Neo Genesis Review - Trainers and Energy

A lot of the Trainers from Neo Genesis were created in the spirit of "nerfed versions of Base Set cards." These changes mostly landed as intended, with only a few duds. But I also feel like some of the worst Trainers of the set were explicitly designed to be janky pack filler, so in that sense they did their job.

Note that since Trainers, Tools, and Stadiums don't inherently have any cost to playing them, they do tend to get better scores than Basic and Evolution cards. Playing a useless Trainer won't cost you a slot on your bench the way a Blaine's Moltres would.

Arcade Game is absolutely awful. The best case scenario is that it's just Bill with way too many extra steps. Except that it's arguably even worse than that since you're always getting two copies of the same card.

The odds of this randomly working are obscenely low and even in situations where you could forcibly set it up by rearranging your deck, you'll almost never want two copies of the same card anyway. What's the second copy for?

Grade: 1/10

Berry is fine, just underwhelming. In most formats there's not a compelling reason to use it over Gold Berry, released in the same exact set, but it could maybe come in handy in point-buy formats, where your access to the best cards is more limited.

There's really no tangible reason to give it a super low score, but it certainly doesn't have much presence in competitive play.

Grade: 4/10

Bill's Teleporter is only worth considering in extremely aggressive decks that want to draw through their deck as quickly as humanly possible. These decks would definitely rather play Bill, Erika, and even Mary before resorting to this card, but it is usable nonetheless.

It has a place in the metagame, but spends a lot of time watching from the sidelines while very similar cards take up all the slots it would go in.

Grade: 7/10

Card-Flip Game would only ever be playable if your deck already plays one of the prize-peeking cards for other reasons. Even then, you'd load up on copies of Bill first and then maybe consider playing this.

The issue is that there are so many reliable ways to draw cards with zero setup required, so asking you to jump through these pointless hoops is really more frustrating than fun.

Grade: 3/10

Double Gust is an amazing card. It does have a slight strain on gameplay, since you have to play around your own card in many ways, but it's very much worth it. It's like Gust of Wind combined with Switch. Worse at each job, but good enough at both.

This is also a format with TONS of powerful free retreaters, so there are plenty of board states where all of your benched 'mons are capable of retreating for free immediately after you play it.

Grade: 10/10

Ecogym's main purpose is to soften the impact of Energy Removal and Super Energy Removal, and it's very good at its job. Decks that hate the Removal cards, such as those reliant on Special Energy, should consider running it.

Even if your opponent isn't on Removals, Stadiums are inherently useful as a way to counter the opponent's Stadiums. Knocking down a powerful Stadium card could turn the whole game around.

Grade: 8/10

Energy Charge is more playable than it looks. While it does require a coin flip, which is miserable, it can get back Special Energy cards. This can be critical to decks running Darkness and Metal 'mons especially, since they have a limited energy supply to work with.

I won't pretend that the coin flip is a super beloved part of the card, though. There have been entire games lost because of bad luck with Energy Charge.

Grade: 6/10

Focus Band is one of the most iconic cards of the Neo block, and is probably the best Tool card in the set. While a 50/50 chance of saving your 'mon from a knock out may sound trivial, it really is a staple card that you're going to want to find space for in many, many decks.

But the most well-known (and reviled) use of this card is to slap it onto a Baby, meaning your opponent needs to beat two coin flips to knock it out. Ugh.

Grade: 10/10

Gold Berry is deceptively strong. It combos nicely with bulky 'mons that take forever to knock out (Steelix), and is just a nice inclusion in decks that have a few open slots to fill.

Another fun way to use it is to put it on a heavily damaged 'mon before it uses Rage or Flail. You get the full damage from the attack, because the healing doesn't activate until the end of your turn.

Grade: 10/10

Mary looks like a worse Bill and that's...basically true. But she works well in control strategies that don't want to deep draw through their deck and still need card selection. She's also a necessary option in the Rocket-On format, where Oak and Bill aren't allowed.

Even in the Base-Neo format, the fact that she gives you selection without reducing the number of cards in your deck absolutely does come up.

Grade: 8/10

Miracle Berry is quite the rare sight. You'll basically only really use it if you're planning on inflicting status on your own 'mons in some way. There are a few 'mons out there like Dark Primeape and Jungle Vileplume that can find some niche use out of it, but even that's grasping at straws.

The biggest issue is that you can usually cure status just by playing a Switch, Double Gust, Warp Point, etc. Or even by simply evolving.

Grade: 4/10

Moo-Moo Milk is too inconsistent to warrant play. Berry and Gold Berry are obviously more reliable cards, but I'd even prefer to play Potion and Super Potion over this.

The only important thing about this card is that it had a really disturbing original artwork in Japan that they opted to change before releasing it in the west, and we should all be thankful for that.

Grade: 2/10

New Pokédex only has one very small change over the original Pokédex, but it's a very clever one. It shuffles your deck before you rearrange the top cards of the deck. This means that if you play one copy and don't see anything you like, the second copy will give you a fresh set of five cards to choose from.

But similar to the original, it's pretty easy to just spam powerful draw effects every turn instead. It does have a clear and useful purpose, though.

Grade: 6/10

PokéGear is a brilliant design that stood the test of time. Variants of this card still see reprints, decades later. By limiting the search range to just the top 7 cards of the deck, this card doesn't fall into the same trap that Computer Search did, where it gave you way too many options all at once.

Instead, you may not get the exact card you were hoping for, but are likely to at least hit something. It was only "good" by the standards of the time, though.

Grade: 7/10

Pokémon March is usually a worse version of Good Manners, since giving your opponent a search is a bit questionable. But there are some decks that care about filling the opponent's bench, so it's not useless.

The obvious problem here is that the TCG is mostly a race to see who can set up faster, so you should really only consider this card in decks that explicitly want to fill the opponent's bench.

Grade: 7/10

Professor Elm, much like Professor Oak before him, is the defining card of his generation. He is clearly meant to be a rebalanced version of Oak, and locking you out of other Trainers for the turn is a clever fix. As many have pointed out before, this feels like the prototype for the Supporter card type.

The general flow of the early game in Rocket-On is a Cleffa backed up by Professor Elm to speed through your set up as fast as possible.

Grade: 10/10

Sprout Tower seems to be a blatant attempt at nerfing cards like Jungle Wigglytuff and Erika's Jigglypuff who dominated early formats. The fact that nothing resists Colorless really did make above-curve Colorless attackers extremely problematic.

It wouldn't be far-fetched to toss in a single copy, depending on the meta you're up against, but it's not something that always pays off.

Grade: 6/10

Super Energy Retrieval was originally a Japanese promo, and got tossed into western releases of Neo Genesis, possibly as a very delayed apology for the existence of Super Energy Removal.

Super Energy Retrieval would have been an awesome option if we'd received it a few years earlier, but we didn't. Instead it came out in the same set that had Ecogym. There are less clunky ways to counter Removal.

Grade: 3/10

Super Rod didn't have its modern effect (which was stolen shamelessly from Nightly Garbage Run). Instead it's just a mediocre way to retrieve a discarded 'mon. At least, that's what it's supposed to do.

The problem is that if you're using a retrieval effect, it's usually because there's one specific card you want to retrieve. You don't really have time to mess around with coin flips in that situation.

Grade: 2/10

Super Scoop Up is a powerful card, but also a painfully frustrating card. On the one hand, it can actually scoop up an entire evolution line and preserve all the energies attached to it. Wow! On the other hand, that coin flip could screw you over when you desperately needed a save.

It does have some very cool applications that the original Scoop Up can't achieve, though, like replaying a Dark Golbat or Dark Crobat. But man that coin flip hurts.

Grade: 7/10

Time Capsule's downsides are debilitating, with it locking you out of other Trainers and restocking your opponent's deck, but the upside is sometimes worth it. Every deck was already running Nightly Garbage Run, so it makes sense to print a supercharged version of it.

Specifically, it can be played as a single copy in hyper-aggressive decks to refill the deck in the mid-game after digging through it.

Grade: 7/10

Recycle Energy was basically an auto-include upon release. Even in formats that don't have Super Energy Removal, the ability to retain an energy after a 'mon goes down really does contribute to your deck's ability to play the long game. You kind of need that resilience in these slow formats.

The only reason not to play it is if your deck is already struggling to cover its types, but at that point your deck probably has a more fundamental problem.

Grade: 9/10

It may feel like the bar for achieving a 10/10 score on a Trainer has gone down a bit since Base Set, but that's only because it actually needed to. Starting with the Rocket-On format, Trainers would never be as powerful as they were in Generation 1 ever again.

This isn't necessarily a bad thing, though. Cards that receive a 9 or a 10 in powerful environments often receive those scores by being just a little bit too good, which can make it hard for the 7's and 8's of the world to keep up.