Baby Mario
2010 UK
National
Seniors
Champion |
#7 Professor’s Letter
Occasionally Pokémon will come along and give us a card
that makes another one completely obsolete. In this case
the card that has been superseded is one that has been
doing a decent job right from the early days of the TCG
(Fossil Set, to be precise), so it’s kind of sad to see
it cast aside.
Yep, Energy Search, that staple of almost every theme
deck ever sold, can now be left out in favour of the #7
card on our list. The old Item let you search you deck
for a Basic Energy, while this fancy new one lets you
grab up to two.
This means there is no reason whatsoever not to play
Professor’s Letter: if you only wanted the one Energy
card, that’s all you have to get, but it’s far more
likely that you will use it to the full extent.
For a lot of decks, getting two
Energy instead of one will just be a way of
‘thinning’ the deck while searching Energy – after all,
you can only attach one per turn. For some though,
Professor’s Letter will be a great asset. Most obvious
are the decks which like to have multiple Energy in hand
for acceleration with Emboar
LTR or Blastoise BCR, but
decks which like to get Energy in the discard such as
Darkai, or some Plasma
variants will also appreciate Professor’s Letter. It can
provide your normal attachment for the turn
and
an Energy to pitch with Ultra
Ball so that you can bring it back with Dark Patch or
Thundurus EX’s
Raiden Knuckle.
No matter how you feel about old cards being made
useless, the fact is that you’ll embrace this card in
your deck. It’s a significant upgrade for anything that
played Energy Search before, and a real boost for those
‘Rain Dance’ style decks.
Rating
Modified: 3.75 (not all that exciting, but very good)
Limited: 4.5 (given the ‘rainbow’ nature of a lot of
limited decks, this is even better in limited)
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HEZ
Intro to
Unlimited 150 |
Professor’s Letter.
Modified.
Energy Search has been with
us since the first few sets of the game and has always
seen at least a little play here and there but never
been a highly played card. This strict upgrade however
is very likely to be all over the place. It nets you
card advantage rather than just replacing itself, fixes
your Energy types by grabbing up to 2 different Energy
cards in one go and it’s an Item! For just one less
Energy than Cilan you don’t use up your Supporter for
the turn and you can even play more than one! Decks that
run more than 1 Energy type or even just tech in a
couple of different Energy will want it. Mono type decks
will run it too like Blastoise and also Emboar, decks
that can dump both Energy into play in 1 turn. Being an
Item has the drawback of being lockable (Trevenant or
Gothitelle) but you can Junk Hunt and Dowsing Machine it
back, really this is one crazy Item card!
Unlimited 150.
Everything said above and then some. Techs and counters
are the name of the game here, so practically every deck
will have more than one different energy requirement in
there somewhere. Energy Search sees play for this
purpose so Prof’s Letter just gives players the bonus of
an extra Energy. Blastoise is a popular deck in this
format too and LBS variations (Lugia Blastoise Steelix,
classic deck there people!) will appreciate the ability
to sort out their varied Energy requirements.
Ratings.
Modified: 4
Unlimited 150: 4.5
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