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Pojo's Pokémon Card of the Day

aroramage	SPEAK OF THE DEVIL, AND SHE WILL APPEAR!  Go figure, I was JUST talking about Plumeria with Salazzle-GX last week, and now look where we are! Plumeria is probably going to be one of those cards that you figure is either overpowered or underpowered depending on how you look at it. Is it one or the other? Depends on how you look at it.  Plumeria's effect is to discard 2 cards from your hand to take off an Energy card from one of your opponent's Pokemon. On the one hand, if you compare this to other cards that discard Energy - specifically Supporters, since comparing this to Energy Removal (Base Set) is probably the most unfair comparison you can make, the answer is use Energy Removal - you could be tempted to say it's underpowered. Xerosic (PHF), Team Flare Grunt (XY), Crushing Hammer (EMP), and Enhanced Hammer (DEX) are all cards that discard Energy in some form, and they don't have a steep 2-card cost attached to them. That's a pretty good argument not to use Plumeria already - why bother with a card that costs so much when you can get away with the same thing for free? You might be a little limited in what you discard - Team Flare Grunt only discards Energy from the Active Pokemon, and Xerosic and Enhanced only discard Special Energy - but still! They get it for free, and you don't even need to use your Supporter for the turn!  But there's some merit to this card. Discarding cards fuels your discard pile, complete with Energy and Supporters and Pokemon for all the benefits you can reap from them. In fact, discarding Exeggcute (PLF) can even circumvent the cost a bit and make it almost free for what you use! But these are also all Expanded-only interactions and cards, with the exception of the Hammers - and those are Item cards that are susceptible to Trashalanche! So for non-Item-based removal, Plumeria's really good, and considering the potential for what you discard fueling your future strategies, you might end up finding Plumeria not only to be fairly costed but even overpowered! What other card lets you get up to 3 cards worth of advantage for the price of one?  Like many Sun/Moon Supporters, I feel Plumeria's popularity will rise and fall depending on the structure of the format. She may be more popular in some decks, but I don't think she'll be the primary option for fueling the discard - that's where Sophocles and Sycamore/Juniper/Sycaper will shine most. But here in Standard, she might be one of the more dangerous Supporters in the current arsenal. If your deck benefits from having stuff discarded, or you're having trouble finding removal for Energy that's not in Hammer-form, maybe Plumeria's just what you need!  Rating  Standard: 3/5 (for Supporter-based removal, she's a bit hefty)  Expanded: 2.5/5 (but for what she can do with that discard and such, she can be DANGEROUS)  Limited: 3.5/5 (it's all a matter of...perspective)  Arora Notealus: I kinda like the general direction many of these cards seem to be going in. It's like the folks at the Pokemon Company know the pace of the game has gotten pretty fast - I mean, how could you not see that? - and have decided to reign things in for the next rotation format where we lost some speedy cards like N and Sycamore and will have to work with stuff like Sophocles and Plumeria. Sure, we've still got cards like Guzma and Acerola which are generally powerful, but we're getting a lot of Supporters that incentivize a certain skill in decision-making - do I include stuff like Sophocles for the benefits of drawing, or do I use Plumeria to put my opponent behind? Do I swap out my Pokemon using Guzma or Acerola? Is it worth running both Plumeria and Sophocles? It's a lot of tactical decision-making that makes Supporters as a card type - as well as the game itself - very interesting to watch.  Next Time: I wish I wish with all my...baton?
21times	Plumeria (Burning Shadows, 145/147) makes her debut in the TCG in the Burning Shadows expansion set.  A Supporter card, she allows you to discard an energy card from any of your opponent’s Pokemon.  The catch: you have to discard two cards from your hand to play Plumeria. We wrote last week about how discarding cards in the new format has become a riskier proposition than in the prior Standard meta.  And like Sophocles (Burning Shadows, 146/147), the cost of discarding two cards in today’s game seems to outweigh the benefit of discarding a single energy from your opponent’s side of the board, even if it is from any Pokemon, not just the active.  I will absolutely give you, though, the fact that in some situations Plumeria could devastate your opponent.  For example, if you are about to KO the active, but your opponent has a powered up attacker on the bench, the value of Plumeria far surpasses Team Flare Grunt (Generations, 73/83).  However, I am of the opinion that most of the time when you want to discard energy, you’ll want to discard it off of the active Pokemon.  I could be wrong on that – I haven’t done any kind of study on it, it’s just my feeling.  If you believe that you will want to discard energy off of Pokemon on the bench more than Pokemon in the active Position, by all means run Plumeria.  It’s just to me, I would guess that well over fifty percent of the time, the Pokemon you want to take energy off of will be in the active position.  Add to that the cost of discarding two cards from your hand, and Plumeria is a pass for me. What I do have some stats for is the surprising loss rate of decks that run energy discard cards during this new meta.  I posted a very early statistical analysis here, and I was very surprised that I’m now actually 8 W 3 L in the 11 matches in which players have employed energy denial cards.  In 107 matches, that’s about 1 out of 10 decks running energy disruption cards, which is significantly less than in the prior meta where about 17% of the decks I faced ran some type of energy removal card.  It is, however, consistent with other studies I have done that show that playing cards that discard energy don’t actually help you increase your win percentage.  In fact, decks that run energy discard cards tend to win less than those that don’t run energy denial.  It’s counter intuitive, I know, but the facts are there.  There are other cards out there that will help you win more than any energy disruption card you could play. Rating Standard: 2 out of 5 Conclusion While I can see situations where Plumeria is advantageous over other energy removal cards, generally speaking, I would still recommend Team Flare Grunt over it … or better yet, finding an even better non-energy discarding substitute that will help you win even more.
Vince	Today we look at Plumeria, a Supporter which requires you to discard two cards from your hand so that you get to discard an Energy card attached to one of your opponent’s Pokemon.   Energy Removal is a powerful effect.  It creates an irritation to your opponent by messing up their setup and setting back one turn if they rely on manual attachments.  She hits even harder on some Special Energy cards that provides at least two units of energy such as Double Colorless Energy or the new Counter Energy that was revealed couple days ago.  Of course, that won’t do much good on basic Energy cards, which can be retrieved by countless ways, Pokemon whose attacks costs one energy, and Pokemon who provides multiple energy attachments to get fully powered up.   Discarding cards from your hand may be a drawback; you may not have enough cards to discard or that the cards that you currently have in too valuable to discard.  You may need some cards that can retrieve itself such as Exeggcute (BW Plasma Freeze) or Darkrai-GX.  Fortunately cards from BW-on have decent amount of card recursion.   In the end, I can’t see much usage on Plumeria, its effect seemed underwhelming to me.  I might be missing something.   Ratings:   Standard: 2.5/5  Expanded: 2.5/5  Limited: 4.5/5  Notes: I’ve faced some battles against Plumeria, both the demo and maybe once or twice in Sun and Moon.  Unfortunately, I don’t know what her role is in Team Skull.
Retro	When I first saw the Sun and Moon trailers, I was disappointed at Plumeria. And I was right. She doesn’t seem to fit the stereotypical Team Skull character, being more mature in an otherwise goofy gang. But unfortunately, since she is the caretaker of the gang, she has to be of that nature. And her Team Skull original outfit also didn’t fit her well, but her redesigned outfit in the post-game suits her better. But hey, that’s personal preference. And finally Plumeria is able to show herself in the TCG realm to accompany his boss Guzma as a Supporter. So how well does she perform?             Plumeria has a unique effect, that although its rather commonly seen before, she does it her own way. By discarding 2 cards from your hand, you can discard any energy card from 1 of your opponent’s hand. We have seen Supporter-based energy denial cards in the not so long past ago, and 2 of the best examples are still in the Standard format; Team Flare Grunt (XY Base Set, XY Generations) discards an energy card from your opponent’s Active Pokemon, which is really useful in a bind to slow down your opponent, and Team Skull Grunt (SM Base Set) discards up to 2 of any energy cards from your opponent’s hand. However, I have many beliefs that Plumeria can be better than both, all because of a simple reason.             Team Flare Grunt discards a card from your opponent’s Active Pokemon only, which means that if your opponent promotes a Pokemon with no energy attached, something like an Alolan Vulpix (SM Guardians Rising) that doesn’t need energy attachments to do what it’s supposed to do, this card becomes a dead and unplayable. I have seen multiple matches where I used the old Team Flare Grunt disruption engine in decks like Quad Wobbuffet and I wished that the energy denial card I had is Plumeria, not the hair gel grunt. Plumeria’s greatest asset is that you can hunt down energies from the benched Pokemon as well, meaning as long as there is at least 1 energy card in play from your opponent’s side, you can deny their setup. As more decks now have this mindset that the best place to setup is in the bench, Plumeria just say no to those mindset. Meanwhile, Team Skull Grunt discards energies before they even come to play by throwing them from your opponent’s hand. Although this might have been a much better energy denial card than Plumeria, because you also gained valuable information by looking at your opponent’s hand as well, there are lots of chances that your opponent has no energy in their hand. Decks that accelerate energy from the discard pile like Metagross-GX (SM Guardians Rising) appreciate having their energy discarded early from their hand to then using Geotech System in their next turn. What Plumeria offers here is that you can discard energy attached from a battle ready Pokemon next turn that thinks “Yeah, I’m chilling in the bench”, which is why Plumeria is better than Team Skull Grunt. Plumeria catches your opponent off guard, while with Team Skull Grunt your opponent can see that their energy are going away, so they can predict it.             However, the thing that lets Plumeria down is the if clause. You need to discard 2 cards to activate the energy denial property. Back in the PRC-on meta, this is easy as you just need to discard 2 Supporters (or energies in some decks) to hunt down your opponent’s energy. And the reason back then is simple; VS Seeker (XY Phantom Forces, XY Roaring Skies) are played everywhere, making sure that those binned Supporters are reusable later in the game. In the post-rotation meta however, this is much easier said than done. You really need to think on which cards to discard so that you won’t mess up by discarding the wrong cards just to hunt your opponent’s Double Colorless Energy, which they can just recover back with stuff like Special Charge (XY Steam Siege) and making your Supporter useless for the next turn.             But all things aside, Plumeria is a really cool energy denial card that can combo well into any deck that aims to disrupt your opponent, and it does its job well. Rating: Standard: 2.8/5 (Too much mind games to play with Plumeria; but when played correctly it can win you games) Expanded: 4.5/5 (VS Seeker is there; this means using Plumeria as the main way of energy denial has less backlash. Especially since Expanded has a lot of decks that just need Special Energy to roll, Plumeria can really bring the pain. Love it in the format) Limited: 4.9/5 (Pull one of these and you’ll love it) Next on SM Burning Shadows: Baton Pass?
Otaku	So we’ve finished long since finished counting down our top 10 picks of SM: Burning Shadows, and we’ve even gone through the effective 11th through 18th place cards that didn’t make the official site’s top 10 but were on some of our individual top 10 lists.  So with those runners-up finished, we’ll now move onto the runners-up from the two personal Top 10 lists that had more than 10 entries because some of us just prefer to roll that way.  One of those lists was mine, so I took the results of the two “extended Top 10’s” and gave them the same treatment as the actual top 10 lists.  Instead of counting down, we’ll count up, with each card impressing us less and less… but still being worth a nod.  Plumeria is a Trainer-Supporter that requires you discard two cards from your hand in order to use it, then it allows you to discard an Energy to one of your opponent’s Pokémon.  Something I probably ought to have mentioned in my Guzma review is that neither he nor Plumeria have anything indicating an affiliation with Team Skull (card art doesn’t count).  The short version is that until the XY-era, Gym Leaders, Elite Four, evil teams, etc. would have something in their name or printed on their card designating them as belonging to that group and making it easy for other card effects to reference the collective.  Some of these would be counters, but most would be beneficial in nature and tended to result in a net positive.  It is possible we’ll be surprised by some such cards releasing later; the powers-that-be can be rather haphazard in this process.  Next, we’ll consider what it means to be a Trainer in general; not much for Standard (Skyla) and a little extra help in Expanded (Dowsing Machine; Trainer’s Mail).  Being a Supporter should allow Plumeria a more potent effect, as this subclass of Trainers are restricted to once-per-turn usage in exchange.  This arrangement also means every Supporter is more or less competing with every other Supporter for deck space, as you always want the option of using one each turn but too many will clutter your hand with dead or soon-to-be dead cards.  While there are some anti-Trainer and anti-Supporter effects, thankfully none have proven competitive in recent years… at least in Standard and Expanded play (Unlimited is a scary place).  So what about the card’s actual effect?  The wording seems a bit odd; it makes the discard cost seem like an effect and not a cost but I’ve seen no rulings to support this.  The PTCGO doesn’t treat it this way, but the PTCGO sometimes gets cards wrong, especially newer ones.  Why would the discard being an effect and not a cost matter?  If it is an effect, then you could use it to discard cards even if the opponent had no Energy in play; for certain decks, that would be at least somewhat valuable.  For now, though, assume it is intended as a cost and the wording was just to make sure there would be no workarounds to having to discard two cards from hand to remove an Energy from an opponent’s Pokémon.  Actually discarding Energy from your opponent is like so many effects in this game; it can range from pointless to game winning, depending upon what both of you are running.  Pokémon usually need Energy to attack, so stripping it away can leave your opponent unable to retaliate, however, if you don’t time the removal right it can be utterly pointless.  Some decks are very energy efficient, so the Energy you’d discard has already paid for an attack and if your own deck has a strong enough offense, said Energy was going to hit the discard pile anyway because you were going to KO the Pokémon to which it was attached.  If your opponent is running sufficient Energy acceleration (especially paired with Energy recycling), whether you were going to KO the Pokémon to which it was attached or not, discarding it won’t matter.  Between these two extremes, though, are decks that will feel the hurt from having Energy discarded.  Just to further add to the ambiguity, there will be exceptions even to what I just said; the deck that normally can’t spare any Energy surprisingly gets Energy ahead, the deck that has numerous attachments suddenly runs dry, or other unusual occurrences.  When we do start considering the discard cost, it creates a few new opportunities but removes some as well; some decks need to discard things from hand, some decks just can’t afford it, and most (again) fall somewhere in between.  It may be useful to look at the other contemporary Energy discarding Trainers.  Crushing Hammer can discard an Energy attached to any of your opponent’s Pokémon and is only an Item, but it requires a coin flip (and “tails fails”).  Enhanced Hammer is guaranteed and is also an Item but it may only discard Special Energy cards.  Team Flare Grunt requires no coin flip and can discard either a basic Energy or a Special Energy, but is a Supporter and can only target your opponent’s Active.  Team Skull Grunt is a recent addition and can discard two Energy (basic, Special, or one of each) but from your opponent’s hand, not those already attached.  Xerosic, besides being an Expanded-only option, can discard one Pokémon Tool or one Special Energy attached to a Pokémon in play, and can even target your own cards if you wish.  All of these cards have had periods where they’ve been largely ignored, loose staples, or somewhere in between, I expect Plumeria to share a similar fate.  I am not guaranteeing anything; ol’ Otaku doesn’t have the track record for that.  Even with that caveat out of the way I’m not certain she’ll ever hit the high points, either.  I just believe Plumeria is too good to completely fail; she’ll at least be slightly subpar general usage card that serves control/disruption decks quite well and/or maybe becomes killer TecH.  I’m still getting my bearings for the current Standard and Expanded Formats.  With what I currently know or suspect, I think Plumeria will be one of the many niche Supporter cards floating around the Standard metagame.  Expanded looks slightly better for Plumeria; she might become an established TecH Supporter.  Not a staple (at least, not yet), but with VS Seeker to easily recycle a single copy, Battle Compressor to get it into the discard pile ASAP, and Exeggcute (BW: Plasma Freeze 4/116; BW: Plasma Blast 102/101) or more deck specific discard options like Darkrai-GX, I mostly have to explain why it will not be a staple.  Which is what this review hopefully did; even when you’re able to effectively use Plumeria on your end, your opponent still has to have an Energy in play worth the effort of discarding.  Non-Supporter draw also matters for both formats: Octillery (XY: BREAKthrough 33/162), Oranguru, and Shaymin-EX (XY: Roaring Skies 77/108, 106/108) not only serve their usual purposes but might appreciate the discard cost of Plumeria, as it could help them draw more from your deck.  Plumeria is a must-run in the Limited Format; most players won’t have decks that can afford to lose any Energy and your deck probably won’t have enough Supporters for them to really be competing against each other.  You’ll also probably have a lot of filler, though when you are stuck discarding something valuable, you probably won’t have a means of reclaiming it from the discard pile.  Ratings  Standard: 3/5  Expanded: 3.25/5  Limited: 4.5/5  Conclusion  Plumeria is another card that benefits mediocre to adequate general usage spiked by brilliant performances in more specialized decks.  I think.  I hate looking more double-minded than usual, but I just don’t have the data.  I’ve only run Plumeria a few times on the PTCGO, which is not enough to be statistically significant.  I still haven’t seen the actual lists for the decks that performed well at Fort Wayne, either, let alone results from multiple large tournaments.  I think Plumeria has potential largely based on how she is a variation of cards that have performed well, both past and present.  It was enough that she was my 11th place pick in my Top 25; after a roll-off between her and the card that topped the other reviewer’s Top 24 list, she came out on top.