in Sword & Shield Fusion Strike, meaning she is still Standard legal for this season, thus, in theory, you could even have 4 of each Shauna and Youngster in one deck, but would you want to in this current season?
Part of the reason why Shauna occasionally saw some play, even in her early days of the XY series, is that there were many other great Supporter cards that were competing for deck space. In regard to Shauna, she was facing competition from Professor Juniper/Sycamore, N, and Lysandre. The trinity of those supporter cards would end up being printed with different names but with either identical or similar effects for different generations. Sun and Moon would still have Sycamore and N, but Lysandre becomes Guzma. Cynthia was right around the corner the following year. Then, in Sword and Shield, there is Professor’s Research, Marnie, and Boss’s Orders.
Despite everything going against Youngster (and Shauna as well), they are still decent; they just wished they did a bit more, like around the level Professor Oak’s New Theory from HGSS provided; if it were to have a hand yield of six instead of five, they might be considered running. It seems the format would want to keep such an effect as secondary or tertiary draw power to round off your 60-card deck. But then again, Judge also happens to be reprinted once more in the same set Youngster is in, and maybe they would prefer the lower draw yield with an disruption effect, and Standard seems to be lacking one after Marnie left. Looks like we’ll be seeing the supporter trinity of Professor’s Research, Judge, and Boss’s Orders for this season.
And Youngster is still outclassed by Cynthia in Expanded, despite few applications where drawing one fewer card than Cynthia might be beneficial. For limited, those pre-constructed 40-card deck contains at least one Youngster, so it’s definitely a must run alongside a single copy of Professor’s Research!
Ratings:
Standard: 2.5/5
Expanded: 1.5/5
Limited: 5/5
This is actually hard for me to rate in Standard; I don’t want to say that this card is good, yet at the same time, this card isn’t awful either. Youngster provides a safe alternative for when other draw-based Supporter cards might be undesirable to you. I think Otaku might have explained better that I can put into words in our recent Shauna review that was over a year and a half ago.
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