Lookers 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
Decks 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
Several 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 Pokemon 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
There 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.
