Discussion Zoroark GX vs Judge

[Duo]

Recently I've been thinking about the value of Judge post rotation, and I've sort of tunneled on a conclusion that may or may not be actually correct and figured it would be best to just start a discussion on it.

The line of thought that I reached is the following:

"Judge is a bad card because Zoroark GX exists and will likely be in over 50% of decks that you see in the post rotation meta."

Let me propose to you a simulation:

You have Judge in hand and manage to play down 3 hand size while your opponent is sitting on 6 cards. You play Judge to extend your hand and minimize your opponent's hand. However, your opponent has Zoroark GX set up on the bench.

Come your opponent's turn, they will draw for turn up to 5, and then trade to reach 6 hand size again. They also have the opportunity to play out that hand and then play Cynthia, Guzma, or any other supporter. Meanwhile, you are still stuck at 4 and have no Zoroark GX set up yourself.

Come your turn again, you draw for turn up to 5 cards, and if you do not have a Zoroark GX yourself and have a bad hand from Judging yourself, you are forced to play Cynthia or a Copycat (if your opponent didn't play their cards) to get your momentum back. And this is the turning point where I think Zoroark GX makes Judge a fairly underwhelming supporter.

Unless your opponent is sitting at 7+ cards with a Zoroark GX in play, you aren't actually damaging their hand size. Or rather, if your opponent has Zoroark GX in play, you damage yourself more than your opponent from a sheer card advantage point of view. If you're going to play Judge, you have to do it when your opponent doesn't have a Zoroark GX in play, and optimally when you do and your opponent doesn't to further separate the card advantage.

Some things I'm weighing here:

- Judge can only be used once per turn and as your supporter for turn, locking you out of your options.
+ Judge can be searched with Lele.

+ Zoroark GX allows you to continue drawing cards for many turns without consuming your supporter for turn.
- You are pretty much forced to run a 2-2 Zoroark GX line if you want to get value out of it which consumes a lot of deck space and bench space. A 1-1 line may work, but I'm not a fan of 1-1 lines.

Lastly, this exchange only matters if Zoroark GX is actually THAT common post rotation. I imagine it will be because Octillery, N, and Sycamore are all rotating out, and persistent, ability-based draw power is incredibly powerful in general.

All this being said, I think that Copycat is probably the better supporter to run in most cases. If your opponent has 6+ cards in hand, you can just play down your own hand and then effectively have a 5th or 6th copy of Cynthia. If your opponent plays Steven's Decision and bloats their hand up to 7 or 8, then Copycat becomes even more value. Instead of screwing yourself over in an attempt to hinder your opponent, you try to accelerate your hand size to match your opponent's pace.

I figured I'd just throw this idea out there, because personally I'm trying to squeeze Zoroark GX into every deck I can build.

 

[Wechselbalg]

I'm more or less convinced that other than specific archetypes, most decks post-rotation will not be able to utilise Judge effectively. Zoroark decks can play Judge to distrupt their opponent, for example, as they can just use Trade after bringing themselves down to 4. Other stuff, like Shiftry-GX (which can also be paired with Zoroark) will probably also play it for obvious reasons, but most decks that don't play a heavy Zoroark line are more likely to screw themselves over with Judge than to distrupt their opponent.

 

[Moxinumon]

Judge wont replace that awesome 1 prize left, they have no draw support satisfaction to make their 11 card hand down to 1

 

[Otaku]

I will propose another way of looking at it. This is all Theorymon, based on what we know; a single new reveal can prove it all wrong.

To begin, we must be careful not to assume that the game will continue on as it currently has, merely replacing lost cards with the closest approximations... but also to allow for that possibility. Then, we must remember to examine the situation not just at the card versus card level, but the deck versus deck and general metagame trends levels. So, what do I think happens when we do that?

I believe the game will radically shift, because of the new "Smooth Over" Magcargo. I know I need to resist the hype, but I'm thinking that the absolute worst-case scenario is that at least one major deck will utilize Magcargo, allowing however many slots it can spare for TecH and other counters to turn the deck into not just a Toolbox approach (where you bring out the right cards for the job), but a Swiss Army Knife approach (trades raw power for a more compact/reliable nature). That is low-balling Magcargo; the hype could be real and we'll all be running Magcargo plus something to help draw that top card of our decks!

With this in mind, we might see a shift away from things we take for granted right now. Did you never get any Tapu Lele-GX cards? Some decks might be able to get away with just using Magcargo+ (where the "+" is usually a draw Ability) to replace it. At the very least, lists that used to require four Tapu Lele-GX? Might be better off dropping those two for a 1-1 Magcargo line (preferably finding two more slots to make it a 2-2 line); Tapu Lele-GX is there for your first turn or when you really need to search out a Supporter plus something else.

We also may see a shift away from Supporter-based draw being the lifeblood of your deck engine. A benched Zoroark-GX and a Magcargo means two cards added to hand, one being exactly what you needed. With your manual draw at the beginning off your turn, that's three new cards per turn; probably not enough but a lot better than it used to be. Less severe is that draw doesn't need to be quite as powerful. I doubt it, but Hau might be worth it as "Draw 3 cards." is a lot more potent when the first card is exactly what you wanted, guaranteed. If hand-sizes start to become smaller on average, Lillie has a real shot; right now, the issue is that even first turn there's too much of a chance your hand will have five or more cards you can't get rid of (let alone utilize well) so she'll draw three or less. Steven's Advice (or Decision) at least rivals (if not surpasses) her first turn prospects. We've long had potent non-draw effects like Guzma that want to be our Supporter for the turn...

...so I'm saying we might see decks where four Cynthia as our "big" draw card is enough. That doesn't mean we lack other draw effects, but they'll be Tate and Liza or Professor Kukui or Lillie or another less impressive draw card. Comboing with Smooth Over plus Cynthia being shuffle-then-draw creates a premium for non-shuffle-then-draw effects.

Sorry folks. I tried to keep it short and sweet, but I couldn't. A big thing to do is research the Modified (Standard) Formats from the first few years after WotC lost the license. Definitely not what we have, but I think we'll get a weird blend of what we've recently known and how things worked back then. Edit: Oh, and all of this bodes well for Judge. It won't need to draw big because you'll be including at least one just to mess with your opponent's hand and deck at the same time. Even if your opponent rebuilds with Zoroark-GX, now that the main draw Supporter isn't Professor Sycamore, there's a good chance more decks will be built expecting to discard fewer cards. Yeah, even decks that run Zoroark-GX, since Zoroark-GX decks are still running Professor Sycamore in the present.