Balls vs. Supporters

[Luxatos]

I've seen quite a few decks here and around, and there tends to be 1 of 2 methods of searching for Pokemon in them. The so-called "Ball Engine" which has a combination of Quick Balls, Master Balls, Dusk Balls and Great Balls that you can "spam" on a single turn. Then there are other decks that use a more "traditional" approach, using supporters such as Celio's Network, Holon Mentor and Roseanne's Research.

Now... I can sort of see how each approach would be good for a certain kind of deck, and one is not absolutely better than the other in every deck. I would think the Ball Engine would be more geared toward a deck without a large number of different Pokemon (e.g. Kricketune), where it doesn't matter so much which one you get, while in a deck with a "combo" utilizing, say, a couple stage 2 Pokemon, I would think the supporters are better at picking out exactly what you need.

Between these extremes, though, is a large gray area, and I was wondering if anyone could share some discoveries they've made about the value of one engine over the other.

 

[vanderbilt_grad]

I like to mix the balls and supporters. In geneal I have the best results with something like 2 Great Balls & 1 Mentor for basic searching ... and Celio's can find either the evolutions you need or get you a basic if your other search fails.

 

[L00p_H01eS]

^ agreed..

although i use 2 quickball and 3 celios instead of 4celios

 

[~`Flygon`~]

Balls are mostly used for Disruption decks like Mario,Kricturne,Speed Ban SW mostly since your looking and thining the deck quickly so you need to be able to do it in a couple of turns.

Supporters used for more setup decks like Electigon,R-Gon and others that need starters.

Even then every deck needs supporters I feel or they dont function as well.

 

[Darkwalker]

I personally feel the various ball trainers only work well if you have a way of replenishing your hand every turn. Luckily there are plenty of good to average Supporters that can do that. Team Galactics Wager, Copycat, Prof. Rowan, Prof. Oak's Research, even Prof. Birch can work well if you conitunally drop a bunch of ball trainers with each new hand.

 

[Prime]

I LOVE Quick Ball, but it's just so unreliable in non-Solo stage 1 decks.

Great Ball is...Great.

I don't really care for Masterball and Duskball because they are so random, but I have seen people use them successfully before.

Let's explain why we choose to use pokeball cards or supporters, and let's not insinuate anything by our use of our words.

 

[Regis_Neo]

I just wish Quick Ball = Fast Ball, that way at least you're guaranteed a Stage 1 or 2 instead of potentially a cruddy Basic instead.

Great Ball and, to an extent, Dual Ball are both cool.

 

[Prime]

Fast Ball would be incredibly broken. Heck, Quick Ball is incredibly broken. If it wasn't for the problem of getting any pokemon, it would be the next staple (4's) in every deck. Every single deck, no matter what you were playing.