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This is a cool Book!

Pojo's Pokemon Card of the Day


 

Copycat - Team Rocket Returns


Date Reviewed: 11.23.04

Ratings & Reviews below

Ratings are based on a 1 to 5 scale
1 being the worst.  3 ... average.  
5 is the highest rating.


William
Hung
Copycat

Modified - 4.5/5 - You can't always make great use of it, but usually if you run 2 or 3 of these, you'll get amazing results with the opponent's large hand size nowadays.

Limited - 4/5 - Hand sizes are a lot smaller until late game, but still works well.

 

Johnny Blaze
Copycat – A goodie but oldie supporter. I just dug up all my Expedition versions so that I can use them. With the abundance of Steven’s Advice, Copycat is well worth the 1 Supporter per turn rule. A great example is that you have Dunsparce active and another Pokemon on the bench, you use Strike and Run attack with Dunsparce now having a total of 5 Pokemon in play. Your opponent has 5 cards in their hand and plays Steven’s Advice, drawing a total of another 5. They now have 10 total cards in their hand. They will most likely play an energy and a basic so that will bring their hand total to 8. On your next turn you CopyCat for a hand of 8 cards.

Unlimited: 2/5 - Unless Vileplume EX is rampant in your area just use the standard Cleffa, CPU Search, Professor Oak + Professor Elm cards for your card drawing.

Modified: 4/5- Like I said before, with the abundance of Steven’s Advice, CopyCat is a great choice for card draw in this format. This also made HL Shiftry another archetype in this format.

Limited: 3/5 – More than likely in sealed your opponent has a small hand. But either way it is draw power to get the cards you need so use it.
 

Otaku

New Feature: If you think this review is too long to read, just skip straight to the Ratings and Summary sections! 

 

Name: Copycat

Set: EX: Team Rocket Returns

Card#: 83/109

Rarity: Uncommon

Type: Trainer

Sub-type: Supporter

Effect Text: You can play only one Supporter card each turn.  When you play this card, put it next to your Active Pokémon.  When your turn ends, discard this card.

 

Shuffle your hand into your deck.  Then, count the number of cards in your opponent’s hand and draw that many cards.

 

Attributes: Copycat was introduced back in Expedition, the first of the last three WotC sets.  Expedition was the first set to introduce a then controversial new game mechanic: Supporters.  Supporters are standard fair now, and the backbone of most decks.  Unfortunately, when Copycat was last reviewed, the gaming environment was rather different.  We Bill, Neo Genesis Cleffa, and Professor Elm were dominating mainstream decks.  Those cards made hands get pretty big.  So, how well does this card work in the modern Modified Format?  First let’s review what it does.

 

Abilities: Copycat gives you draw power, but that draw power is not straight draw power: the amount drawn is variable, and it shuffles your hand into your deck before drawing takes place.  The amount is variable because Copycat has you draw the same amount of cards as your opponent has in hand (after you shuffle your hand into your deck).  Depending on your outlook, this can be good or bad.  Some have pointed out that it’s only big draw when your opponent has a huge hand, which is bad: they have a lot of options then.  This is only true if the large hand resulted from their end of turn action.  Otherwise, a large hand probably means they have a lot of stuff they can’t make use of.  That’s why I almost never run Stephen’s Advice-I seem to only draw it when my hand has too many cards, consisting of Energy and Evolutions I can’t get rid of even if I wanted to.  The main reason it ends up poor is that a good player’s deck will run fairly smooth in most cases, resulting in a smaller hand size during the opponent’s turn.  On the bright side, this also means that late game, if your opponent’s hand size is small enough; you can replenish your deck by shrinking your hand.  This makes Copycat versatile, but not reliable.

 

Uses/Combinations: Aside from using it as general draw power, there are some specific combos.  In Unlimited, for example, you can combine it with things like Erika, which let each player draw up to three cards.  Play a few, get what you need from your deck, play what you can, then Copycat.  Then follow up with some hand depleting cards.  Imposter Oak’s Revenge, assuming you can draw it after a successful Copycat practically turns around the hand advantage.  They get even better together: Erika a few times, Copycat the large hand, then IOR their hand down to four cards.  That could make your hand of four cards and their hand of seven cards turn into your hand of seven cards and their hand of four cards.

 

In Modified, the current format sees a lot of draw power.  More importantly for Copycat, the only other cycling (shuffle your hand into your deck then draw) card seeing a lot of play is Prof. Oak’s Research.  Conversely, we have more or less straight draw power coming from Professor Birch, Steven’s Advice, Bill’s Maintenance, and TV Reporter.  This tends to give most decks a slow, steady increase in hand size.  Even after we finish looking at some of the new Team Rocket Returns’ Supporters, we will at most see one more to each category, likely keeping things the same.  This can be really fun against an opponent using TV Reporter and Delcatty’s Energy Draw in the same turn. ;)

 

In terms of more specific decks, Hidden Legends Shiftry loves this card.  Its Supernatural Power attack normally does 40 for (CCC).  However, if you and your opponent have the same number of cards in hand, it hits for 80.

 

Ratings

 

Unlimited: 3/5-I wouldn’t use it for general draw power, but it might work for a new take on the Trapper deck, or for someone who refuses to give up their Erika (which, to be far, I am thinking I might want to go back to…).

 

Modified: 4/5-This should see a lot of play.  Most decks will either be running the mostly “straight” draw power I listed above, Hidden Legends Shiftry.

 

Limited: 4.75/5-It’s draw power that can also be used as recursion.  Hand sizes are either non-existent or huge in this format, usually large once the bench fills.  Go for it.  I pulled two at the Iowan TRR pre-release. ;)

 

Summary

Copycat is more a specialist in Unlimited, but its something roughly half to two-thirds of all Modified decks should be running, since it will usually pay off big time.  Feed off your opponent’s success.  They then have to choose between slowing down and helping you out.

 

 


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