Top 10 Most Overrated Cards in GLC
There’s plenty of cards in GLC that are deemed “Tier 1” or otherwise known as overpowered cards that should be played in every GLC list of a certain type. Cards like the Shady Dealings Inteleon line and the Brilliant Stars Torterra line come to mind as staple cards in their respective types. However, there are plenty of other cards that are overrated as “staples” and should not be mandatory in every deck, and in many cases shouldn’t be played nearly as much as they are. There are some cards on this list that are seen as so powerful as to be considered for a ban by many players. I have these cards on the list because I think they are overrated and not as powerful as they sound, and definitely not worthy of a ban.
Take this as an opinion article designed to promote discussion and more creativity in deck building besides just accepting certain cards as staples or mandatory. Most of the cards on the list are good cards *cough* Timer Ball *cough* but are otherwise just overplayed.
Honorable Mentions
Dragapult
Dragapult is absolutely insane when it flips heads several times in a row. But when it does flip tails or a Hex Maniac is used to ignore it, its strength drops a ton. 120 damage isn’t a lot if you only get to do it once for a Stage 2. The card is an incredible card, but the idea that it has to be in almost every psychic deck isn’t true. There’s plenty of viable psychic decks that don’t play Dragapult, so if you want to build a deck that is lower to the ground, attacks faster, and doesn’t want to set up both Gallade and Dragapult, go for it.
10. Boss’s Orders/Lysandre
One can’t put too much stock into statistics that don’t account for player skill and other variables, but an interesting difference in win rate can be seen between Guzma and Boss’s Orders after thousands of online tournament games. In the cardboardwarriors.net analytics, Guzma has a win rate of 51.58% and Boss's Orders has a win rate of 48.98% after 5000+ games of data for each card. Some decks do want to play both, but not every deck needs to. Especially if you have ways of recycling Guzma with Pal Pad and Lusamine, you often only need one of the two gust supporters. Try cutting Boss for a consistency card such as Trainers’ Mail or Pokegear 3.0 that can potentially find Guzma in a pinch.
Boss’s Orders is best in decks that can play off their board state well with low maintenance attackers like Hoopa and Zapdos. It’s often best to remove this card in decks that need to play a draw supporter every turn to find all of the combo pieces required to attack.
9. Kricketune
Kricketune is good, but easy to play around. If you deal 190 damage to Torterra one turn, then gust the Kricketune another turn, you can take a multi prize turn. Kricketune doesn’t increase its own HP, so it’s very easy to knock out. When Parallel City or Avery is played, Kricketune is usually one of the first Pokemon discarded, as the other Grass support Pokemon are more important. Hex Maniac can also ignore this card to take crucial knockouts. With Iono in the format resulting in more hand disruption, the Bunch Hunch Kricketot is also a little less useful. Just because this card is on the overrated cards list doesn’t mean that you need to remove it from your Grass decks, but if you need deck space this card is a potential cut.
8. Special Wave Wailord
The Jumbo Sized Wailord is huge! Effectively 230 HP, hitting for 240 damage! The problem is that there are lots of ways to easily respond with a knockout on this Wailord using Copycat Mimikyu, Foul Play Zoroark, or Watch and Learn Sudowoodo to copy Wailord’s attack to OHKO it. Those Pokemon can attach a special energy and deal 240 damage right back to the Wailord. However, if these Pokemon were to copy Hydro Pump they would deal a measly 10 damage. Since Psychic and Dark are very common and some of Water’s hardest matchups, I would suggest playing the Hydro Pump Wailord more often.
The Special Wave Wailord is still an absolutely amazing card, and it’s definitely still worth playing in dedicated decks with similar cards like Cetitan. However, I don’t think classic Deluge Water builds should change lots of cards to fit in extra special energy to use a Wailord that’s easier to knock out for several of the more popular decks.
7. Peonia
Peonia is occasionally treated like a draw card or search card, which is not true. This card decreases your hand size. Essentially this card says “Draw 3 cards, put 3 back”. There is already a supporter that does a similar effect, Caitlin, which is a terrible card and sees no play whatsoever. Peonia isn’t even great at finding prized combo pieces, as it has a half chance of missing finding that one card out of six. It can be alright if you have a large hand size before using Peonia, but to do that you would need to have several other useless cards in hand to put back. Ideally your deck is filled with good cards that you want to play each turn, if you often have hands full of useless cards that’s a whole different problem.
Where this card does shine is in decks with plenty of draw support such as Water, Colorless, and Revavroom Metal, because the decrease in hand size actually helps you draw more cards. Otherwise, the only places this card should see play over Gladion or Town Map are in meme Dream Ball decks, Control Decks, and Wombo Combo decks that need as much prize modifying as possible to find several specific pieces every game without taking prizes. In those cases, play it alongside Gladion too as that is the better prize finding card.
6. Timer Ball
I’m a Timer Ball hater. The problem with this card is that you have a 25% chance to get nothing. Usually when playing Timer Ball, you only need one evolution. When you flip a double heads, you often don’t need the second evolution and fail the search. But flipping a double tails can really set back your board state and can even be game losing. On average, this card turns out fine, but the problem is that it’s unreliable and you can’t depend on it. Evosoda is a much better option because you can depend on it and know exactly what you’re getting.
The only thing that keeps this card from being higher on the list is Ball Guy, a very strong setup card. Evosoda and other alternatives like Capturing Aroma can’t be found off of Ball Guy like Timer Ball can, so some decks that really need that extra ball or two for Ball Guy consistency could maybe consider Timer Ball. Even then, it’s not something that can be relied upon to use with Ball Guy. My advice is that when you can avoid it don’t play Timer Ball, unless you’re prepared for disappointment.
5. Gloria/Brigette
In certain decks, these are very necessary for setting up large boards full of Pokemon. Grass, Water, and Fire come to mind. However, in decks that want to get an early attack, a card such as Brigette or Gloria doesn’t draw you any cards and can open the door for your opponent to capitalize on your slower time getting out of the gates attacking. When playing decks like Colorless with Bibarel, Brigette and Gloria clog the hand, and are not the card you’d like to see in your hand after your opponent plays an N to 1. Some Water decks can opt to not play Brigette and Gloria, instead using Pokemon such as Hisuian Basculin for consistency. This saves deck space and allows Octillery to draw more cards.
Almost any time past turn 1 and 2 you’d rather not see these cards. Having too many setup supporters takes up valuable deck space and decreases the consistency of the deck late game. I’d highly suggest not playing these cards in decks such as Dark, Dragon, and Fighting. Perhaps try removing one or both of them in Archeops Colorless (Guzhala for research lab is often the desired play T1), Metal, Psychic, and Lightning for more flexible setup supporters and item-based search.
Another alternative that has a lot of potential is Battle VIP Pass. You can’t play 4 of them like you can in standard, but you can play cards to search out the single copy. Supporters like Arven, Green’s Exploration, Skyla, Korrina, Volkner, and Irida can search for the Battle VIP Pass on the first turn of the game. You can play Battle VIP Pass turn one going first, and it’s not much less a dead card late game than a Brigette or Gloria. The supporters that you can use to find VIP Pass are much more versatile mid-late game for searching for other combo pieces like recovery cards and Field Blower.
4. Stand In Zoroark
In my opinion, Stand In Zoroark takes the place of a better Zoroark, the Foul Play Zoroark. Foul Play can easily one shot most of the biggest attackers in the format, such as Copperajah, SIT Wailord, and Zamazenta. You’d be surprised at how many giant attackers this guy can take down with a single energy attachment, such as Druddigon, Necrozma, Steelix, and Snorlax. Even crazier, this guy can copy Amazing Raikou’s attack. Unlike Copycat Mimikyu’s attack, Foul Play works even if they used a different attack the previous turn so you can even play Guzma to gust the Raikou early and use Amazing Shot before Raikou attacks. Foul Play is a much better attack into the current BDIF, Colorless, it can oneshot pretty much any attacker in that deck regardless of this opponent’s bench size.
Mind Jack is a good attack, but it’s easy to play around. Mind Jack is best into decks such as Water and Grass that fill their board. However, this is also where another popular Dark attacker, Weavile, shines. Foul Play is good against pretty much all decks that Weavile is bad against, and vice versa. Playing Mind Jack can lead to having several useless evolution lines into a few matchups. Stand In is a good ability, but there are lots of other ways in Dark to switch. In my experience playing a lot of Dark, Hoopa doesn’t get stuck often enough to warrant sacrificing the versatility of Foul Play.
3. Starmie EVO
The Starmie from the set Evolutions is seen as a staple that is very necessary in water decks to recover energy. My counterpoint to this is that Staryu or Starmie are almost always the first discards when a Parallel City or Avery is played. So Starmie is not a top priority to get into play and either comes into play late or not at all. If it does come into play, it often uses its ability only a couple times. It adds another ability into play that can be shut off by Hex Maniac or Garbodor, and another ability that Evil Admonition Weavile can capitalize on for extra damage to OHKO a Wailord.
Also, playing this Starmie means that you can’t play the other strong Starmie from Fusion Strike that can deal a ton of damage all across your opponent’s board. Starmie’s place can easily be filled by a Superior Energy Retrieval and something like a Pal Pad to reuse Nessa, and each of these has the bonus of not being something that can be discarded by Parallel City. Starmie EVO is a good card, but definitely overrated.
2. Cynthia (and other shuffle draw supporters such as Colress)
Shuffle draw has several pros and cons. One of the pros is that it conserves resources. For example if you have evolutions in hand you can't play or important recovery cards, shuffle draw puts these back into the deck to potentially find again later. However, this isn't always a good thing.
One of the cons is that you can occasionally draw into some of the same cards all over again, effectively reducing the number of playable cards drawn to 4 or 5. Especially in the case of decks that like to build large hands such as Salazzle in Fire, Cynthia can shuffle in a giant hand and get a much smaller hand that contains many of the same cards.
Especially in decks such as Water, Metal, and Colorless with Octillery, Revavroom, and Bibarel, shuffle draw doesn’t usually cut it. You want to use those draw abilities to dig through your deck, and if cards like Cynthia keep shuffling dead cards such as Gloria and Brigette back into the deck you will continue to see these cards clog your hands and draw you fewer cards. Cynthia is still a great card and a staple in decks such as Fighting, but when you have a draw support Pokemon shuffle draw cards are less necessary and direct search cards like Arven and Peony are more useful.
1. Galarian Weezing and Wobbuffet
Wobbuffet and Galarian Weezing are not as overpowered as they seem. Galarian Weezing is not very consistent in classic versions of Dark and the poison is very easy to retreat around or evolve out of. Wobbuffet is consistent as a basic but has a pretty underwhelming attack. These cards are easy to play around for most types and knock out for a free prize with manual energy attachments. These cards are very good against less experienced players, but at least in the online competitive scene players are ready and know how to deal with these cards, even when using ability based decks.
Galarian Weezing, in my opinion, holds Dark back as a type. It’s too slow, and doesn’t synergize with Dark’s biggest strengths, low maintenance speedy attackers. It allows your opponent to have lots of time to build up a strong board able to withstand attackers like Hoopa, Spiritomb, and Guzzlord. Weezing is pretty useless late game or if you miss the Ascension attack turn 1. If you don’t get it out early enough, your opponent likely has had plenty of time to use their abilities and you now have two dead cards in your deck. This happens more often than not. Weezing is best with other poison cards as support to make the small chip damage more meaningful, and with other cards that can keep the ability lock up all game like Phantom Transformation Zoroark. In classic Guzzlord builds of Dark I think Weezing holds the deck back from capitalizing on the type’s strengths.
Wobbuffet is good but definitely not strong enough to be considered worthy of a ban. It doesn’t have a very strong attack, so most of the time it’s just a wall that sits there until your opponent knocks it out. Water and Grass can usually manually attach to a Lapras or Zarude and knock Wobbuffet out for a free prize. Escape Rope, Boss’s Orders, or Guzma can force it out of the active and allow you to use setup abilities and end your turn by starting the prize trade with an attack on something else.
In most cases, there are only two types that are significantly worried about ability lock, Water and Grass. Ability lock is healthy for the format, those two types need some things limiting them slightly. In my opinion, compared to actually broken cards in the format like Guzzlord, Archeops, Snorlax, and Amazing Raikou that are busted in any type matchup, Wobbuffet and Galarian Weezing are overrated and not worthy of a ban.
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Thanks for reading! I hope this article was helpful for promoting discussion and new ideas about card alternatives and other ways to build GLC decks. Don't be afraid to explore and try new things!