PokeCommunity Card of the Day (August 8th, 2011) - Energy Retrieval BW 92/114

[donavannj]

Welcome to PokeCommunity's Card of the Day series!

Back after a temporary hiatus!

Basically, this is a series of threads where you rate a given card based on several factors, including how useful it is in various decks, which cards it combos well with, and its art. So, basically, you're rating all aspects of the card.

Card of the Day for August 8th, 2011 - Energy Retrieval Black and White Set

Spoiler:

(This pic is just being used to show the art. I can't find the power cable for our scanner here at the moment, otherwise I'd have used a scan)

Card details:

Spoiler:

Name: Energy Retrieval
Set: Black & White
Collector's Number: 92/114
Rarity: Uncommon
Illustrator: Kent Kanetsuna
Trainer Class: Item
Effect: Put 2 Basic Energy cards from your discard pile into your hand.

Some questions to get you started:
What decks is this useful in?
What cards does it combo well with?
What do you think about the card's capabilities?
What do you think about the card art?

Now get your rate on!

 

[Tanaki]

For decks, it's useful in every one. Especially useful in fire and electric-using decks where energies are discarded quite frequently for effects and attacks.

For combos, it's awesome with things like junk arm, where you can drop 2 energies from your hand, get a trainer to reuse and then play energy retrieval to pick them back up.

The card has a lot of good play usage and just generally good synergy with most decks even with 1 copy. A 2 pickup with no coin flipping involved, so a 0% failure rate is great. It replaces fisherman in most decks as an energy pickup since it is more easily usable and recyclable with junk arm, but still susceptible to being locked by Vileplume.

As for the art, it's meh. It's alright, but nothing over-the-top or spectacular about it. Standard mysterious machine moving around energies artwork prevalent on most trainers. Like most BW trainers, it lacks Pokemon on the cards, I kind of miss those days of a pokemon looking out of place or awkward around strange machines and areas.

 

[Apple Juice]

Being a more avid Yu-gi-oh player than anything, I noticed this is somewhat like utility cards in YGO. It's probably going to work well in most decks (meaning theme won't matter as the card isn't theme -based). It seems to be kind of useful, but from what I know 2 isn't too wonderful. I can see it being a topdeck in times of need, though.

Same as Tanaki, I looked up 'Junk Arms' and figured it would pull off nice combos and allow for big plays.

It could be used by lots of people, but mostly the simplicity of cards is the clincher. Meaning, it needs something extra. Sure, 2 energies from the dp. Great. But what if it had a, sort of, secondary effect? That would make the card more competitive-friendly and more usable, in terms of playability.

I like it, imo it reflects the simplicity of the effect. I believe it also reflects on the Item aspect of the card, the claw being a kind of machine, therefore being able to be categorized as an 'item'.

All this coming from someone that dosen't play Pokemon that much. :c

 

[donavannj]

2 is pretty good for an Item. Any better and it'd be on a Supporter or an Ability or PokePower.

I do prefer my energy fetching to be on my Pokemon, myself, but it fits into Reshiboar and Magneboar especially well for metagame decks, especially if either of those two decks uses Ninetales's Roast Reveal PokePower as a draw engine.

Art's just okay. Not terrible.

I give the card a 6.5/10 overall.

 

[Overlord Drakow]

To add on, it works very well with Sage's Training too. You can just discard the energies with Sage's and recover them with Retreival.