Baby Mario
2010 UK
National
Seniors
Champion |
VS Seeker
This is a neat little card that we have seen a couple of
times before in the Fire Red/Leaf Green and Supreme
Victors sets. It’s always been a useful card for being
able to re-use Supporters, and I usually ran one myself
in SP decks to help chain Cyrus’s Conspiracy (among
other things). It never saw massive use though and was
really the quintessential ‘61st card’: you know, one
that is undeniably useful, but gets cut for reasons of
space.
However, we are now living in a very different TCG
world. In those past formats, draw and search was often
Pokémon-based (Pidgeot FRLG,
Uxie LA,
Claydol GE). Now we are
almost entirely reliant on a very limited range of
Supporters for the draw that makes our decks run
efficiently. Because of this, I expect VS Seeker to shed
its 61st card status and become a virtual staple in
today’s decks. With only Juniper, N, and maybe/sometimes
Colress as our decent draw
cards, VS Seeker gives us the capability to re-use them
instead of having to look at mediocre cards like Shauna
and Bianca to make up the numbers. It also gives us the
chance to get more use out of single copies of
Supporters like Lysandre,
Xerosic, or AZ. We even have
a couple of sweet combos for VS Seeker: use it with
Battle Compressor to search out and recover the exact
Supporter you need, or play it with
Lysandre’s Trump Card for infinite cycling of
your entire deck.
When you consider our huge Supporter-dependancy,
coupled with the massive amount of discarding in the
game (Ultra Ball, Juniper, Computer Search, etc.), it’s
easy to see why this card is now so good. It improves
deck stability and consistency by increasing the utility
of all Supporters. Right now, I wouldn’t write out a
decklist without including
at least two copies of VS Seeker, and I’ll run three
whenever I can find the space.
Rating
Modified: 4.5 (decks run on Supporters, Supporters can
run on VS Seeker)
Expanded: 4.5 (just as good here, though space may be a
little tighter)
Limited: 4.75 (assuming you draft a Supporter or two,
this card is your best friend)
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aroramage |
Welcome back to our reprint week! Today's card was
first introduced back in EX FIreRed & LeafGreen over 10
years ago! And it's going to be a very VERY relevant
card here in today's format! It's VS Seeker, and it's
got a powerful effect!
Most people who've played the games know the VS Seeker
from Gen III and IV (and the Seeker-esque function on
the new PokeNav Plus in ORAS), and its TCG effect is
similar. Most Supporters tend to represent a person or a
Trainer you've fought in battle previously, and most of
the time (with the exception of your rival and the Elite
Four), you could only battle Trainers once. In Gen II,
this list expanded to a few Trainers via your Poketch,
which could record numbers and have people call you up
anytime during your journey, sometimes to tell you about
rare Pokemon in the area and other times to challenge
you to battle.
Gen III took that number-calling concept and made it a
"find the Trainers" function, allowing you to revisit
areas you'd already been in, activate the Seeker, and
cause any number of Trainers to pop up and say, "I'm
ready to battle again!" VS Seeker's TCG function works
similarly; as I've said, Supporters tend to resemble
Trainers you've fought, so it makes sense that VS
Seeker's function is to search your discard pile for a
Supporter to get back.
This is one of the cards we've mentioned Battle
Compressor works well together with, as you can send any
Supporter you want to thin out your deck and then use VS
Seeker to add it to your hand to use. It's very
efficient and has a wide variety of uses. Random
Receiver did something similar, grabbing a Supporter
from your deck to add to your hand, and while that's
fine and dandy, you'd have to reveal your deck to your
opponent and rely on the chances of you grabbing the
Supporter you needed before you get some other Supporter
- VS Seeker/Battle Compressor takes the guesswork and
revelation out of that.
Keep an eye out for this guy - you may want a couple for
your own deck!
Rating
Standard: 4/5 (retrieving some of the most powerful
cards in the game is always nice)
Expanded: 4/5 (more Supporters to grab for sure!)
Limited: 4.5/5 (there's a nice chunk of Supporters to
grab here, and you'll be able to utilize the Battle
Compressor combo effectively here!)
Arora Notealus: Personally, I think the VS Seeker
mechanic in the video games is one of the best ideas
GameFreak came up with in so long, and I'm glad it's
stayed relevant in some form or other with the more
recent games.
Next Time: Two's always better than one!
|
Otaku |
VS Seeker (EX: FireRed &
LeafGreen 100/112; PL: Supreme Victors
140/147; XY: Phantom Forces 109/119) returns!
VS Seeker originally, officially released outside of
Japan with the rest of EX: FireRed & LeafGreen on
August 30th, 2004, a little over 10 years ago. It left
the format when PL: Supreme Victors rotated out
(along with other sets) on July 1, 2011 as the Modified
Format of the time shifted to HeartGold/SoulSilver
and later sets, so it hasn’t been gone too long (not
quite three and a half years)... and yes three and half
years is not long in this game: the TCG itself is
already nearly 16 years old outside of Japan! You can
see the crew’s first review of it
here
and the second
here:
I sadly missed both.
So mini-lecture about how many new players don’t realize they are
still new (just not “brand new”) to the game even if
they’ve got a year or two under their belts aside… what
about VS Seeker? This is an Item that let’s you
get a Supporter from your discard pile and add it to
your hand. Yes, that means you can play the Supporter
that same turn and that is pretty good. Obviously
you’re at the mercy of whatever Supporters are in your
discard pile, which often keeps the card from being as
useful early game and makes Supporter diversity in your
deck a potentially mixed bag: the greater the variety
the more options you have, but the greater the risk you
won’t have the desired Supporter in your discard pile,
much the same as with Random Receiver.
The card pool loves and hates this card. The one thing purely
going against this card is Seismitoad-EX and
Trevenant (XY 55/146). Of mixed usefulness
are a few things. Lysandre’s Trump Card resets
your discard pile, robbing you of targets for VS
Seeker… but is itself a VS Seeker target as
Lysandre’s Trump Card specifically states it
won’t shuffle cards named “Lysandre’s Trump Card”
back into the deck, thus VS Seeker allows a
single Lysandre’s Trump Card to be used over and
over again. Decks never seem to have the room they
need, so working in VS Seeker can be tricky,
except it allows you to reuse other Supporters and since
it can be anything from the discard, it might allow you
to run fewer copies of said Supporters. As stated,
keeping things simple means VS Seeker will almost
always have the intended target in the discard but since
it can be used on that TecH Lysandre or
Xerosic or maxed out staple like Professor
Juniper/Professor Sycamore.
Moving into pure advantage, we have a format where discarding
things from hand is huge, and outside of Lysandre’s
Trump Card your discard pile is far safer than your
hand from disruption: VS Seeker in hand can
become whatever Supporter you need at that moment and
any copy you get back of VS Seeker will suffice
instead of a specific spare copy of a Supporter or using
Pal Pad (remember that Item? Shuffles two
Supporters back into your deck) and hoping you can draw
into or search out the Supporter you need. Lastly, so
many cards have discard costs/effects. Battle
Compressor means you can send no Supporters (if
you’ve got what you need in the discard already), one,
two or a full three. This way you don’t draw
“specialist” Supporters at the wrong moment; you just
cash in a VS Seeker when you actually need a
Lysandre, Lysandre’s Trump Card or Xerosic.
Battle Compressor allows you to optimize
Lysandre’s Trump Card, don’t forget. In addition to
Battle Compressor, Professor Juniper/Professor
Sycamore and Ultra Ball also often need to
discard a Supporter due to timing or resource issues,
and finally that is easily addressed, even turned into a
possible benefit.
Every Supporter benefits from VS Seeker, but what excites me
is that is that while it of course helps the best to get
even better, the amount it helps “the rest” is still
significant. Using it for the optimal draw card for the
situation is a given, but Korrina and Skyla
become even more effective search tools, as will perhaps
the new Trevor (XY Promos XY33), which
searches out a single Pokémon of your choice. For Fire
decks, Blacksmith being in hand “at the wrong
time” can finally be reduced. Of course, those see some
play anyway, but there are a lot of Supporters that have
always been “not quite” cards, the ones that just barely
miss on making it into a deck or that a specific deck
does run but is stuck running heavily and dealing with
wasteful spare copies (like Fossil Researcher).
This applies to most Supporters in the Standard
and Expanded card pool: Cedric Juniper is the
only one that remains nigh useless (even that is only
because you can’t directly control whether you or your
opponent draws). Even long shots like Cheren,
Hugh or Tierno have better odds of proving
worthwhile when you can dump one and recycle it for
those odd moments.
Ratings
Standard: 4/5 - This is
actually a conservative estimate; even if Item lock is
common and it is just handy as a spare, variable copy of
the usual Supporters, that’s actually amazingly useful.
Just mind the Item lock effects and run only one or
two. If you can cope with the risk of things like
Seismitoad-EX and its Quaking Punch or you’ve got a
specific combo in mind, it might rank even higher.
Expanded: 4.05/5 - I am
giving a bonus for having access to more Supporters, but
from what I can see all that this format adds are
Cilan and Hooligans - Jim & Cas, so its a
really, really small bonus.
Limited: 4.9/5 - I’d score it as “perfect” but the obvious exception is if
you don’t pull a Supporter to combine with it. This set
as AZ, Lysandre’s Trump Card, Professor
Sycamore, Shauna, Tierno and
Xerosic: six possible Uncommon Supporters with the
three new to this set also available in (much harder to
pull) Full-Art versions. The set contains enough
Special Energy and Pokémon Tools that Xerosic is
still a must run, so as long as you pull one of these,
the only other exception is if you’re running a +39 deck
and only get VS Seeker alongside AZ.
Summary: Between VS Seeker and Lysandre’s Trump Card (in
general or as a combo), Pal Pad is pretty much
obsolete; a Supporter to the hand is worth more than two
to the deck. Being able to pop off more than four
copies of a Supporter is very useful, and unlike other
options this is an Item that isn’t an Ace Spec and
doesn’t require you draw into or search out what you
just reclaimed. There’s a reason I’m so disappointed
that I can’t seem to pull (or really afford to trade
for) any copies on the PTCGO; get a play-set in real
life and online ASAP, as worst case scenario a single
should prove to be a staple (and you can trade off the
spares). If this had been a “new” card, I probably
would have made it my number one pick for the Top 10;
its good to great in just about any deck!
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