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Pojo's Pokémon Card of the Day

 

 Super Potion
- XY: Evolutions

Date Reviewed:
Nov. 28, 2016

Ratings & Reviews Summary

Standard: 2.0
Expanded: 1.75
Limited: 4.25

Ratings are based on a 1 to 5 scale.
1 being horrible.  3 ... average.  5 is awesome.

Back to the main COTD Page


aroramage

Pretty much a simple card. It's like Potion if Potion was better but also worse?  

Super Potion heals off 60 damage, which is twice as much as Potion's, but it also discards an Energy off the Pokemon it heals from. It runs in a similar vein in that respect to Max Potion, a card which heals all the Energy off of a Pokemon but discards all their Energy as well. In that regard, Super Potion can be played as a cheaper alternative, and it can be played around similarly too. Use Energy swapping Abilities to move your stuff around, heal off what you need to with Super Potion without losing any Energy, and then swap it back on to keep yourself charged. Simple and effective! 

Of course, Super Potion is, much like its cousin Potion, heavily outclassed by a lot of other cards, even within just healing. Sure, it's probably better than the ACE SPEC Gold Potion, which gave you an unlimited 90 healing as long as it was your Active and that Gold Potion was your ACE SPEC of choice, but beyond that it's hard to justify running it competitively. Pokemon Center Lady does the same healing and removes Statuses but is your Supporter for the turn, and Rough Seas, while it heals less and only Water and Electric-types, still heals off all of your Pokemon rather than just one - at no additional cost. 

Super Potion's drawback is a staple to the card the way Potion's healing has to be the absolute minimum standard of healing for anything. If it didn't have the discard, it would just be a better Potion, and that wouldn't make sense. I mean, why would you run Potion if you had Super Potion which could do it better? Course the drawback can be played around, but once again, Max Potion becomes a superior option in that regard. So you get stuck between choosing whether to keep Super Potion in your deck or just give it up for something better for the deck - whether that's healing, draw power, searching, or just a better Item in general. 

...did I just rant about Super Potion for 3 paragraphs? Geez, next thing you know I'll rant on Switch for 5! 

Rating 

Standard: 2/5 (it's a fine healing option, it's just outclassed by a lot of other options for the deck) 

Expanded: 1.5/5 (...like, a LOT of options) 

Limited: 4.5/5 (but it's a gold standard in Limited environments, that much I'm sure of) 

Arora Notealus: Super Potion hasn't changed much over the years. It's stronger nowadays, able to heal up more than it used to, but it's as overpriced as it is in the games. Seriously, 700 PokeDollars is not what you want to be using to heal 50 damage. Stick to Lemonades - they're cheaper AND heal more. 

...but seriously, I could go on about Switch all day. 

Next Time: Another card to put up on review for tomorrow? This jar of bees ought to help out with that review!!


Otaku

This week we’ll be looking at more cards from XY: Evolutions and we begin with Super Potion (Base Set 90/102; Base Set 2 117/130; XY 128/146; XY: Evolutions 87/108).  Older versions of Super Potion worked differently, but an official errata was released so you may use those older cards if you have them, however they work exactly like the current versions.  How Super Potion works is fairly simple; it is a Trainer card, specifically an Item, and it allows you to choose one of your Pokémon and heal 60 damage from it.  You then must discard an Energy from the Pokémon you just healed, however the discard is worded as an “effect” and not a “cost”; this means you may target something with 10 or more damage on it but no Energy and still heal it.  You are doing as much of the card effect as you are able, and you are not using the card for no effect, so it is legal. 

The original Super Potion is quite similar; it was a “normal Trainer” because we didn’t have the subdivisions of Trainers we do now, but “normal Trainer” cards just functioned like modern day Items so that is really the same.  Likewise, “removing damage counters” is just the older wording for “healing”, though “up to” might have allowed you to heal less than the full amount (still a minor difference if it isn’t just poor wording).  The two significant differences are that on the older Base Set 90/102 and Base Set 2 117/130 releases, the Energy discard happened first and is a cost instead of an effect (so you could not use it to heal something that had no Energy attached), and that only four damage counters were removed.  Proportionately the older version is more powerful, as the maximum printed HP on anything at the time was 120, whereas now the maximum printed HP is 250; Super Potion would have to heal 80 or 90 damage (depending on whether you round up or down) to be in scale.  Except those calculations ignore some of the added complexity of the modern game. 

The original max HP score of 120 applied to all Stages, and there were no “special mechanics” like being a Pokémon-EX or BREAK Evolution.  The current maximum HP on “regular” Basic Pokémon is 140, which would scale to healing 40 or 50 damage (again, depending on whether we round up or down), while for Evolutions (excluding gimmicks like BREAK Evolutions) their current max HP is 160 and so healing would scale to 50 or 60 (again depending upon whether you round up or down).  So for the largest Pokémon, Super Potion isn’t as good as it once was, but ignoring mechanics that didn’t exist at the time like Pokémon-EX (let alone Mega Evolutions) and BREAK Evolutions, Super Potion has either received a small buff or is still in scale.  Super Potion was already Expanded legal due to XY 128/146, but XY: Evolutions 87/108 returned it to Standard play.  The then current review crew covered the first post-errata release of Super Potion here, making it their 10th place pick from XY.  I was not reviewing at the time, but I agreed with their basic premise, however we were all wrong.  Why?  Other healing options proved a better fit for the pacing of the game. 

If healing a target isn’t going to shift the KO turn count or trigger an effect, then it doesn’t need the healing.  Where this does matter, we have Max Potion to heal all damage but discard all attached Energy; that drawback worked out fine for the various decks that could rapidly reattach what was lost, whether by moving Energies around, mass recycling and reattachment, or because the target only needed one easily replaced Energy in the first place.  It is even still Standard legal.  Super Scoop Up was Standard legal but now is only an option for Expanded and was similar in use to Max Potion, except with the added blessing/constraint of bouncing the target Pokémon and all cards attached to hand.  The abundance of Item lock meant that supporters like AZ and Pokémon Center Lady also go in on the healing, with AZ being the guaranteed bounce (even if it discarded attached cards) and Pokémon Center Lady healing the same 60 damage as Super Potion, only without any Energy discard and with the added effect of removing Special Conditions. 

With a slower pace, Super Potion could prove worthwhile, at least if it leads to Pokémon with a greater “investment” so that options like Max Potion are far too wasteful.  Until then it will be a card that on paper is adequate but in practice falls short for both Standard and Expanded play.  You can however enjoy it quite a bit for Limited, where it is a good pull indeed. 

Ratings 

Standard: 2/5 

Expanded: 2/5 

Limited: 4/5 

Summary: Super Potion can’t win for losing.  There is a niche for it, except it is one that no currently competitive deck needs filled; a decent chunk of healing for a single Energy discard (or none if there is no Energy to discard).  Between the smaller targets that won’t survive long enough to need healing, the larger targets that need more healing to make a difference, and the various targets that can’t afford the discard cost or could afford the larger discard cost of Max Potion, Super Potion is going to be a shelf-warmer at the ol’ Poké Mart. 

I wanted to re-review this card for a few reasons; mainly because it looked relatively easy to cover and I was late getting out the list of cards to review to the others, and to ease into our first full week back into regular reviews.  I also used to wish this card would return, and like Baby Mario and HEZ I expected more of it when it was reprinted with a boost in the damage healed and changing the Energy discard into an effect instead of a cost.


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