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Pojo's Pokémon Card of the Day

 

Giovanni's Scheme

- XY BREAKthrough

Date Reviewed:
February 5, 2016

Ratings & Reviews Summary

Standard: 3.0
Expanded: 2.8
Limited: 4.8

Ratings are based on a 1 to 5 scale.
1 being horrible.  3 ... average.  5 is awesome.

Back to the main COTD Page


aroramage

You know what I like? Variety and flexibility. You know who I like? Giovanni. You know what's a great card? Debatably, this card. 

Giovanni's Scheme is the enterprising Supporter that does two things at the same time!...okay, not actually the same time, but it does have two different effects, and they're both pretty nice. You've seen these sorts of effects on other Supporters, so naturally we're gonna have to compare Giovanni's Duality with other Supporters of the same nature. 

Now Supporters are no stranger to drawing cards, and Giovanni has been studying the likes of Colress and Sycamore to give you...THE ABILITY TO DRAW UP TO 5 CARDS!! At least, if you don't have any other cards other than Giovanni's Scheme. That's pretty good, right? Well, Sycamore unfortunately guarantees drawing 7 cards, albeit by discarding the rest of your hand if any, which already makes it the best Supporter in terms of drawing, so Giovanni's getting ousted easily. But hey, it's not like any other Supporters draw 5 cards!...except Archie's and Maxie's will do that AND bring out any Water/Fighting Pokemon from your discard pile at the same time. Needless to say, Giovanni's first effect is outclassed by the other effects. 

But never fear, Giovanni has bigger plans! Damage-dealing plans, increasing the output by an extra 20 damage to the opponent's Active Pokemon!! Not many Supporters can do that!...except for Iris, which does 10 more damage for each Prize your opponent has already taken, and we've seen how little play that card gets. Granted, Giovanni is at least a consistent 20 more damage, but we've already got something for that - it's called Muscle Band. 

So once again, we have found that Giovanni here is a jack-of-all-trades, talented in many ways but a master of none of them. He couldn't take over the Kanto region, he couldn't contain Mewtwo - and he's not quite gonna make his big return with this kind of approach. 

Rating 

Standard: 2/5 (outclassed by other cards, but the flexibility he offers is still a nice nod) 

Expanded: 2/5 (maybe if the effects were a bit stronger each, he'd warrant more play - but then he might be considered too overpowered?) 

Limited: 5/5 (that being said, draw is draw, and tacking on an extra 20 damage is the difference between winning and losing) 

Arora Notealus: He's still a cool mob boss Gym Leader, in my opinion. 

Weekend Thought: How excited are you for the rise of the Water-I mean, the release of BREAKPoint? Pretty exciting stuff, ehhhh? Makes you wanna play a Water deck again, don't it? Ehhh? Ehhhhhhhhhhh???


Otaku

We wrap up the week with Giovanni’s Scheme (XY: BREAKthrough 138/162, 162/162), a Supporter that gives you a choice: have your attacks do 20 extra damage this turn or draw until you have five cards in hand.  This card has been popping up frequently in Standard competitive play (not sure about Expanded).  Why?  VS Seeker makes Supporter singles a great deal right now, but why would you want something that only granted you the same damage bonus as Muscle Band or draw one less card than Bianca?  There are various attackers that fall 10 or 20 points shy of some significant damage threshold, like Charizard-EX (XY: Flashfire 12/106) with its 150 damage via “Combustion Blast”.  Muscle Band gets that to 170 and thus scoring a OHKO against a lot in the format, but the typical Basic Pokémon-EX tends to be 170 or 180: Giovanni’s Scheme increases that coverage to handle up to 190 damage, crossing that threshold.  Also we have more decks used to thinning hands thanks to heavy Shaymin-EX (XY: Roaring Skies 77/108, 106/108), it isn’t too bad for backup draw power.  Especially in Standard, as it is lacking some of the useful options that Expanded still possesses. 

It is getting to the point where I kind of want a copy of this card in all of my decks in Standard, but only can accomplish it in some decks.  Same for Expanded but a little lower priority.  In Limited play, this is a primo pull as either effect is great here.  The two effects are important as it makes it difficult for the card to be truly dead in hand.  This card was our 14th place pick for XY: BREAKthrough and… we kind of dropped the ball.  It didn’t make anyone’s Top 10 list, but was part of someone’s honorary mentions.  Not mine though, so it is mostly on me that it didn’t rank at all.  Yes, this is it except for the ratings: this is so simple and straightforward it makes the oversight even worse, I think. 

Ratings 

Standard: 4/5 
Expanded:
3.75/5 
Limited:
4.5/5


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