Call Energy is hands down one of the best cards in the Pokemon Trading Card Game. Often underappreciated, it is one of the sole reasons we can attribute any sort of consistency to many of the major decks out there. I think that every deck NEEDS to play 3 to 4 copies of the card, with extremely few exceptions.
The reason Call Energy is so good is that it allows you to search out Pokemon during the first turn of the game, when you are not allowed to play Trainers or Supporters. Normally you would want to play a card such as Roseanne’s Research to get your basic Pokemon out, but this is not possible if you “win” the coin flip. Getting your Pokemon out this first turn is of utmost importance because it gives you a chance to evolve or Level Up these Pokemon during your next turn.
If you were not able to get these Pokemon out during that first turn, you would have to play a Roseanne’s Research the next turn and then wait a whole other turn to evolve or Level Up. This basically puts you behind a whole turn, which can easily be the determining factor in whether you win or lose.
Its good to use Call Energy in conjunction with Roseanne’s Research, just to have more than one way to get your Pokemon in play. There also seems to be a real need at least at the moment to have these multiple sources of basic Pokemon fetching when you have tech cards such as Uxie LA and Unown G GE which you have to get into play much of the time.
Call Energy is also nice because of the simple fact that it is an Energy. You don’t have to really clear out space to fit it in; just play it as part of your grand total number of Energy.
Another nifty, yet sometimes overlooked feature of Call Energy is that you can use its effect even when you’re Paralyzed, Asleep, or Confused. I know that I have used this fact to my benefit many times in the past.
Again, I can’t stress enough how important it is to play at least 3, if not 4 (if you can fit it), of this Pokemon card in every deck. It helps with consistency, can help prevent turn 1 benching (think Machamp or Kingdra knocking out your lone Pokemon), and it’s an Energy too.
The only time you may not want to use Call Energy would be in something like turn 1 Kingdra or Machamp. In all other cases, especially Stage 2 set up decks, you need it. Even in Kingdra or Machamp I would still heavily consider using it.
I know this may be an obvious point to some people, but I still see people using decks without Call Energy, and I feel they are just making themselves more reliant on luck than they need to be.
Thanks for reading! Let me know your thoughts on the card, and I should have a new contest sometime next week (with Arceus cards as prizes!).
-Adam
