#set 11

The iconic tree on a snow day.

Card Shark 95: Petunia Petals, Mare of Many Talents

Hello, readers! Welcome back to Card Shark! To close out this mini-Leaders and Legends celebration, I wanted to turn my attention to the one color I have neglected to cover in this set! Let’s take a look at “Petunia Petals, Mare of Many Talents!”

A mare with that many talents is no common mare. It should be pretty obvious that this is an entry-level Friend if you have a Pink Mane, costing only 2 AT and 1 Pink req. She also has the keyword Talented, which I’ve discussed a bit in the past. Essentially, Friends with Talented can activate additional effects when you play an Event with at least part of the colors of the Talented Friend (so in Petunia’s case, you could play mono-Pink Events like Rolling Tones or Dip in the Pool or partially Pink Events like Party of One or It’s Time to Be Awesome). When you play that Pink Event, you can exhaust Petunia to draw a card. That’s a nice little bonus! Pink loves to draw cards, and this is a nice way to get an extra draw without spending an extra 1 AT. I remember when Berry Punch, All-Night Partier was a staple in DJ Pon-3, Party Starter decks (I don’t see too much of it anymore), and Petunia reminds me of Berry. Pink is also, furthermore, one of the most Event-oriented colors, at least in my view, so you have a lot to work with in regards to Petunia. I guess I’m just trying to emphasize that Petunia might be one of the easier Talented cards to activate and make good use of. That’s saying a lot considering her Common status! Good on you, Petunia. Good on you.

What can’t this mare do? I don’t critique Common cards often since they’re not designed to do anything severe. Thus I gotta give this card some grace since it can’t truly act as the core of a tricky strategy. My biggest gripe with her is that exhausting her before you confront a Problem may not be ideal at the start of a game. Sure, you can play an Immediate partially Pink Event after you confront her Problem and exhaust her then (Talented knows no limits when it comes to activation), but that may get complicated. In my opinion, there aren’t a lot of Pink or partially Pink Immediate Events that may be worth playing right after you confront a Problem. Unless you’re trying to stop a Problem Faceoff, Puppet Show is effectively useless on your turn. Inside Information is nice, but its Harmony effect is one of the harder ones to activate (I don’t think I’ve ever seen a competitive Griffon deck), and you may want those three extra cards sooner rather than later. And the Immediate partially Pink Events, namely Tea With Discord and Untested Magic Fireworks, are super crazy and are probably not worth playing just for the sake of an extra card. There’s a lot of technicalities at play. Of course, you could always have her as support for drawing extra cards before the Score Phase and have other power to confront Problems, and that’s dandy too. Am I overthinking this scarily simple card? Absolutely! XP

Here’s a few more cards that have just as much hope as Petunia:

*Surprise Party Notes. This is one of the easiest Events you can play to draw an extra card and not spend extra. Why? It costs 0 AT! And if you have Petunia in play, you already meet the color req! Surprise Party Notes allows you to Immediately switch cards on the top of both players’ decks, along with potentially drawing you an extra card if a player has 8 or more points. There are a few other 0 cost Pink Events - Rock, Paper, Scissors, Shoot!, Very Startling, and Yoink! - but none of them have the same Immediacy as Surprise Party Notes. Thus Surprise Party Notes is my pick.

*Pinkie’s Present. It’s not often I recommend Song cards, but this one was too good to resist. One of the effects of Pinkie’s Present is that you can draw four cards. With Petunia, that four cards can be boosted to five. You’re drawing five cards for only 2 AT! And you don’t need to discard anything from your hand to do so! Pair this with something like Flitter and Cloudchaser, Prancing Pair or Mirror Pool Miscount and and you’ll have a nice arsenal of cards at your disposal.

*Skipping Class. But maybe you do want to obtain a complete refresh of your hand. In that case, Skipping Class may be your best choice! Combine this with a Petunia and you can get seven new cards in your hand, not six. And who knows? That one extra card may be the one thing that turns the game in your favor.

Corner snow house.