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Pojo's Pokemon Card of the Day

 

Dual Ball

HS Unleashed

Date Reviewed: June 28, 2010

Ratings & Reviews Summary

Modified: 1.90
Limited: 3.50

Ratings are based on a 1 to 5 scale.
1 being the worst. 
3 ... average.  
5 is the highest rating.

Back to the main COTD Page


Baby Mario
2010 UK National
Seniors
Champion

Dual Ball

 

Hello and welcome to another week of Pojo’s CotD. For the next couple of weeks we will be looking at some recently-released Trainers, which makes a nice change from reviewing the actual Pokémon. There’s only so many ways I can find to say ‘a retreat cost of one isn’t bad’ and ‘Lightning Weakness is terrible’ before I start boring myself, never mind the people who actually read these reviews.

 

Anyway, Dual Ball is a potentially very useful card that doesn’t get played much (if at all). Why? The key is in the word ‘potentially’.

 

Dual Ball is a Trainer with a simple effect: flip two coins, and for each heads you get to search your deck for a Basic and put it in your hand. There are a few good things about this: the Basic goes to your hand, not the Bench (unlike Great Ball), so you can use it for Basics with coming-into-play Powers like Uxie, Azelf, Mesprit and . . . ummm . . . Torkoal UL! Being a Trainer is also pretty nice, as you are free to play this in multiples and in conjunction with your Supporter for the turn.

 

Being a Trainer rather than a Supporter is not always an advantage though. As anyone who has faced a deck with Spititomb or Dialga G in it will tell you, Trainer lock can really hurt. The main drawback of Dual Ball, however, is (you guessed it), the flippy factor.

 

In this format, with so many low-Energy big-hitting Pokémon around, a fast and consistent set-up is crucial if you don’t want your game to end before you even get started. For this reason, players will almost always choose the foolproof options of Pokémon Collector, Roseanne’s Research, and Call Energy in order to set up their Basics. Although Dual Ball offers you a decent chance of getting at least one search, getting out Basics is just too important to trust to a couple of coin flips, and deck space is usually much too tight to fit in a card like Dual Ball.

 

Even a very fast, Trainer-based, Ball Engine kind of deck would probably prefer to run PokéBall over this. Although it only gives you one flip, it does allow a search for ANY Pokémon, and is therefore more flexible.

 

Better still, run four Pokémon Communicator with four Pokémon Collector, and you’ll get the Pokémon you need without having to rely on coin flips at all.

 

Rating

 

Modified: 1.75 (Can do a useful job, but there are more reliable solutions)

Limited: 4 (any kind of search is excellent in Limited)

virusyosh Welcome back, Pojo readers! Over the next few weeks, we'll be reviewing some Trainers for our Cards of the Day. Today's Card of the Day is Dual Ball, from the HS Unleashed expansion.

Dual Ball has a very simple effect: you flip 2 coins, and search your deck for a Basic Pokemon and put it into your hand for each heads. One thing that this card has going for it is that it's Trainer speed, so you can play this both multiple times per turn and not use up your once-per-turn Supporter. However, the coin flips really lower the usability of the card. While you will probably average one heads and therefore one Basic Pokemon, there are so many other Trainers and Supporters available in the format that do the same thing without flips: Roseanne's Research and Pokemon Collector come to mind as widely played ways for getting Basics, as well as trade cards like Pokemon Communication and Bebe's Search. Even still, there are other, more reliable ways of getting Pokemon, including Great Ball, Luxury Ball, and even the "Call for Family" family of attacks.

Modified: 1.75/5 Even if Roseanne's Research and other useful Trainers/Supporters are rotating out of the format come September, there will be more reliable ways of getting Basics that don't involve coin flips, and these are generally better options.

Limited: 2.5/5 Even though it's flippy, getting the exact Basic that you need can be good, especially when you don't have to use a Supporter. Even still, it's a Trainer, so you should probably run it here regardless.
Mad Mattezhion
 Professor Bathurst League Australia

Dual Ball (HS Unleashed)

Otaku recently had the brilliant idea of reviewing some trainers that have been done before, because the metagame has changed so the reviews need to change as well. That, and it occupies our time while Bill has a well deserved break over July 4th. On with the show!

Dual Ball is a trainer that is pretty self explanatory. Instead of having one pokeball where you flip a coin to get a Pokemon, you flip 2 coins and grab a Basic pokemon for each heads. Pokemon Collector and Roseanne's both do this job better, but they are Supporters. Then again, you don't want to be worrying about flips when the game is in the balance, so Dual Ball is only for people who can't get Collector. Even then, Great Ball is a trainer that guarantees getting one Basic onto the bench so Dual Ball is really outclassed by other cards. In the end, flippy is still bad.

Modified: 2 (I don't imagine this is any better than when it was first released, but at least it isn't completely horrible, just heavily outclassed)
Limited: 4 (75% chance of gettng at least 1 pokemon in a set without any other options? Good enough!)

Combos with: Prerelease games!


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