Pokémon TCG: Sword and Shield—Brilliant Stars

Ghetsis

T

TuxedoBlack

New Member
A new Supporter, Ghetsis, will soon be released with the upcoming Plasma Freeze set. It states, "Your opponent reveals his or her hand and shuffles all Item cards found there into his or her deck. Then, draw a number of cards equal to the number of Item cards your opponent shuffled into his or her deck." This card when played, especially early game when one's hand might have a large number of Item cards, seems like it could be very disruptive and could possibly impact the game play significantly.

So, my questions are:
  1. Do you expect that Ghetsis will become a deck "staple" (i.e., you intend to play this Supporter in all your decks) for you?
  2. How many do you expect to run in your deck and why (please state your rationale; it would be appreciated)?
  3. Of a "typical" deck's Supporter mix consisting of 3 Bianca/Cheren/Colress, 4 N, and 4 Professor Juniper, how do you expect this mix to change in order to include Ghetsis and why (please state your rationale; it would be appreciated)?
My playtesting with Plasma Freeze card proxies will start this weekend; so, I will have some additional feedback/insight about Ghetsis later and I will post my initial observations then.

Following are some thoughts I have about this new Supporter. So, I will address my own questions first to get the feedback/comments started:

  1. Yes. The ability to disrupt my opponent's hand by removing his/her Items from hand and possibly drawing 3+ cards as a result is just too good not to play, IMHO. Needless to say, this card seems most effective early-mid game (or after my opponent has played a Professor Juniper (for example)). Another side benefit, not to be under-valued, is that I also get a chance to see my opponent's current hand which could also be very beneficial at that time in the game. On the other hand, especially during mid-late game, playing this Supporters may yield no cards drawn.
  2. I plan to initially playtest with 4 Ghetsis in my deck in order to maximize my chances of having 1 turn 1 or 2.
  3. I currently have 4 competitive decks that I play: LMT/LMTG (aka Big Basics without/with Garbodor), Blastoise-Keldeo EX-Black Kyurem, Darkrai EX-Sableye, and Rayquaza EX-Eels. The Supporter mix is typically 3-4 Bianca (1 per Ultra Ball in the deck), 4 N, and 3-4 Professor Juniper. I do not play Bicycle in any of these decks; so, I have no other card draw support other than the aforementioned Supporters listed.

    Given the disruptive nature of Ghetsis, my first thought was to replace all my Ns for Ghetsis. However, mid-to-late game, Ghetsis appears to be less effective; but playing a well-timed N can be game-changing.

    When your hand is depleted (e.g., your opponent just Nd you since you're ahead in prizes :)), drawing a Professor Juniper at that time is simply great. So, I think these need to stay at the current count in my decks.

    That leaves the Bianca/Cheren/Colress group to tinker with. I plan to replace all of these Supporters with Ghetsis for initial playtesting purposes until I find/derive a proper Supporter mix for each of my decks.

Your thoughts/comments? Thanks.
 
1. No. It's a good card, but you can't count on it to draw you cards, which is the main purpose of supporters. I think this will be more of a rogue card for disruption decks.
2. I might play one just to see how it works. If it works well, I'll add more, but if it doesn't, I'll just stick with my more reliable supporters (N and Juniper)
3. No, if any supporter will be added it will be shadow triad (reusing lasers alone is a reason to run that). A few months ago, I would have thought differently, but from what I hear, it's not played much in Japan.
 
Yeah juniper and n need to stay they are way too good. The bianca vs cheren argument is always a tough one, but I think at the end of the day ghetsis will mainly be used in disruption decks or as a card to mess with your opponent in a regular competitive deck. Playing 1-2 of them to see ypur opponents hand and foiling their plan mid game is most likely going to be this cards strength. On the other hand, if someone was playing a disconnect lock deck, this card is a staple
 
I feel like it is just too easy to play around Ghetsis. In almost every competitive deck, you can fairly easily dump most if not all Items from your hand every turn. In many cases, this is something you even want to do (for example, in Darkrai, I often play out most Items in my turn, leaving maybe 1 or 2 in my hand at the end of my turn). A T1 Ghetsis isn't even that bad, either. If I have a Juniper in hand, you just saved me resources. If I have a Bianca in hand, you just maximized my draw potential.

The ONLY time I see Ghetsis being powerful is against Stage 2 decks that need their Rare Candies, and even then it's a bit sketchy.
 
Not really sure about Ghetsis. True, its really similar to the old favourite Lass, and Supporter status doesn't matter in that regard because who the heck would play more than 1 Lass in one turn anyway? And extra drawpower is always good.

However, its a Supporter that can whiff. And when a Supporter whiffs, you're sacrificing your draw for the turn. Juniper, Bianca, Cheren, N, Colress...players play Supporters almost every turn, and ignoring the deck space problems, playing a Supporter that can whiff, and the whiffing is under your opponent's control just doesn't scream "staple" to me. The primary deck that runs a crapload of items are Sableye/Darkrai/Lasers or Hammers or both, and because of Junk Hunt and Bicycle, they generally like to play all their Items within a turn or 2 of getting them in their hand. You will definitely not get a second Ghetsis on them, because they will take precautions after that.

Among the major decks, lets check out what Ghetsis shuffles in(Catchers are being ignored here because every deck runs them anyway):

Eels - Level Balls? Ultra Balls? They generally use Emolga, so they'll still be pulling their Basics out. You're slowing down their Evolution set up, but since the Items are going back into the deck, a Juniper/Cheren/Bianca has a very good chance of pulling the relevant cards out.

Blastoise/Keldeo EX/Black Kyurem EX - Energy Retrievals and Balls are the only things you'll really be shuffling here, and if they attack with Keldeo EX you need to KO it to actually make the loss of Energy Retrievals matter.

Garbodor - You shuffle tools in? I guess in this case it is worth it, but you could just Tool Scrapper the tools away when they land on the field instead of using an unreliable draw Supporter.

Big Basics - Balls and Retrievals again(ok, and Lasers). The whole point of this deck is to play it simple and hard, so something as "complicated" as Ghetsis isn't going to be very effective.

Darkrai variants - They want the Items in the discard for Sableye, and sure as hell will not be letting them gather dust in their hand.

PlasmaKlang - I can't comment on this particular deck because I haven't seen it work as much, but I'm pretty sure it doesn't use a lot of Items.

Sure, T1/T2 it can give you great draw(4 copies give you this easily), but beyond that point, it really just sits in your hand doing nothing, kind of like when players run 4 SF Sableye, and after playing 1 down, didn't really have anything to do with the others. Its going to clog up your Biancas(you'll probably need to cut them out if you use Ghetsis), and will eventually just get Junipered away. Beyond T2, it just doesn't draw enough to justify itself, because Items are generally meant to be played on the turn you get them.

I'm not really convinced that it will make that big a splash on the metagame, but we'll have to wait for tournaments to give the final verdict.
 
looking at my decklists, they're usually around 1/3 items. That means that, if used on turn one, a Ghetsis should net you around 2 cards on average (unless I'm a completely insane and abnormal deckbuilder). That doesn't sound too great. Using Ghetsis is also a pretty big risk, because you never know how any cards your opponent has, unless they just junk hunted or something. So, its a risk, usually gets you low draw power at best, and offers weak disruption. Not to say that Ghetsis can't be effective, but I don't think It'll make nearly as big a splash as people are hyping it to be.

Although it would be fun with Stoutland :).
 
Destiny Warrior said:
Darkrai variants - They want the Items in the discard for Sableye, and sure as hell will not be letting them gather dust in their hand.
Click to expand...

What better time to use Ghetsis than right after your opponent has just used junk hunt for 2 items? You shuffle them back in and you guarantee you'll at least get 2 cards out of it.
 
^ very true but what i have found is that sometimes you help them because since the always have a juniper or somethin in hand you just shuffled there whatever trainers back in instead of discarding them instead so this card i feel like is medicore at best.
 
It views your opponents hand and shuffles in most of the staple items like Hypnotoxic, Catchers, Balls, Bicycles, Random Receivers, Switchs, Computer Search, Dowsing Machine, Dark Patch, Colress Machines its more items in decks than there are pokemon, the fact that when they load up on colress or juniper, you play it, you decrease their hands most times you draw it since you would only play it when their hands exceeds 5 cards.

The card is good, its like N, you have to know when to play it.
 
1. Do you expect that Ghetsis will become a deck "staple" (i.e., you intend to play this Supporter in all your decks) for you?
2. How many do you expect to run in your deck and why (please state your rationale; it would be appreciated)?
3, Of a "typical" deck's Supporter mix consisting of 3 Bianca/Cheren/Colress, 4 N, and 4 Professor Juniper, how do you expect this mix to change in order to include Ghetsis and why (please state your rationale; it would be appreciated)?
Click to expand...

1. No, I do not expect Ghetsis to be a staple. However, I do expect it used as another option.

2. I personally think people would play 1 or 2 because sometimes, you hit big, other times, you hit rock bottom. The only 100% guarantee off of it is a peak at your opponent's hand to get a peek at your opponent's hand to see what they have next.

3. Personally, out of that, taking out Ns for 1 or 2 Ghetsis is the best you can do because N and Ghetsis have something in common, both must be used wisely.
 
The only problem I see if you take out N(s) is that N is a card that wins games while ghetsis does not. Just keep that in mind.
 
Raise your hand if you'd like a good possibility of your supporter for your turn reading:
"Look at your opponent's hand. See no items, cry, and no draw for you, sucker"

Yeah, card is over-hyped.
 
Since we're just speculating, I think it is one of those potential game-changing cards. And as someone once said to me, you only need to change the game once.

In the format before Catcher, everyone dabbled with Pokemon Reversal or Poke Blower+, to gust them up from the Bench. That was considered game changing, where the opponent couldn't necessarily recover from it. The same could be true for Ghetsis. If I empty your hand of Items and you are in topdeck mode for another turn or two, that could give me the upper hand. Or maybe indeed I set you up for your Juniper....well, that means you lost the opportunity to play some of those Items (Catcher? Ultra Ball?) before Junipering, thus slowing down your set up.

I would expect to draw 1-3 cards from a Ghetsis:
3 cards makes it better than Cheren.
2 cards is okay, because I disrupted you at the same time.
1 card I better hope I top deck something good, and at least I got to look at your hand.
0 cards will be a bummer.

I'm starting my experiments by replacing any instances of Colress with Ghetsis.
 
losjackal said:
Since we're just speculating, I think it is one of those potential game-changing cards. And as someone once said to me, you only need to change the game once.

In the format before Catcher, everyone dabbled with Pokemon Reversal or Poke Blower+, to gust them up from the Bench. That was considered game changing, where the opponent couldn't necessarily recover from it. The same could be true for Ghetsis. If I empty your hand of Items and you are in topdeck mode for another turn or two, that could give me the upper hand. Or maybe indeed I set you up for your Juniper....well, that means you lost the opportunity to play some of those Items (Catcher? Ultra Ball?) before Junipering, thus slowing down your set up.

I would expect to draw 1-3 cards from a Ghetsis:
3 cards makes it better than Cheren.
2 cards is okay, because I disrupted you at the same time.
1 card I better hope I top deck something good, and at least I got to look at your hand.
0 cards will be a bummer.

I'm starting my experiments by replacing any instances of Colress with Ghetsis.
Click to expand...

By the way, I played some games at J's shop yesterday against a PlasmaBox deck. If this deck takes off as the hype suggests, you may want to keep those Colress in your deck, but substitute your Bianaca and/or Cheren for Ghetsis instead.
 
TuxedoBlack said:
So, my questions are:
  1. Do you expect that Ghetsis will become a deck "staple" (i.e., you intend to play this Supporter in all your decks) for you?
  2. How many do you expect to run in your deck and why (please state your rationale; it would be appreciated)?
  3. Of a "typical" deck's Supporter mix consisting of 3 Bianca/Cheren/Colress, 4 N, and 4 Professor Juniper, how do you expect this mix to change in order to include Ghetsis and why (please state your rationale; it would be appreciated)?
Click to expand...
  1. At best one Ghetsis will become a staple; I believe this because it can be devastating but carries a legitimate risk of doing next to nothing. Unlike say Hooligans - Jim & Cas which always has 50/50 potential of success/failure, you can improve your odds through clever play, or if fortunate guarantee it (as against Junk Hunt). That is the best case; worst case it just won't be worth the space at all. At the same time, with either outcome there may be some decks that can capitalize upon it much better, and thus would regularly run it in multiples.
  2. I hope to begin testing soon with a single copy; just running one will force my opponent to waste time and effort trying to anticipate whether it is safer to "burn" Items to avoid them being shuffled away by Ghetsis and providing me draw power or better to settle for minimal returns so that Ghetsis whiffs.
  3. I haven't been able to test much post BW: Plasma Storm, so maybe my Supporter engine is just too out of whack, but my default while building was something like 3 Colress/N/Professor Juniper/Skyla plus one Bicycle and one Random Receiver. Few decks actually remained that way; usually Colress was dropped to one (two if I felt daring) while N and Professor Juniper went up to four per deck. With that out of the way, I'll probably just be running something 1 Colress, 4 N, 4 Professor Juniper, 2-3 Skyla, and 1-3 Random Receiver, and 0-1 Bicycle; the pseudo-Supporters are pretty useful.
 
I think that if Ghetsis could shuffle Supporters as well as Items it would be a definite staple since that would cripple your opponent whenever you played it. Even if you could choose which Items to shuffle back in, it would be relatively good (Your hand is three Catchers and a Juniper? No, I don't want to shuffle anything in). As it is, though, I just don't see Ghetsis really taking off unless someone can design a deck that can really abuse the card.
 
espeon200 said:
I think that if Ghetsis could shuffle Supporters as well as Items it would be a definite staple since that would cripple your opponent whenever you played it. Even if you could choose which Items to shuffle back in, it would be relatively good (Your hand is three Catchers and a Juniper? No, I don't want to shuffle anything in). As it is, though, I just don't see Ghetsis really taking off unless someone can design a deck that can really abuse the card.
Click to expand...

If Crushing Hammer didn't require a coin flip, it would likely be a maxed out staple, or at least worth two or three slots in every deck. :wink:

Ghetsis is that odd mix of draw power and hand disruption. The other two Supporters that do this are basically at opposite ends of the spectrum for use: N is nearly a staple, while Hugh is seldom if ever used in well-made, competitive efforts. If Ghetsis hit all Trainers or Trainers and Supporters etc. it would likely be too powerful.

I personally would have preferred we had gotten Lass back as a Supporter; why is she not too powerful? You don't get to draw any cards from her affect and you hit yourself. I doubt it would become any sort of staple in a deck with added draw capacity, it would be amazing. To be fair, Ghetsis fairs better in those as well.
 
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