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Pojo's Pokémon Card of the Day

aroramage	So Herdier's actually an interesting card, and the reason may surprise you!  It's NOT the 3-for-50 vanilla Bite attack!  ...okay, maybe that didn't surprise you. It's all about his Ability, Treasure Hunt, which when Herdier evolves from Lillipup allows you to add an Item to your hand from your discard. That's a wildly useful Ability to have, depending on the Item pool available. That's a list that currently includes cards like Crushing Hammer, Rare Candy, Switch, Ultra Ball, and that's just in this set!   There will be lots of Items to utilize with this Ability, for sure, but the question becomes can you run a Stage 1 to check for cycling Items back? If you've got multiple copies, then bringing back one of them could be useful to have upwards of 5, 6, maybe even 7 copies if you feel like it. But then if you've only got the one copy, well then you get the utility of bringing it back in case you need it again! There's a lot of positives to this kind of Ability, depending on the utility you need.  Keep in mind though that running a Stage 1 requires at least 2 cards in your deck, so if space is tight, don't force Herdier in - he's still only got 90 HP after all.   Rating  Standard: 2.5/5 (a lot of utility with this guy, but finding space may be hard) Expanded: 3/5 (if you can make use of him though)  Limited: 4/5 (he's a friend till the end!)  Arora Notealus: Herdier's a loyal friend, and loyal friends go dig up stuff out of the ground! Because that's true friendship right there! Digging up stuff from the ground! No questions asked, nothing about what the contents are, who put it there, why the police might be chasing us after it - NOTHING!! Just TRUE, BLUE, DIGGING UP LOYAL FRIENDSHIP STUFF!!  ...I swear the Exeggcute had the broken egg before I found it!  Next Time: Speaking of items, let's talk about an old one!
21times	Herdier (Sun & Moon, 104/149) leaps into play from the Sun & Moon expansion set.  Herdier’s main focus comes from its ability Treasure Hunt: when you play this Pokemon from your hand to evolve one of your Pokemon during your turn, you may put an Item card from your discard pile into your hand.  Treasure Hunt can help pull item cards you have used out of your discard pile and back into your hand.  Herdier can help you use Crushing Hammer (Sun & Moon, 115/149), Fairy Drop (Fates Collide, 99/124), or any other Item card that you’ve already exhausted and get to use it immediately again.  Treasure Hunt functions similarly to Puzzle of Time (Breakpoint, 109/122) but only for one card, and only for item cards.  However, you could use Treasure Hunt to pull out a VS Seeker (Roaring Skies, 110/108), thereby allowing you access to Supporter cards, and you could use it to get something like a Super Rod (Breakthrough, 149/162) to get various Pokemon or Energy cards back in your deck as well.  Finally, you can use Devolution Spray (Evolutions, 76/108) to pull Herdier off of Lillipup (Sun & Moon, 103/149) and put him down again next turn.   Unfortunately, Herdier is basically a bench sitter in all other aspects though.  Its only attack Bite does fifty damage but for three colorless energy.  And Stoutland (Sun & Moon, 105/149), Herdier’s Stage 2 evolution, has a four energy attack for 120 damage, but it will probably struggle as many of the other Stage 2 Pokemon have in this meta.  I haven’t tried Herdier much myself, I’ve seen it in some mill deck videos, but overall it just doesn’t have much impact in the current meta. Rating Standard: 1.5 out of 5 Conclusion Herdier’s ability Treasure Hunt would dominate the meta and probably be a 2-2 line in most decks if it would let you pull an item card once a turn.  It would be the very definition of broken.  As it is, only being able to use Treasure Hunt when you play Herdier from your hand, it’s a significant limitation on the usefulness of Treasure Hunt and relegates Herdier to the shoe box in which you keep your filler Pokemon. I’ve gotta say though: if they can make a Pokemon from a Yorkshire Terrier, they need to make one from a Dachshund as well.
Otaku	Herdier (Sun & Moon 104/149) is our subject today, and it isn’t just a Stage 1 Pokémon but an Evolving Stage 1 Pokémon.  Normally, this consigns a card to be bland filler, a stepping stone between Basic and Stage 2 forms that only sees play because Rare Candy can be blocked by Item lock.  So is this just a filler review, or is there a trick here?  Being a Colorless Pokémon is about as close as the TCG comes to a neutral Type; the same goes for being a Stage 1 (instead of a Basic).  90 HP means Herdier isn’t surviving a hit without a lot of luck, especially against Fighting Types thanks to Weakness.  No Resistance is the worst, but it's also the most common so its absence isn’t a big issue.  Retreat Cost [C] is nice; easy to pay and recover from having paid.  The Ability, “Treasure Hunt”, is good; when you Evolve one of your in play Pokémon into this Herdier, you are allowed to add an Item card from your discard pile to your hand.  The attack, “Bite”, is a simple affair that does 50 damage for [CCC].  We are looking at this card because of Treasure Hunt; the rest ranges from poor to adequate.  Of course, we could use Herdier just to support a Stoutland, its Stage 2 form, and Lillipup has a chance of contributing as well, but none of these cards have experienced more than a flicker of usefulness in the past.  For Lillipup, Black & White 80/114, Black & White 81/114, and BW: Boundaries Crossed 120/149 each have a mildly useful attack for [C], but Lillipup isn’t surviving after using it as they only have 50 or 60 HP (and no protective effects).  The Stoutland are less impressive; most have attacks that are overpriced for the combination of damage and effects they possess.  BW: Boundaries Crossed 122/149 comes the closest, as its mediocre stats and overpriced/underpowered attack is blessed with the Ability “Sentinel”, which forces a one-sided Supporter lock against your opponent while this Stoutland is Active.  Putting it all together, that means we either find decks that want an Ability based form of Item retrieval, space (or even a need) for a Stage 1 Pokémon or find a way to make an entire Stoutland line useful.  I’ve heard arguments to include Herdier in certain Standard format Vespiquen (XY: Ancient Origins 10/98) builds; the deck uses so many Items that reclaiming one is useful, but it also needs Pokémon as fodder to fill the discard pile.  While I don’t have a lot of data on this, we do have one Daniel Lynch managing an 11th place finish in the Masters Division at the Anaheim, California Regional Championship held this last February 18th and 19th.  I’ve also bumped into an advocate or two on the message boards, but haven’t heard much since Vileplume (XY: Ancient Origins 3/98) variants, especially the one built around it and Decidueye-GX, regained their hype after initially stumbling.  While having more Pokémon in your discard can apply even while under Item lock, unlike with the more general Puzzle of Time, I’m thinking this deck is hurting either way.  Still, a credit to Herdier.  There is another facet I almost forgot; Ability denial.  While we’ll soon (officially) have a good answer to Garbodor (XY: BREAKpoint 57/122) and its Ability denial, even then you’ll have to remember that an Item utilizing Ability faces a double-whammy right now in Standard play; strong Ability denial in some decks, strong Item denial in others.  In Expanded play, it gets worse as you still can run into decks that rob you of both at the same time!  Next is an unproven idea, for either Expanded or Standard play.  Not even a deck skeleton, just the basic concept: a porter deck can make use of Stoutland (BW: Boundaries Crossed 122/149) and today’s Herdier.  It is a lot of space for something that won’t always be the best option to promote, but shutting off Supporters is usually awkward, painful, or even calamitous for your opponent.  Other than that, Herdier is another card that can shine in almost any deck you can slip it into for Limited play, though remember you’re at the mercy of the Items you pull and are lucky enough to draw into and use before Herdier hits the field.  Thanks to the Theme Deck (Bright Tide), I know first hand that when you don’t have a deck that resembles a proper, competitive build for Standard or Expanded play, Herdier won’t always cooperate and show up when you’ve got something worth recycling from the discard… but you may not be able to wait around for that to happen either.  This is also a concern in Constructed Format play, but in Expanded and Standard it is more a matter of being forced to prematurely chuck Herdier or Lillipup with something like Professor Sycamore and less “All I have in my discard pile right now is Poké Ball.”  Ratings  Standard: 2/5  Expanded: 2/5  Limited: 3.5/5  Theme: 3.5/5  Conclusion  Talk about a time sensitive subject; if we’d reviewed this earlier, I’d have dismissed it for much the same reasons I couldn’t score it high here, but I’d have been oblivious to its uses in Vespiquen decks.  A little later, but still earlier than now, and I might have been glowing about it because I’ve got a soft spot for Vespiquen decks.  Looking at it now, it isn’t something to worry about in the short-term, but I’d keep it in mind for the future; between rotation, or (dare I dream) a worthwhile Stoutland card and this could prove relevant again.