Neo Discovery Review - Trainer Cards

The Trainer Cards from Neo Discovery didn't generate entire new decks, new engines, or new staples, but there are a few cards in here that work in certain decks.

I'm personally fine with that, since Neo Genesis filled the format with tons of new staples overnight. Players weren't even done collecting all of the awesome Trainer Cards from Neo Genesis when this set rolled out, so it's fine for it to be relatively tame.

Energy Ark is just worse Energy Search. You can only attach one Energy Card per turn in most cases, so that 25% chance of getting 2 energies isn't actually going to benefit you much, but the 25% chance of the card not doing anything will absolutely hurt you.

Stick to Energy Search. Even if Energy Search wasn't an option, I'd rather just play another Basic Energy Card in my deck before using this.

Grade: 2/10

Fossil Egg may not look good due to the coin flip, but being able to cheat a fossil 'mon directly into play is pretty awesome. The main use of the card is to set up Aerodactyl's Prehistoric Power as early as the first turn.

If you can make it happen, that will lock down most opposing decks on the spot. Of course, decks revolving around Basics and Babies might not care about your clever floodgate, but it's still a pretty powerful card.

Grade: 7/10

Hyper Devolution Spray lets you reuse the effects of Evolution cards immediately. The most obvious application is to retrieve Dark Crobat in order to do another 20 damage immediately, but you can also combo this with any once per turn effect in order to reuse it.

While it's obviously not going to be a staple in every single deck, it's a mandatory inclusion in some very powerful decks, and a surprisingly versatile card.

Grade: 9/10

Ruin Wall is obviously meant to be the main consistency booster for Unown decks, but most formats that include this card also include the gym sets. This means you have Good Manners, which can search for any Basic with effectively no downside.

That doesn't make this a bad card, though. It's just that Basics aren't hard to search for in the formats it exists in.

Grade: 7/10

One thing I find interesting is that the Trainers were very clearly designed to synergize with the cards introduced in the set itself. Ruin Wall and Fossil Egg obviously go in Unown and fossil decks, while Hyper Devolution Spray was probably meant to let branched evolutions switch between their options at will.

The only complete miss was Energy Ark, but 3 out of 4 ain't bad.