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Pojo's Pokémon Card of the Day

 

Top 10
SM: Burning Shadows

#10 - Olivia
- S&M: Burning Shadows
- #BUS 119

Date Reviewed:
August 14, 2017

Ratings & Reviews Summary

Standard: 2.67
Expanded: 2.50
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


21times

Olivia (Burning Shadows, 119/147) makes her debut in the Pokemon Trading Card Game in the Burning Shadows expansion set.  She allows you to search your deck for any two Pokemon GX and put them in your hand.  Olivia now forms a triumvirate of early play cards that we can access thanks to Tapu Lele GX’s (Guardians Rising, 60/145) Wonder Tag ability.

The two other Supporter cards in this triangle: Brigette (Breakthrough, 134/162) and Pokemon Fan Club (Fates Collide, 107/124).  Brigette has seen tremendous usage since the release of GUR – it has become a common tactic to use Tapu Lele GX to grab Brigette on turn one to put three Basic Pokemon on your bench to quickly start building your evolutionary lines for your Stage 1 and 2 Pokemon.  Pokemon Fan Club has also significantly increased in popularity (albeit maybe not quite as much as Brigette) as it can also be used to grab any two Basic Pokemon and put them in your hand.  This is significant as Brigette requires you to put them directly on the bench, meaning grabbing something like Tapu Lele GX would not allow you to activate its Wonder Tag ability.  If you have multiple non-Basic GX Pokemon in your deck, however, then Olivia can expedite the development of these evolutionary lines.

Fan Club also has a place in many decks as it allows you to get Lele and put it in your hand so you could potentially use it next turn.  It also could grab an EX Pokemon should you need one (Brigette can only grab a single EX or any combination of three Basic GX / regular Pokemon).  Olivia steps in and lets you grab a pair of GX Pokemon regardless of what Stage they might be.  You could grab two Metagross GX (Guardians Rising, 85/145) or Ho-Oh GX (Burning Shadows, 21/147) and Salazzle GX (Burning Shadows, 25/147) or even Tapu Lele and any other GX you need (thereby ensuring you have a Supporter for the following turn).  I could definitely see Olivia serving as the follow up play behind either Fan Club or Brigette… but I haven’t yet.

This month I am not tracking my stats like I normally do, so I can’t tell you exactly how many matches I’ve played so far since BUS, but I’m pretty sure I’ve played more than a hundred matches in the slightly more than a week that BUS has been out, and I don’t think I’ve seen Olivia played by my opponents even a single time.  I’ve tried it out with all of the decks I’ve been testing for the reviews this week, and it definitely has a place as a one of in these sixty card lists.  It’s not a great card, and I would say that its best usage would be early in the game to complete evolutionary lines.  For example, you would Brigette turn one and then Olivia turn two or three.  I didn’t find myself using it every game, but I definitely chose to Lele for it enough to say that it’s a valuable asset to your sixty card list

Rating

Standard: 3 out of 5

Conclusion

Olivia might be one of those sleeper cards that we all overlook until someone plays it on stream at a major tournament and we all realize that this is a great situational card.  I don’t think it will ever be more than a one of in decks, and it definitely relies on the more precision based draw strategy that is becoming more prevalent in the game (i.e. playing Brigette instead of Professor Sycamore (Steam Siege, 114/114), so it might not function as well in decks that are more reliant on pure splash draw support.  Still, it wouldn’t surprise me if this card sees more and more usage as people discover the value of its utility.  It just might take some time (and some big game exposure) for this to happen.


Vince

So after doing the countdown of the top 10 cards lost to set rotation, we find ourselves with another top 10 countdown, this time regarding cards in SM Burning Shadows that might have potential. I guess I might consider those cards “first impressions” (pun intended). As we progress throughout the year, when we re-review a card, we should have already known how well these cards perform.

Kicking off with the 10th best card is Olivia. She’s the Kahuna of Akala Island who gives you a Rockenium Z after you defeat her, as well as giving you a second stamp on the trainer passport, allowing traded Pokemon to obey you up to Level 50. In the TCG, however, upon looking at the effect, there’s no relation between the TCG and the video games; I thought it would somewhat support Fighting types (rock types in the games is represented as Fighting types in the TCG). So what does she do instead?

Search your deck for 2 Pokemon GX and put it on your hand.

Well…that’s surprising! She turns out to be a good search card! Pokemon GX can be Basic, Stage 1, or Stage 2, so fetching these out will let you put down a Basic GX from your hand to the bench or getting Stage 1 or Stage 2 Pokemon to evolve it to the final stage either manually or Rare Candy.

I don’t know how many copies will suffice, but at least not only you search your deck for 2 Pokemon, you would also thin your deck as well as avoiding fueling Trashalanche’s damage output. This is a must run in Limited unless you have no GX Pokemon to use.

Ratings:

Standard (pre-rotation): 3/5 (narrow in scope, but does one thing very well)

Standard (post-rotation): 3/5

Expanded: 3/5 (GX Pokemon debuted in Sun & Moon, so I don’t think the increased card pool would affect her in this format.)

Limited: 5/5

Summary: Though it’s a specialized search card, she will see play because GX is still a new mechanic and will be seeing play to some degree. However, if we resort to raw draw power and item based search, then I fear there’s no need for Olivia. Maybe she needs a slower format. Olivia took 10th place with 8 voting points, which feels like quite low. But then again, if other cards were ranked very highly, then there’s little room for other cards to squeeze in (which would fall under honorable mentions category). The 9th place pick had 13 voting points, five points over her. I didn’t have her on my personal top 10 list.


Otaku

Welcome to our countdown of the 10 most promising cards of SM: Burning Shadows, the latest expansion which officially becomes legal for organized play August 18th (this Friday).  Yes, we just finished our rotation based top 10 list, counting down the cards we’ll miss once the 2017-2018 Standard Format goes into effect on September 1st.  Yes, the World Championship is also this weekend.  Yes, we’ve followed the usual guidelines when compiling this list; each reviewer submitted his own personal top 10, based on his own criteria for what is “good”, I assigned “voting points” based on how each card ranked on each respective list, then added it all together to get the official Pojo list.  Reprints, as usual, were not allowed unless we thought them particularly relevant.  So let us begin with our 10th place finisher, Olivia (SM: Burning Shadows 119/147)! 

Olivia is a Trainer-Supporter whose effect allows you to search your deck for up to two Pokémon-GX, show them to your opponent, add them to your hand, and finally shuffle your deck.  I haven’t had any hands-on experience with this card yet, so I’m going to resort to some Theorymon… and some math.  For those who can’t stand math at all… you shouldn’t be reading this anyway; most TCGs involve at least a little math.  For those who struggle with it, I’ll try to explain things in other terms as well, so don’t worry.  In math, there is something known as the “Transitive Property of Equality”, usually represented as “If a=b and b=c, then a=c.”  Another way to think of it is that “If 1+3=4 and 2+2=4, then 1+3=2+2.”  To some extent, we may apply this to cards in the Pokémon TCG.  Why “some”; shouldn’t it either work or not work for understanding the game?  The issue is that I will be looking at only a few cards, but to truly do this would require dealing with the entire card pool.  Plus, it still wouldn’t be able to account for player tastes and the like skewing the results (even if only due to unconscious bias).  Even if two cards produce equal results in isolation, the specifics of how they do it can matter when filtered through the entire card pool, such as how many Supporters that didn’t perform well when first introduced became much better after the release of VS Seeker or because anti-Item measures suddenly made a Supporter-based option viable (if not preferable).  So let us compare Olivia to some of the other Pokémon search Supporters, and then to other forms of Pokémon search, to get an idea of how she stacks up; I won’t be mentioning how these cards require you show your opponent what you picked and to shuffle your deck, as this is universal to such effects. 

We’ll start with the simplest first, even if it is a bit obscure: Trevor.  He allows you to search out and add any one Pokémon to your hand.  He released during the XY-era, so it is possible power creep (or the more rare power crunch) could apply, but if either does I would expect the former as Trevor never really saw much play, let alone competitive success; though some of it could be attributed to its availability, I am convinced it is because other options were preferable.  A direct comparison suggests that being a Pokémon-GX is enough of a restriction to warrant doubling the card yield.  Next, let us consider Pokémon Fan Club; while it originally released in Aquapolis with a slightly different effect, the most recent version is from XY: Fates Collide, and thus only 15 months older than Olivia.  Pokémon Fan Club allows you to search your deck for up to two Basic Pokémon, then add them to your hand.  Basic Pokémon tend to be important even to Evolution decks, and are still the strongest current Stage due to their speed and reduced resource cost relative to Evolutions, and being restricted to just them gives Pokémon Fan Club the same double search as being restricted to Pokémon-GX grants Olivia.  Pokémon Fan Club has seen some competitive success over the last 15 months as well, but some of that involves specific search targets, like Shaymin-EX (XY: Roaring Skies 77/108/, 106/108).  You could fetch any one Basic your deck needed and then pick a Shaymin-EX for added draw.  There were a few other similar combos as well… and they won’t apply to Olivia because they don’t involve Pokémon-GX.  Not that Pokémon Fan Club will be able to search out Shaymin-EX for much longer. 

The last two Supporters we’ll consider are Winona and Brigette.  Both snag up to three Pokémon from your deck, instead of just one or two; Winona may only grab Colorless-Types while Brigette is a bit more complicated.  Brigette gives you a choice between picking one Basic Pokémon-EX or three Basic non-Pokémon-EX.  The final difference between Brigette and the rest (including Winona) is that Brigette plays your picks directly from deck to the field, so it cannot trigger coming-into-play Abilities like “Setup” (the Ability on Shaymin-EX).  Even though they get two more Pokémon than Trevor and one more than Olivia and Pokémon Fan Club, these cards haven’t had a lot of success.  Winona saw some at first but was replaced by other options.  Brigette didn’t see much success until Pokémon-GX started showing up; Basic Pokémon-GX are on par (possibly better) than Basic Pokémon-EX, so this created an exploit with the card.  Brigette was supposed to be balanced by not being able to grab multiples of the strongest Basics, but now she can.  So now it is time to address the elephant in the room; none of the Supporters I’ve mentioned are the go-to source of Pokémon search.  Instead, the best examples are Item-based. 

The Pokémon search card is Ultra Ball; you have to discard two cards from hand but then you get the same unrestricted search as Trevor.  There are many cards in the “Ball” family; so many that even though the rest are more specialized, they tend to each have at least a small niche in competitive play.  It also suggests that being a Supporter is really only worth a discard cost of two cards from hand, at least before we get into effect specifics that might be broken by going from a once-per-turn Supporter to an Item.  An older example that is no longer as good is Ability based; the card that replaced Winona was Hoopa-EX (XY: Ancient Origins 36/98, 89/98; XY: Black Star Promos XY71).  Its “Scoundrel Ring” Ability lets you add three Pokémon-EX from deck to hand, except for Hoopa-EX.  If you need multiple Pokémon-EX, it is still a good card, but even though it will survive rotation due to the promo version, its days are numbered instead because decks are including more and more Pokémon-GX.  So why bring it up at all?  Before we get to the hypothetical, it is an example of another card that Pokémon Fan Club could exploit; you had to be careful not to clutter up your hand, but this allowed your one Supporter to fetch three Pokémon-EX of your choice (Basic or Mega Evolution) and draw until you had six cards in hand.  You just needed to have room in your deck and on your Bench for Hoopa-EX and Shaymin-EX, and of course, for Abilities to be working. 

Olivia does not seem all that great a Supporter to me at present unless you’re worried about setting up a Pokémon-GX deck while under Item lock or while avoiding too many Items so as not to feed the “Trashalanche” attack of Garbodor (SM: Guardians Rising 51/145).  Post-rotation, Standard Format play loses the current big name in Item lock - Vileplume (XY: Ancient Origins 3/98) - and might be losing the support - Double Dragon Energy - needed so that Noivern-GX can assume the throne.  I think her future depends on circumstances that may or may not manifest.  The following are neither mutually inclusive nor exclusive: 

  • Items remain a liability for many Pokémon-GX heavy decks or decks in general.
  • Items do not remain a liability but non-Supporter forms of Basic Pokémon search make Olivia a bargain in a format with a heavy Evolved Pokémon-GX focus.
  • Additional Basic Pokémon-GX are released that make searching out two of them well worth your Supporter.

These could also apply to the Expanded Format, though I am focused upon Standard play.  The third point could use a bit more explanation; right now, you can use Olivia to fetch Tapu Lele-GX plus another Pokémon-GX.  As long as you’ve got some room on your Bench and the other Pokémon-GX is worthwhile, it is like Olivia replaces itself with your choice of Supporter!  This is where Shaymin-EX and Hoopa-EX are useful as examples of what could be; we don’t have any such cards now, but Tapu Lele-GX is already a better version of Jirachi-EX, as it has the same great Ability, just under a different name and attached to significantly worse stats and lone attack.  In other words, if we get some more useful draw or search Abilities attached to Basic Pokémon-GX (possibly even Evolved ones), it could make Olivia quite the bargain.  For now, though, niche usage in Standard and Expanded Format play, if even that.  I’m not sure if she has an edge in Standard (because it will focus more on Pokémon-GX by necessity) or in Expanded (where there are more delightful combos like Battle Compressor with VS Seeker).  Enjoy using her in the Limited Format; you might even include her as another way of looking at and then shuffling your deck, even if you can’t run any Pokémon-GX.  Probably not, though. 

Ratings 

Standard: 2/5 

Expanded: 2/5 

Limited: 3.5/5 

Conclusion 

Olivia strikes me as a bit early to the party; yes, we actually had our first Pokémon-GX before Sun & Moon had released but we are only three sets into the mechanic, and still have quite a bit of the previous generation’s sets running around.  I think she’ll become better with time as she’ll have more and more targets, not diminishing until something better comes along (power creep) or the next gimmick supplants Pokémon-GX (you know it’ll happen eventually).  As I am not running the decks where she’d be the most use at present, I’ll also add that I could be grossly underrating her. 

Breakdown 

Once again, we enjoyed five different lists with which to the official site list; Olivia obtained 10th place with eight voting points, beating out a three-way tie we had for 11th through 13th place.  She only appeared on one of our reviewer’s individual top 10 lists, however, and it wasn’t mine.  Though I wasn’t as detailed as I prefer to be, I still went through the entire set when making my personal Top 10, and actually ended up with a Top 25 that Olivia still didn’t make.  All that said, I’m actually not bothered by her making the list.  I think she does have future potential, and I even expect to see her because she appears to already have her own mini-fandom.


aroramage
Had this at #3 on his Top 10 List


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