Worth a Look

Lookers-Investigation-Platinum-PL-109Lookers Investigation is often an overlooked Supporter card, however, one belongs in almost every deck.

What it does: You get to look at your opponent’s hand, then decide whether to make him shuffle it into his deck, or shuffle your own hand into the deck. The player that shuffles his hand in can then draw up to five cards.

There are many other supporters that let you draw cards, including:
Cynthia’s Feelings
Professor Oak’s Visit
Professor Oak’s New Theory
Professor Rowan

There are also cards that make your opponent shuffle his hand in like:
Team Galactic Wager

But none other that let you look, and then decide. That’s pretty powerful and has uses in many circumstances, depending on what you and your opponent are playing. Let’s go through a few typical situations.

Return-to-the Hand Attacks

Shuppet Platinum PL 92 Pokemon CardDecks based upon Shuppet, Gliscor/Spiritomb, and Yanmega/Shaymin feature “return-to-the hand” attacks. In these three decks, the main attacker has an attack that does damage, and then either returns the attacker and all cards attached to it to your hand (Shuppet, and Glisctomb) or returns all energy to the hand (Dragonfly Bonsai a.k.a Yanmega/Shaymin). In either case, the opponent’s strategy is to be able to put those cards back in play on his next turn and do the attack again. If, on your turn you play Lookers Investigation and make him shuffle all those cards back into his deck, he will be crippled. He’s been Lookered.

Recovery Decks

Gyarados Stormfront SF 19 Pokemon CardSeveral decks such as Speedrill and Gyarados rely on having a particular few cards in hand in order to get their attacker back after a knockout. In the case of Speedrill, that card is Night Maintenance. For Gyarados, it is another Gyarados or a way of getting one and a Pokémon Rescue. If you play Looker’s Investigation on the turn you Knock Out his attacker and make him shuffle in his hand, he will not be able to recover as planned, and may be in bad shape for several turns. He’s been Lookered.

The Hand is Important Decks

Gengar Stormfront SF 18 Pokemon CardThere are decks in which what is in your hand at a given point in time is important. When playing against Gengar, his Poltergeist attack will do 30 damage for each trainer or supporter you have in your hand. If you have a hand full of trainers, you may be trouble as you will get hit for big damage, but you can play Looker’s Investigation, shuffle your own hand in, and draw only 2 cards, limiting his damage to a maximum of 60. Likewise, the Gengar player may also choose to Looker you in order to determine whether its worth it to Poltergeist or not.

There are many situations in which the knowledge of the opponent’s hand combined with the opportunity to shuffle his or yours back in can be game changing. Lookers wins games. It’s worth a look.

Reader Interactions

24 replies

  1. Collan Baker

    Lookers was definitely one of my biggest fears when I played shuppet, now it's become a great friend to my Gengar. When a shuppet player gets lookered with a full hand of needed cards they can't recover.

  2. pokefart

    1 of my friends wanted to know, if when using sleeves can u use word championship cards. :D

  3. Pokemanz

    You cannot use World's Championships cards, but make sure to talk to your local judge/TO/League Leader

  4. Pokemanz

    You cannot use World's Championships cards, but make sure to talk to your local judge/TO/League Leader

  5. SMGausch

    Looker's should not be too detrimental to Shuppet since you have so many cards to recover with. I usually have most of what I need back my next turn, two turns at the most. What really hurts is power lock and a lookers like with GG or mesprit then I cannot “set up” to get rolling again. But GG should not make it to the point that they can lock so palkia lock and odd other variants of decks with mesprit are your biggest concern and they are not real popular.

  6. Jeremy Wauchek

    even though it's a stage 2 i'd say that the promo noctowl is a better alternative to Looker's… yeah it's stage 1 and yeah it can get power sprayed, but really… it's so much more consistent than having to waste your supporter and with night scope you can do it every turn… oh yeah, it's not a supporter either…

  7. Zachary Slater

    Convinced me! I was looking for card to fill that last vacant spot in my deck! :)

  8. Matthew Riddle

    Looker's Investigation is also useful against SP decks that tend to stack power sprays, and poke turns in the user's hand.

  9. Adam Capriola

    Nice article. Lookers does seem pretty strong at the moment. I think 1 or 2 is going to be enough in most decks, if you decide to play it.

    I like Giratina too, the one with the “Let Loose” Poke-Power…I forget what set it's from. It makes both you and your opponent shuffle your hands into your decks and draw 4 cards when you play it.

  10. Michael Randolph

    “Yeah thats right, I just played it, WHAT? You just been Lookered suckuh” – LMAO

  11. Colin Peterik

    -Giratina's only advantage over Lookers/Wager is that is it more easily searchable and not susceptible to “Telepass”. It's problem is that it takes up bench space and loves to be sprayed.
    -I like Lookers. Like someone said, if you are clutching a “Bright Look” and you know your opponent is holding a Spray, just Lookers and hope they don't draw it again.
    -Lookers beats Gyarados, as mentioned.
    -I seriously like TG Wager more than Lookers, but I hate playing RPS against people. Haha..
    -TG Wager and Lookers are definitely both underplayed cards in the format, but watch out for them.

  12. BB2Si

    Actually that Poke-Power is a choice. Of course you'd probably use it, but just putting it out there that it is still a choice to use it. :)

  13. Brandon Bittinger

    Nice article, but I agree with Adam 1 or 2 is good for a deck!

    On a completely separate note, I like how this article gets like 14 comments and the few in front of it have about 2!

  14. Drew Stillwell

    I firmly support lookers. I remember at my cities in TX I played a Gyarados deck with my Garchomp SV. The game was not going well for me, but I happened to pull an upper energy at the best time so that I could do 120 to the Gyarados (which knocked it out) right after using my 1 lookers in the deck, giving me an opportunity to get caught up and secure the win for that round, just like you mentioned.

    It's also nice for a simple hand refresh when you just need another hand. The beauty of Lookers that you didn't seem to directly mention is its versatility. If you asked me which I prefer – Lookers or Wager – I'd say Lookers because of its ability to be so versatile depending on the game-state.

  15. Joshua Pikka

    Yeah Lookers is a good card, but there a lot of supporters like it so it gets lost in the mix. Plus supporter draws shouldnt be used for drawing, thats what claydols for. So people tend not to play it.

    I like team galactics wager. But the problem is that I do a lot of testing by myself, and its really hard to play rochambeau against yourself.

  16. Mark Stroup

    Great article!
    Lookers certainly is over”looked” in a lot of cases, but the one reason why I like to side with Team Galactic's Wager a BIT more, is only because you're affecting BOTH hands, meaning when you play Lookers, you blow your Supporter drop basically on just forcing your opponent to draw more cards while you get no benefit out of it besides that.
    Once you absolutely KNOW that that Gliscor LvX is in their hand, or you can just figure that Gyarados has some Pokemon Rescues in their hand by now after they did Felicity's three times, it's sometimes better just to make the assumption.
    -Lookers gives them 5 cards
    -You get nothing but the knowledge they had key cards in their hand, which they MAY get back next turn via Bebes, etc.
    -TGW could give them only 3 or 6, and even if you're getting only 3, at least you're still getting something out of it, besides the assumption they had in their hand what they needed.
    Very critically thought article, I enjoyed it!

  17. Mantidactyle

    This use is really interesting, but with 3~4 power spray in the deck, the odds that the opponent draws one of 'em in his new hand are not negligible.

  18. Mantidactyle

    This use is really interesting, but with 3~4 power spray in the deck, the odds that the opponent draws one of 'em in his new hand are not negligible.

  19. wrinkle serum

    I am really joyfulto see that you are putting so much of effortfor cheeringthe readers with valueable posts like this.

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