Today we look at
Cedric Juniper.
Supporters typically “drive” a
deck; they won’t win you the game
(barring rare exceptions), but they are
what usually help you set-up and
maintain your resources.
As such,
Cedric Juniper faces an almost
paradoxical situation; players are
hungry for new Supporters, but part of
that is because
Professor Juniper and
N have set the bar so high that
other Supporters, even those better than
earlier, successful counterparts, have a
hard time measuring up.
Cedric Juniper
has you select a Pokémon from your hand,
place it facedown in front of you (so
not entering any particular zones), and
have your opponent attempt to guess the
height printed on said Pokémon’s card.
If they get it right, they draw
three cards.
If they get it wrong, you draw
three cards.
In either case, you return the
selected Pokémon to your hand after
revealing it to confirm if the guess was
correct or not, and you cannot select a
Pokémon card that doesn’t have its
height printed on it.
This card taking this long to review was
a bad sign that I have to confirm was
accurate; this card is worth reviewing
as a warning not to use it and to
explain how bad it truly is.
To begin with, if you want to
“make” your opponent draw three cards as
part of a mill strategy… too bad!
They can always choose to guess
wrong.
If you want to draw three cards…
why would you play this card instead of
Cheren and/or
Tierno?
Either of those Supporters
guarantees you draw three cards, no
questions asked.
If you have no Pokémon in hand to
play down that has its height printed on
it, you can’t play
Cedric Juniper.
If you only have something that
is already visible in play… you can play
it but you’ll get the result you didn’t
want.
This is not a wholly new card.
The name is new, and the exact
stats and effect are as well, but very
similar cards have existed since the
Gym expansions.
Blaine’s
Quiz #1
had the same scenario but was a
“regular” Trainer because Supporters
hadn’t been invented yet, and the player
that drew cards got to draw only two
instead of three.
Blaine’s
Quiz #2
and
Blaine’s
Quiz #3
were similar guessing games.
Pokémon Personality Test also
featured a similar mechanic; guessing
whether an Evolution you selected from
your hand had either “Light”, “Dark”, or
neither one in its name with the same
rewards as for
Cedric Juniper.
The big difference is that again,
it was a “regular” Trainer, an Item
before they were called Items.
This would be a risky but interesting
mechanic on an Item, and a potential
incentive for playing lesser played
Pokémon, but as a Supporter it needs
rewards that you can’t get just by
playing a different, no fail Supporter.
I still would take issue with it,
though… because this is just a bad
mechanic.
The way this card works is that
if your opponent is prepared to memorize
the heights of all Pokémon (a huge waste
of time – seriously), they get a reward.
If they aren’t wasting their
lives to such a degree, you might get to
draw some cards.
If they really want to use the
quiz mechanic, lets restrict it to
something a bit more reasonable; the
cards in the deck of the player asking
the question.
While it would be tricky to do
that without allowing your opponent to
handle your cards, knowing the heights
of the Pokémon in your own deck isn’t a
ridiculous thing… and either way, the
card shouldn’t be all or nothing.
Don’t use this in Modified or Unlimited.
Do use it in Limited, where the
card is at its best; decks are likely to
be using some fairly “random” seeming
Pokémon, even though it has to be
something from the set, it is unlikely
your opponent will know it (or that a
copy said opponent can just look at will
be in play).
Plus this is a format where you
are pretty desperate for draw power.
Just remember that you have next
to no reason to force it into a “+39”
build where you have a single Basic
Pokémon; you would have to include
filler Evolutions in order to allow the
card a chance to work!
Ratings
Unlimited:
1/5
Modified:
1/5
Limited:
4.8/5
Summary
An old, gimmicky mechanic returns and it
shouldn’t have;
Cedric Juniper rewards your opponent
for you wasting slots in your deck and
said opponent wasting his or her life.
I
also keep nearly calling it “Cedric
Diggory” because of the “Harry Potter”
character.
