Baby Mario
2010 UK
National
Seniors
Champion |
#1 Lysandre’s Trump Card
Well, well, well. This is going to be controversial. A
lot of excellent players have said that this card isn’t
very good. I had it at number 1 on my list, so I suppose
I should try and explain why I think a Supporter that
shuffles both players’ discard piles into their deck is
the best card in Phantom Forces.
First off, this is not a card that gets run in
multiples. Those that choose to use it will very likely
play only a single copy. That single copy does have the
potential to have a huge impact on
gameplay though.
There are some decks where
Lysandre’s Trump Card is an automatic inclusion.
Something which involves spamming Hammers and Lasers,
for example, or Trubbish
Tool Drop decks which straight up lose if they get their
Tools discarded by Startling Megaphone. Aside from that
though, Lysandre’s Trump
Card has the extremely useful function of getting back
the stuff from your discard pile that you need.
Stuff that is difficult (or
impossible) to recover any other way (DCEs, ACE SPECs,
Items). If you play recklessly and burn through
your deck early; if you are forced to Juniper away a
bunch of essential cards just to set up; if you have run
out of the resources you need to win the game . . . then
Lysandre’s Trump Card can
come to the rescue.
The usual argument against this card is that you are
using your Supporter to give your opponent back their
stuff, which they can then draw into with their own
Supporter next turn. The thing is though, is that you
wouldn’t play Lysandre’s
Trump Card at all unless you either
needed to,
or it would give you the
advantage to
do so. If you simply cannot win without your DCEs, then
the point that you are giving your opponent cards back
is moot: you would lose anyway. The same applies if you
were on the verge of losing by deck-out. Similarly, if
you have more essential resources in the discard than
your opponent (say after a blow-out first turn of
Bicycles and Roller Skates), then you can use
Lysandre’s Trump Card to
benefit yourself more than your opponent. It’s not a
card to be played recklessly, but then would you play an
N if your opponent had two cards in hand and six Prizes
left? Only if you absolutely 100%
needed to.
The bad side of Lysandre’s
Trump Card is that it can simply be a crutch for those
players with poor resource management. On the other
hand, it can benefit legitimate strategies (such as
Hammer spam), and is a hedge against those unfortunate
‘three Juniper’ opening hands (we’ve all had them).
Those players who just use it to compensate for
thoughtless play will most likely use it in a manner
that benefits the opponent in any case.
Lysandre’s
Trump Card is a good counter to decks that like stuff in
the discard pile (Bronzong
needs Metal in there, Flareon
needs Pokémon). It also has good synergy with Trainer
Lock strategies (put a load of cards your opponent can’t
use back in their deck). More generally, it’s a card
that can save you games, or at least improve a bad
situation . . . but only if used with care.
Rating
Modifed:
4.25 (some decks love it, some players will use it. Some
will think its trash)
Expanded: 3.5 (more recovery options here, especially
Sableye)
Limited: 4 (deck out is a legit worry in a 40-card
format)
|
aroramage |
(#1 Lysandre's Trump Card)
And now for our #1 card in the set! I'll be honest...I'm
not sure how we've got it at #1. Lysandre's Trump Card
is perhaps the one card on this list that people will
either see the uses for it right away and praise it, and
then there are people like me who look it and wonder
what it can be used for.
Lysandre's Trump Card is in all honesty a powerful card
- it can return all the cards in BOTH players' discard
piles back into the deck to be shuffled (save for any
other Lysandre's Trump Card). My first thoughts with the
card are that you could use it to get something out of
the discard pile you didn't want there like a Pokemon
or a Supporter, the problem with that being you'd be
doing the same for your opponent. Then again, maybe you
want to return your opponent's cards back into the deck
to keep them from using Bronzong or VS Seeker and
abusing the discard pile for it.
So it has offensive and defensive capabilities, and
because it is a Supporter technically you can use VS
Seeker with it. In this way, Lysandre's Trump Card
becomes a recyclable reset button, putting a bunch of
cards back into both players' decks - but why would this
be useful for you, I kept wondering? Two answers come to
mind:
1) Like I said, you're probably using this to disrupt
your opponent's usage of the discard pile through cards
like Bronzong and VS Seeker, forcing things to be set
back to the way they were before and removing all
support they had for it, but more importantly
2) Your reset isn't a full reset.
Lysandre's Trump Card only affects the cards in the
discard pile - you still have all the Pokemon in play,
as well as the cards in your hands and any remaining
Prize cards in play. In fact, depending on what Prize
cards get used, you could be adding back MORE cards for
your opponent to deal with, making it harder for them to
draw what they need. If you're at an advantage against
an opponent and it looks like they're getting the upper
hand, Lysandre's Trump Card could conceivably turn
things on their head and put the ball back in your
court! Even a deck at a disadvantage can utilize
Lysandre's Trump Card well - remove your opponent's
advantage completely (and in Expanded you can punish
their victorious streak with an N)!
Lysandre's Trump Card may not be absolutely perfect
though - it could be a dead card in your hand until you
decide on a good time to play it, and not every deck is
fully reliant on the discard pile. Blastoise decks come
to mind as a deck that'd benefit from having their
discard pile reshuffled into the deck - it'll allow them
to get their Energies back from Black Kyurem-EX or a
KO'd Keldeo-EX! It's one of those cards that benefits
some decks while crippling others - and it's because of
its simple effect that it brings out such a
controversial topic: is Lysandre's Trump Card a good
card or a bad card?
Then again, with all the other Supporters you've got,
you may not even have room for him to begin with.
Rating
Standard: 4/5 (I'd say its usage against the rising
Metal Deck as well as its potential reviving of the
Blastoise deck - my personal favorite - will probably
allow this card to be run at least 1 or 2; combined with
VS Seeker and Battle Compressor, it's no longer just a
"Maybe I'll get it this game" kind of card)
Expanded: 4.5/5 (throw in the Eelektrik-Rayquaza-EX deck
as one that gets crippled by this card)
Limited: 3/5 (I've no idea if the format would be fast
enough to warrant its usage, even with Battle
Compressor, Bronzong, and VS Seeker hanging around)
Arora Notealus: Lysandre may not have been the greatest
villainous mind of our time, but at least he only looks
really really goofy with his machines on.
Weekend Thought: Do you agree with our list? What's your
opinion on the ever-controversial Lysandre's Trump Card?
|
Otaku |
At last the number one for our Top 10 Promising Picks of
XY: Phantom Forces. Our number one pick… might
not have been if reprint cards were eligible for the Top
10 list. Said list is compiled by Pojo, who received a
Top 10 list created by each member of the review crew:
Pojo averages them out to produce the master Top 10 list
we use for the review order. Also don’t forget, even
though you can already use these on the PTCGO (and of
course can use them in casual play), the official
release date for this set in the U.S. was November 5th,
so XY: Phantom Forces cards aren’t tournament
legal until November 21st; however we’ll be scoring them
as if they were.
Lysandre’s Trump Card
(XY: Phantom Forces 99/119, 118/119) managed to
top our list, to my surprise and delight… and still more
surprise. This is a Supporter that forces each
player to shuffle his or her discard pile back into his
or her deck… except for Lysandre’s Trump Card.
If the new “self referencing” guidelines that apply
equally to Supporters as well as Pokémon, that means no
matter how many copies of this card are in the discard
pile, none of them are going back into the deck. The
thing is I literally just realized this right now; I’m a
long time player so I’m used to the old self
referencing rules, when instead of “this Pokémon” a card
would just state its name and use different phrasing to
refer to all cards with that name. Of course, even if
it can’t recycle itself, VS Seeker is a simple
answer (and VS Seeker would get shuffled back
alongside everything else).
Players seem divided over this card; some are shocked
that something this potent exists (or at least
disappointed) while others are wondering what all the
fuss is about. Among those I’ve noticed weighing in, I
get the impression that besides those inclined to always
hype or bash a card, those that have been playing the
Pokémon TCG for at least a short while (in my book, that
would be about five or more years) and/or have a few
years of experience with other TCGs on top of those
spent in the Pokémon TCG are among the ones that have
high expectations from Lysandre’s Trump Card.
This is not a “scientific” observation: I haven’t been
counting and I already know of some long time players
that think Lysandre’s Trump Card is more
“interesting” than useful or game relevant. I also
didn’t mention player skill or accomplishments: people
good at winning tournaments are usually good at
reading the deeper aspects of the game, but not always.
I am someone that thinks Lysandre’s Trump Card is
ultimately too powerful, and I’ll explain why. First,
it pretty much kills mill decks; such decks aren’t
really alive right now anyway and there have been very,
very few that have been seen as competitive, so the loss
isn’t likely to be felt except by those that wish this
strategy was viable in the first place. Unless we get
an absurdly powerful mill effect, this is a fairly easy
answer though a mill deck might get lucky and discard it
(and any hope of retrieving it) before Lysandre’s
Trump Card can be used in a worthwhile manner.
The second reason is that it is quite hard on effects
that work based on cards in the discard pile. Our number
three pick Battle Compressor helps to compensate
but its basically the reason why cards like Bronzong
(XY: Phantom Forces 61/119) can be our number two
pick in the same list where Lysandre’s Trump Card
is our number one: without Lysandre’s Trump Card
discard based effects would be more powerful than they
likely ever have been before. Certain effects also are
impacted far less: Bronzong is likely attaching
Energy each turn and so even if the discard pile gets
shuffled away, the Energy already in play is likely
hitting the discard pile soon enough or else the
Bronzong deck is in a very good place even without
additional Energy… and a Battle Compressor gets
three more Energy into the discard pile ASAP. Night
March is an attack found on three Pokémon this set -
Joltik (XY: Phantom Forces 26/119),
Lampent (XY: Phantom Forces 42/119) and
Pumpkaboo (XY: Phantom Forces 44/119) that
does 20 damage times the number of Pokémon with Night
March on them that are in your discard pile. Joltik
can use the attack for [CC] and with a Dimension
Valley so can Pumpkaboo. While they are
glass cannons, they can pretty easily ramp the damage to
the point that OHKOs against 180 HP Pokémon-EX are
possible. Without Lysandre’s Trump Card this
probably would have been a new, top performing deck but
now? Its relegated to “fun deck” status.
The third reason and perhaps the most important is that
resource management is going to get even more out of
whack for the Pokémon TCG. Players can rip through
their decks with total abandon, for better and worse,
and not have to worry too much about what they are using
up or tossing away as Lysandre’s Trump Card can
get it all back in the deck to do it again (and with a
VS Seeker, again and again as needed). Maybe it
is just because I’m not a good enough player, but I do
have the periodic game that goes to time. In a
tournament setting I would expect this less as players
are already incentivized to run “faster” decks and to
shrewdly know when to scoop due to a bad set-up or
situation because the time is better spent on a second
and third game than trying to reverse a bad first one.
Still it happens, especially when someone digs for that
one card they need to seal the win this turn… and they
whiff. Now unless you do deck out while doing it, that
isn’t a concern.
Or at least significantly less of a concern. Critics of
Lysandre’s Trump Card do have one thing
completely correct: giving up your Supporter usage for
the turn is a major concern, especially as you are
giving your opponent the same benefit. What I believe
most are failing to properly consider are when
you should be playing it and what you should be running
with it. Again maybe it is because I’m not the
greatest of player and when I watch a video of someone
skilled playing, maybe I am just catching them making a
bad play, but I find there are times when I don’t really
want to use a draw Supporter. Its usually late game
(though sometimes mid-game), I’ve got pretty much
everything I want in hand, and there’s just no sense
depleting my deck at that point. That’s when you hit
the reset button on your discard pile. You also have
the choice, even if you’re deck is optimized for it, to
not use Lysandre’s Trump Card if you can
tell it will help your opponent more than yourself, the
same way one does with N.
How do you make sure you’ve got the good timing what I
just said requires? You can’t guarantee it but you can
make it quite probable with Battle Compressor and
VS Seeker, two cards which should already be in
most decks and probably beyond TecH levels. If
no one is bothering with Lysandre’s Trump Card,
the two allow you to streamline your Supporters while
also making use of potent TecH supporters that are
normally a pain because they tend to not show up at the
right time and end up hiding in your deck or getting
prematurely discarded. In fact, you are still going to
do this even if everyone is running Lysandre’s Trump
Card because its one of those Supporters you should
be tossing. If you’re running a deck that already
favors Bicycle and/or Roller Skates, that
also helps with the whole “I just used my Supporter for
the turn on something that isn’t draw or search”. thing.
Battle Compressor in significant quantities
(assuming you can make room) allows you to functionally
recycle just the “good” stuff in your deck. Odds are
you won’t be able to ditch everything you’d rather not
draw again, but if you’ve got two or three Battle
Compressor (and especially if you max it out) you
can come close. If you’re opponent is already doing the
same, either they have a deck that isn’t going to like
Lysandre’s Trump Card or run it themselves, in
which case having your own deck prepared to use it is
the best defense.
Ratings
Standard:
4.25/5 - A bit low considering I’m pretty much telling
you that one copy should be a staple, but still the best
card of the set and one that changes some fundamental
aspects of how we play this game, especially at the
higher levels.
Expanded:
4.25/5 - Same score, though I’ll add that here it also
makes it even less likely Durant (BW: Noble
Victories 83/101) is going to make a comeback.
Limited:
5/5 - Besides the nature of Limited being that you’ve
got room for Trainers that are unlikely to be used most
games and that you rarely will lack a Supporter usage
you can spare that turn, it really is pretty helpful
here. Your opponent can’t rely on you having one and
build his or her deck accordingly, so it should be
somewhat of a surprise when it happens. Get some of
your best pulls back to use again. Even +39 decks
should make room; it is pretty unlikely you’ll risk
decking out before your opponent KOs your lone big Basic
or you take four Prizes, but stalling happens and again,
you should have the room.
Summary:
As you can tell, I’m quite impressed by this card. I
can still see people skipping it but they really
shouldn’t. When Lysandre (XY: Flashfire
90/106, 104/106) I didn’t expect it to do all that well
(and was surprised when it was the Pojo crew’s top pick
for XY: Flashfire) but in hindsight it was a
completely accurate call. I had Lysandre’s Trump
Card as my number one pick for this set, and to my
surprise that I wasn’t alone in thinking so highly of
it.
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