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We finish off this short week with
two cards that are very often linked together for
obvious reasons. It’s a bit strange reviewing them
separately, but then I guess reviewing Pokémon cards is
a bit of a strange job anyway . . .
Plusle
is a Lightning Type unevolving
Basic who is pretty adorable if you can look past the
fact that he looks suspiciously like a Pikachu remake.
With only 60 HP, Fighting Weakness, and a Retreat cost
of one, there is nothing in this card’s stats that would
jump out at you and demand to be played. In fact so far
it is looking a bit like an easy Prize for your
opponent.
Plusle’s
first attack is his main attraction. The second attack,
Positive Ion, gives you a cheap
20-30 damage, but really you would only play this card
for Tag Draw. Tag Draw costs just
one Energy of any Colour, it doesn’t do any
damage, but it does let you shuffle your hand into your
deck and draw a fresh hand of four cards. So far, so
meh . . . it’s just a bad
Cleffa really . . . but the
real good stuff happens when you happen to have
Minun on your Bench. Now you
shuffle your hand in and draw EIGHT cards. That’s huge
and actually much better than
Cleffa. What’s more, it won’t stay asleep at
awkward times either.
Of course
Cleffa will soon be leaving the format, along
with our most popular shuffle-draw cards like Professor
Oak’s New Theory and Copycat. This could create a niche
for the Plusle/Minun
combination as a means of setting up. The obvious
drawback is that you need two Basics out on the Field to
pull it off and, given that Pokémon Collector and Dual
Ball are also going out of rotation, players are more
likely to prefer Call for Family Basics like
Elgyem or the forthcoming
Emolga for decks that can
afford to spend a turn or two on set up.
I wouldn’t discount
Plusle totally though. There
may well be decks which emerge in the new format that
will benefit from the hand refresh. It’s certainly
something you should bear in mind when
deckbuilding, though I
suspect that the deckspace
the combo requires will put a lot of players off.
Rating
Modified: 2.25 (slightly gimmicky,
but who knows? Some deck may depend on it in the future)
Limited: 4.25 (I will take any kind
of draw/refresh I can get my hands on in Limited)
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