Capturing Aroma · Silver Tempest (SIT) #153

7 comments

1. 

   TehRazorBack

   (2 years ago)

   Capturing Aroma, in my opinion, is strictly better than Poke Ball. If you have 2 minutes, I’d like to make my case :)

   The first thing to note is Capturing Aroma still covers all available Pokemon selections between its “Basic” and “Evolution” terms; there’s no other limiting factors like “don’t have a Rule Box”, etc. Even though Poke Ball tutors any Pokemon and Capturing Aroma tutors either Basic *or* Evolution, from a user standpoint both cards are a 50% chance to get the Pokemon you want due to the coin flip. Capturing Aroma might *feel* worse if you flip, get Basic Pokemon, and despair because the your best Pokemon choice to get was an Evolution card. In this situation you might curse that the card is not a Poke Ball, which would have been able to get *any* Pokemon. But what you’d be missing is that, because you “failed to get what you needed” in this situation, had it have been a Poke Ball the equivalent to your 50% chance failed situation would have been a tails on the Poke Ball coin flip, getting you nothing instead.

   This leads to the main difference as far as I see it; even if you don’t get the card that you want with Capturing Aroma, you still get a Pokemon card. This can be useful if you also have something like a Pokemon Communication in hand and no other Pokemon, or something that requires you to discard a card to get something else, or even just another alright-but-not-quite-what-you-wanted option in either Basic or Evolution. But “Hah”, I hear you say, “It’s not *strictly* better because sometimes you don’t want a Pokemon to your hand, and Capturing Aroma doesn’t have that option”. Even in the situation where Poke Ball getting you nothing to hand is better (due to an effect or card that cares about hand sizes), with Capturing Aroma you can still choose to fail-to-find a Pokemon of the type you flipped. This is always an option for any tutoring card. But the fact that Capturing Aroma can usually always get you something leads to less “feels bad” situations, and gives the card a much better floor (or “worst case scenario”) overall than Poke Ball.

   Am I wrong in my assessment? What are everyone else’s thoughts?

   Reply
   • 

     TwylisTehRazorBack

     (2 years ago)

     I’m inclined to agree, with the obvious exception of basic-only decks in which the cards are functionally equal, and fringe cases when decks run atypical stages that Capturing Aroma wouldn’t cover like V-union cards.

     Pokeball is pretty terrible to begin with though, so it’s kind of a moot point. I think a more interesting argument might be how Capturing Aroma compares to other mediocre-but-still-historically-used balls like Great Ball, Timer Ball, and Dual Ball. Great Ball’s success rate is heavily dependent on the decklist, and Timer and Dual will fail just as often as they double their results. Since Capturing Aroma will always yield *something*, deck contents permitting, I’d put it above all of those aside from maybe Dual Ball. Maybe even better than Pokemon Communication in decks that run very low pokemon counts.

     Still, in a format with Ultra Ball, Quick Ball, *and* Evolution Incense, Capturing Aroma will likely never see play.

     Reply
     • 

       TehRazorBackTwylis

       (2 years ago)

       Hey Twylis. Oh yeah, I agree that Poke Ball is not a great card to begin with. I’m approaching this from a Pokemon Cube standpoint, as it’s the main way I play these days. When trying to create a 570 card singleton Cube, you eventually run out of decent Pokemon tutor and have to throw a Poke Ball in the cube XD It’s been in there for a while, and has remained there because 1) it’s an iconic card, and 2) nothing has been *STRICTLY* better than it so far (I don’t like having cards that are strictly worse versions of other cards in the cube, like Poke Kid and Celio’s Network). And there are cards I would say are a *lot* better; Luxury Ball from Stormfront, in a singleton format, is a superb tutor (chef’s kiss). In terms of comparing different cards, it’s easy to say overall some are better than others, but there’s rarely something that’s strictly better.

       Your point about V-Union cards is something I have not considered though. Are LEVEL UP and BREAK Pokemon equally not counted as Evolution cards? If that’s the case, than it will fall short of being “strictly better” by quite a bit, even if just in my cube (I’m not running V-Union cards).

       Reply
       • 

         TwylisTehRazorBack

         (2 years ago)

         BREAK pokemon are considered Evolutions — broadly, if a card says “evolves from” somewhere on it, it’s an Evolution card. Lv. X pokemon are a category unto themselves though, hence their “put onto” wording, and they’re consequently also not blocked by anti-Evolution effects.

         Reply
2. 

   TehRazorBack

   (2 years ago)

   You’re doing a good job of convincing me that it’s not actually strictly better than Poke Ball, but is instead strictly worse than Luxury Ball XD the Luxury Ball discard pile clause isn’t really relevant in singleton.

   You’ve convinced me it’s not *strictly* better. It is better though, but now I’m unsure whether to replace Poke Ball or another card.

   Good chat though, this was definately worth. Thanks for hashing this out with me

   Reply
   • 

     IgnisTehRazorBack

     (2 years ago)

     Another (very rare) point why Poké Ball might be better (that has nothing to do with exceptions like V-Union): if you don’t get what you want with the Poké Ball, nothing happens. With the Aroma, you have to shuffle the deck (which you might not want in very specific cases).

     Reply
     • 

       TehRazorBackIgnis

       (2 years ago)

       Another excellent point I hadn’t considered. The cube is running Oracle and Magcargo

       Reply