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Pojo's Pokémon Card of the Day

aroramage	Max Potion's a pretty big staple card in recent history. Sure it's not going into every deck, but for those decks that can move Energy around or bring it back quickly, it's an essential healing tool.  ...I mean that's really all I have to say about it. It's great to see it reprinted again.  ...it's weird I never reviewed this card myself, and yet now have so little to say about it because it's just something I've known about for so long now.  ...yep.  Rating  Standard: 3.5/5 (...pretty good card)  Expanded: 3.5/5 (...)  Limited: 4.5/5 (...yep)  Arora Notealus: I'm not kidding, I don't have that much to say on Max Potion. It's great recovery. If anything, it just might not be played that much cause of Garbodor...that don't mean it ain't great~  Next Time: DISASTER APPROACHES!!
21times	Max Potion (Guardians Rising, 128/145) received a reprint in the Guardians Rising expansion set.  Max Potion allows you to heal all of the damage from one of your Pokemon.  This comes at a high cost though – you have to discard all energy attached to that Pokemon.  Historically, this downside has made this card virtually unplayable.  In the past, Pokemon with very high HP have also had very high energy costs for their attacks, and Pokemon with single energy attacks generally have lower HP, making Max Potion less useful as they are more susceptible to being OHKO’d. Basically, it hasn’t been worth it to play Max Potion because you’re either going to get KO’d before you can use it or the application of it to a high HP Pokemon means that Pokemon won’t be able to attack again.  However, we’ve seen that completely change in this new meta. It seems to be the theme this week: we suddenly find ourselves living in an era of single energy attackers.  Below is a list of Pokemon with strong attacks that only cost a single energy attachment: ·         Alolan Ninetales GX (Guardians Rising, 22/145) ·         Azelf (XY Promo 142) ·         Bunnelby (Primal Clash, 121/160) ·         Espeon EX (Breakpoint, 52/122) ·         Espeon GX (Sun & Moon, 61/149) ·         Garbodor (Guardians Rising, 51/145) ·         Greninja Break (Breakpoint, 41/122) ·         Gyarados (Ancient Origins, 21/98) ·         Houndoom EX (Breakthrough, 22/162) ·         Jirachi (XY Promo 67) ·         Lurantis GX (Sun & Moon, 15/149) ·         Oricorio (Guardians Rising, 56/145) ·         Raichu (XY, 43/146) ·         Sylveon GX (Guardians Rising, 92/145) ·         Tapu Koko (SM Promo 30) ·         Tauros GX (Sun & Moon, 100/149) ·         Vespiquen (Ancient Origins, 10/98) ·         Volcanion (Steam Siege, 25/114) ·         Zoroark Break (Breakthrough, 92/162) Many other Pokemon (such as Metagross GX (Guardians Rising, 85/145), Tapu Bulu GX (SM Promo 32), and Lapras GX (Sun & Moon, 35/149)) use abilities (Vikavolt (Sun & Moon, 52/149) or Metagross GX) or special item cards (Aqua Patch (Guardians Rising, 119,145) to accelerate energy attachment.  It’s become a meta where you need to be able to attack quickly AND either do triple digit damage or have a disruptive effect as a part of your attack. What people are quickly realizing is that an added benefit to having a single energy attachment attacker is that it’s very convenient to play Max Potion, heal any damage you might have taken, and then simply reattach another energy on to that Pokemon that you just healed.  Max Potion has seen significant increase in use over the past month.  Metagross GX came in second in Madison and ran three Max Potion.  Other Pokemon like Ninetales GX and Tapu Bulu GX that discard energy as part of their attack can also take advantage of Max Potion as well.  If you haven’t already, I would definitely re-think your approach to Max Potion and seriously consider adding a couple to your deck.  If you’re not running a deck that can take advantage of Max Potion, maybe you want to seriously consider whether or not you really want to take that deck to a competitive environment.  Rating Standard: 3.5 out of 5 Conclusion Although it will inherently remain less useful in many decks, Max Potion has become at least a two if not a four of in many decks that have high HP Pokemon with low energy attack costs (or attacks that discard energy).
Otaku	Today’s Throwback Thursday pick is Max Potion (BW: Emerging Powers 94/98; BW: Plasma Freeze 121/116; XY: BREAKpoint 103/122; SM: Guardians Rising 128/145, 164/145).  While nowhere near as old as last week’s pick, Max Potion originally released nearly six years ago, and its history is even longer if we include its previous stages of evolution (not to be confused with Pokémon Evolution, of course).  Max Potion is a Trainer card, specifically, an Item; there is more support for these mechanics now than at most (perhaps any) point in the past, but it still isn’t overly abundant.  The good news is that counters for Trainers hit an all time low years ago, and at least when it comes to competitive options, is still at that low; the designers have made Trainers so important to play, that instead of feeling like a clever challenge, strong anti-Trainer strategies mostly feel frustrating as the force the game to a crawl.  They have not shied away from anti-Item effects, however, and while some seem pretty well balanced, most are either awesome or awful, sometimes dependent upon the exact metagame situation.  These also tend to slow the game to a crawl and as such, a tactic I once thoroughly enjoyed has become so vexing.  I was tempted to skip stating what experienced players find so obvious, but we just emerged from a period where Item lock - in the form of Decidueye-GX backed by Vileplume (XY: Ancient Origins 3/98) decks - was the dominant strategy, nearly monopolizing the top cut of events.  The effect of Max Potion is pretty straightforward: select one of your Pokémon with at least one damage counter on it, heal all that damage, then discard all Energy from that Pokémon.  If that Pokémon had no Energy attached, even better.  Healing in Pokémon has often been an ineffective strategy because it requires you survive being attacked in the first place, so a strong offense (preventing damage by taking out threats before they can attack) or damage reduction (including full-on damage prevention) are more effective.  Healing effects are almost notorious for being behind the power curve of the TCG, struggling to heal enough damage to shift the turn count for being KO’d in your favor without an exorbitant cost.  Max Potion almost got it right.  Wait!  What do I mean “almost”?!  Instead of being too weak, Max Potion at least flirts with being too strong.  Ignoring things that may boil down to personal taste, like how it is an important part of control/stall/mill decks, it becomes really hard for other contemporary healing cards to compete when you’ve got this level of healing available in Item form.  Thankfully, it isn’t a total shutout, with cards like Pokémon Center Lady (in the right deck) being worth your Supporter because healing 60 damage staves off being KO’d for a turn plus shakes pesky Special Conditions, but something like Super Potion needs a niche that doesn’t exist; something that is helped by healing 60 damage but can handle losing an Energy but doesn’t benefit as much or more from Max Potion.  Max Potion is strong enough that, unless you need it for something like reusing a coming-into-play effect or vacating the Active position, it competes with bounce effects for healing!  So what about this cards prehistory?  There are two cards to look at here: Pokémon Center (Base Set 85/102; Base Set 2 114/130; WotC Black Star Promos 40; BW: Next Destinies 90/99) and Pokémon Nurse (Expedition 145/165).  Pokémon Center is confusing if you only look at that latest release, where it is a Stadium that allows a player to select one of his or her Pokémon once during his or her turn (before attacking) and heal 20 damage from it.  All prior releases were a “normal Trainer” (Item before that was a game term) that instead heal all damage from all your Pokémon in play, then discards all Energy attached to the Pokémon which it healed.  Thanks to Stadium version being the most recent, all past versions are no longer legal for play, but originally this was the go-to mass healing card.  Max Potion is arguably the nerfed version of Pokémon Center; less healing overall but avoiding issues where you needed to heal Pokémon A but Pokémon B (and possibly others) had negligible amounts of damage but not Energy attached.  So what about Pokémon Nurse?  Pokémon Nurse is simply Max Potion as a Supporter, released among the first batch of Supporters, the in-between step as we go from Pokémon Center to Max Potion.  Both of these cards were good, proving competitive in the right decks.  If you’d like to read them, you can find a review of Pokémon Center with its original effect here and with its current effect here.  Pokémon Nurse received her review here.  Max Potion has only been reviewed once before according to Ctrl+F; you can read that one here.  Ratings  Standard: 3.75/5  Expanded: 3.5/5  Limited: 3.5/5  Conclusion  Max Potion is a potent card, and the only reason it isn’t the predominant form of removing damage counters from your Pokémon is that some decks do it better with bounce effects, some decks do it better with a more specialized form of healing, but mostly because we have a OHKO or 2HKO format.  You can’t heal a Pokémon that was OHKO’d, and sometimes you don’t need to heal all damage to turn a 2HKO into a 3HKO, but where this card works, it effectively negates an opponent’s previous attack.  More, in certain stall decks.  I’m scoring it a bit lower in Expanded because there are several bounce cards that provide an alternative (AZ, Scoop Up Cyclone, and Super Scoop Up), while Limited scores lower because you won’t be able to enjoy the amazing combos, though it has good general usage.  Max Potion did show up in the current set, part of why I chose it for Throwback Thursday while covering the runners-up from our countdown.  It is hard to say for sure, but if it had never been printed in the first place and this was its first release into the Pokémon TCG, I think it would have made the actual Top 10, maybe even the Top 5.  If it had just been released under a new name, it might have still made the Top 15, but its true impact wouldn’t be felt until Max Potion (still Standard legal) would rotate out.