COTD – 22nd August 2011 – Pokemon Catcher

Today’s Card of the Day hasn’t officially been released yet, but it’s going to play a big part in future tournaments so I think it’s worth a look.

Pokemon Catcher is a card from our next released set, Emerging Powers. It comes in the form of a trainer card and simply allows you to switch your opponent’s active Pokemon with one of their bench. This is immediately going to remind players of Gust of Wind all the way back from Base Set, or more recent players of the game may remember Luxray GL Lv.X’s Poke Power, Bright Look, which is essentially the same but in a trainer form.At the moment, Pokemon Reversal has been playing a huge part in our format and does the same as Pokemon Catcher, but involving a flip. With many players running this very card, the element of luck played a huge part in the turn out of certain games, especially when player’s of a very high skill level were involved. What I believe Pokemon Catcher does, is eliminate this aspect of luck and ultimately make the game more focused on skill.

Many people are believing that this very card will ruin the current game, but I believe that it will be quite the opposite. Many strategies will change and players will always have to be wary of any of their Pokemon being dragged up at any time, so I feel skill will become a bigger part of playing games.

Overall, there’s not a lot to say about this card apart from it’s going to change the way people think during a game and will replace every Pokemon Reversal at the moment. What’s more interesting is that you can reuse Catcher with Junk Arm, something which didn’t happen back in the Base Set days. Only time will tell how much of an impact this card will have on deckbuilding.

I’m going to give Pokemon Catcher and extremely high 9.5/10. I can’t possibly give this a perfect 10 simply because Vileplume will render it useless, so it isn’t unbeatable. A lot’s going to change with this card so let’s hope we are all prepared as best we can.

Artwork: With trainer cards, there isn’t always a lot that can be done, but I feel they could have done better with this one. If you look at the Base Set Gust of Wind, we have ourselves a really humorous image of Weedle being sucked through some kind of strong wind, looking afraid to become KO’d shortly. This card however, features a strange looking spider web gun that isn’t really doing much in the image. The background isn’t too exciting either, just a straight block of red.

I really feel that they could have done something more with this and possibly made it slightly funny, maybe like the Weedle from Base Set, but more up to date. With this in mind, I’m going to give it a small 3/10. Disappointing art for a card we’re going to see a lot of!

Thanks for reading today’s COTD.