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Pojo's Pokemon Card of the Day

 

Munna #48

Black & White

Date Reviewed: June 7, 2011

Ratings & Reviews Summary

Modified: 1.75
Limited: 2.25

Ratings are based on a 1 to 5 scale.
1 being the worst. 
3 ... average.  
5 is the highest rating.

Back to the main COTD Page

Baby Mario
2010 UK National
Seniors
Champion

Munna #48/114 (Black and White)

Awwww look . . . it’s Munna! One of the cute Pokémon from Generation V.

The whole Munna/Musharna BW line is a bit of a weird one in which the Stage 1 is effectively a slightly more powerful version of the Basic: same attacks and everything, just a bit more damage and a bit more HP. As such, you can’t really have any complaints about the way they work together. Munna has a decent 70 HP and can put the Defending Pokémon to Sleep so that next turn you evolve into Musharna and use Dream Eater for 90 damage.

Munna isn’t at all bad at what it does. Its Hypnosis attack is cheap and the effect is automatic. Even if you don’t get the Musharna out next turn, its own Dream Eater isn’t completely terrible, doing 60 damage (but only if the defending Pokémon is Asleep). The real problem lies in actually managing to make the Sleep Condition stick in the first place. Even if the opponent does miss both flips to wake up, they could still evolve or Retreat their way out of trouble, in which case Munna and Musharna become virtually useless. I suppose you could always try using Hypno HGSS to give yourself another shot at inflicting Sleep, but in the end, the reward for all this effort is just nowhere near enough, especially considering the fact that the combo is highly dependent on luck.

Annoying and effective as it is in limited, the Munna/Musharna strategy is just too unreliable and weak to make much of an impact outside of that format.

Rating

Modified (HGSS-on): 1.5 (sturdy Basic, but you could never rely on using its attack)

Limited: 2.75 (can be a very irritating wall. If you pull Musharna as well, you might even have a workable strategy here)

conical
Deck Garage

6/7/11: Munna(Black &White) 

            Say, does this card look familiar? If it doesn't, you might want to look at the COTD reviews in the first couple of weeks of B/W cards, because its evolution, Musharna, has the same gimmick. The difference is that Musharna doesmore damage. 

            As such, I don't feel the need to reiterate how luck dependent the whole “put to sleep, then hope for two tails flips” strategy is. I will, however, say that as much as I don't like the gimmick used here, I do like it better for an evolving basic, like Munna, rather than a Stage 1, because simple basic attacks that cause status effects are more useful on basics, since it can buy some time to evolve, and you'd rather have something more effective on an unevolving Stage 1. Still, the whole concept is broken, and not even the Sableye type of broken, where say what you will about Sableye, it's certainly effective(overly so, even). The 'sleep plus Dream Eater' gimmick? Not so much.

Modified: 2.5/5 

Limited: 2.25/5


Otaku

Today’s card is Munna, the… Dream Eater Pokémon. Wow, sounds pretty specific. It is a Basic Pokémon, making it easy to run and fit into a deck. In the MD-On version of Modified, support for Psychic-Type Pokémon is limited to Azelf Lv.X (Legends Awakened, 140/146) to neutralize Weakness on your Psychic-Type Pokémon and Miasma Valley, which places two damage counters on Basic Pokémon that are not Psychic-Types when you Bench them from your hand, though the latter also applies to Grass-Type Basic Pokémon as well.

There is actually more support for Psychic Energy than actual Psychic Pokémon: Gardevoir (Platinum, 8/127) can move Psychic-Type Energy from your Benched Pokémon to your Active, Jirachi (Unleashed, 1/95) gets to flip three coins when Benched from hand and attach a Psychic Energy to itself for each “heads”, Metagross Unleashed, 4/95) zeroes out the Retreat Cost of an Active Pokémon with a Psychic-Type Energy attached, Mismagius (Unleashed 5/95) which lets you move a Psychic-Type Energy attached to one of your Pokémon to another of your Pokémon once per turn, Roserade (Unleashed, 23/95) Poisons the your opponent’s Defending Pokémon when a Psychic-Type Energy is attached to it from your hand, and Vileplume (Legends Awakened, 45/146) similarly Poisons your opponent’s Defending Pokémon when you attach a Psychic-Type Energy card to it from your hand. In either case, things drop off once the card pool shifts to HeartGold SoulSilver and later sets: no direct Psychic-Type Pokémon support and Psychic-Type Energy support loses Gardevoir and Vileplume.

Munna has a solid 70 HP for a basic Pokémon that can Evolve once more, so it isn’t an easy OHKO first/second turn. After that, it’s in OHKO range, which actual renders the card’s Psychic Weakness x 2 pretty irrelevant, especially when Psychic-Type Pokémon tend to specialize in more indirect methods of attack or are played in a non-attacking role entirely. The lack of Resistance feels lazy on the designers’ part, but it is a common sight on most cards and as such shouldn’t be crippling. The two Energy needed to Retreat is chunky for a Basic Pokémon and can be a problem, but nothing to severe.

Munna has two attacks: Hypnosis and Dream Eater. Both seem overpriced. Hypnosis requires (C) to use and automatically inflicts Sleep on the Defending Pokémon. This isn’t horrible, but Sleep is the weakest Special Condition because even though it could theoretically last several turns, it also has a 50% chance of curing itself between each turn. Another effect on top would have been appreciated, or just turning this attack into an Ability. Especially since the second attack only does anything if the Defending Pokémon is Asleep when it hits, specifically Dream Eater does 60 points of damage for (PP). If this were a less stringent requirement, that’d be a good return, but like I said, 50% chance between turns that Sleep goes away before your opponent even needs to use any of the easy methods of ditching a Special Condition.

Munna itself is clearly not worth running for its own sake in a Constructed format. It can Evolve into Musharna, so let’s remind ourselves of what the only legal version is like: 20 more HP than Munna but the same stats, a first attack requiring a (P) Energy to do 20 with automatic Sleep, and 30 more points of damage from its identically priced Dream Eater. That isn’t really a good enough reason to play this card. If you felt like it, you could build a deck around it, at least in MD-On. Use Darkrai (Majestic Dawn, 3/100), Hypno (HeartGold SoulSilver, 23/123) and/or the Vileplume I mentioned above. Darkrai puts the Defending Pokémon to sleep automatically when you Bench it from your hand, unless you choose not to. Hypno has a Poké-Power that lets you flip a coin to put the Defending Pokémon to Sleep on “heads”, with no effect on “tails”. Vileplume Poké-Power, which I mentioned above, has a second effect of inflicting Sleep to the Defending Pokémon if you attach a (G) Energy to it. That is more resource intensive and time consuming than Hypno, but the deck will want to run Vileplume (Undaunted, 24/90) anyway to block Trainers that would make getting rid of Sleep easier. Darkrai G places a damage counter on each of your opponent’s Pokémon that remain Asleep between turns. All of that stacked on top of each other (possibly with a Miasma Valley tossed in) and you’ll actually rack up some quick KOs, but with more effort than is worthwhile and not a whole lot of reliability.

If Dream Eater is to become a viable attack, it needs an effect seen on a card not currently Modified legal. I speak of “Deep Sleep”, the Poké-Body on Misdreavus (Legend Maker, 40/92). While Misdreavus is Active, Deep Sleep forces each player to flip two coins between turns for his/her Pokémon to wake-up from Sleep, and requires both coins come up “heads” for a Pokémon to awaken. Hopefully the designers realize this would be much better as an enhanced attack (like how some attacks Poison for multiple damage counters), slap it on something bigger (that Misdreavus had 40 HP), or make it work from the Bench. The existence of this Misdreavus also makes running Munna/Musharna utterly pointless in Unlimited, even trying to adapt the above deck.

You still might find yourself using Munna in Limited play, but only if you’re running a decent amount of Psychic Energy: the instant your opponent’s Active Pokémon is still Asleep at the beginning of your turn, you want to drop a second Psychic Energy onto it and go for Dream Eater. All Special Conditions are better here (and average HP/attack damage worse), so this is an okay pull if you already have a decent Psychic presence. Even then, I probably wouldn’t use it myself unless desperate or if I pulled a few and at least one Musharna.

Ratings

Unlimited: 1/5

Modified (MD-On): 1/5

Modified (HGSS-On): 1/5

Limited: 2/5

Summary

Dream Eater is actually a pretty good attack in the video games, where Sleep is a little more reliable and a successful Dream Eater both does good damage to the other Pokémon while healing your attacker. It once again has failed to translate well to the TCG. If you aren’t playing a Psychic deck in Limited, you shouldn’t be running this card.

Mad Mattezhion
 Professor Bathurst League Australia
Munna (Black & White)
 
Before I jump into the review, I would like to say good luck to all of the competitors who will be at the Australian Nationals in Sydney this Saturday. Take care traveling on the June long weekend and I'll see you there!
 
For all of the European players, best of luck with your upcoming Nationals as well. Both Australia and Europe are playing MD-on with NO Black & White so it will be interesting to see what happens. Gengar For The Win!
 
With that out of the way, I'll start talking about Munna now. We reviewed the evolution a few weeks back so this card will seem pretty familiar.
 
Munna is a Psychic type evolving Basic with 60 HP, Psychic weakness, a retreat cost of 1 and two attacks.
 
Munna has acceptable HP for an evolving Basic and none of the other stats are surprising (although they are disappointing). The weakness is actually quite good with Psychic Poke'mon set to almost disappear from the format once the rotation kicks in (but until then it is an easily exploited death sentence). The retreat cost is a serious pain on such a weak Poke'mon but I didn't expect any better, seeing how Munna is involved with dreams and sleeping (and is shaped like a jelly bean). All in all these are solid stats for an evolving Basic but it doesn't matter because the only Musharna available sucks terribly.
 
Speaking of Musharna, the attacks are almost the exact same. Munna's first attack is Hypnosis and does almost the same thing as Hypnotic Ray. For [c] you inflict auto sleep, which is okay but nothing brilliant. They might as well have made the cost [p] instead and added some damage because I don't see Munna getting played in an off type deck. Musharna doesn't strike me as the kind of Poke'mon that is going to be printed as an obscenely broken card that everyone will try to tech in. Then again neither did Claydol and look how that turned out, so maybe having a cheap, Colourless stall attack is a good thing.
 
Dream Eater is an exact copy of Musharna's attack, except that it deals 60 damage instead of 90 (which makes sense, Stage 1 Poke'mon have more powerful attacks). The cost is [p][p] and you only deal damage if the Defending Poke'mon is Asleep, so unless you have a Poke-power or Ability to inflict Sleep you have, at most, a 25% chance of succesfully landing a hit with Dream Eater. Maybe Hypno HGSS has found a friend?
 
If we get a must-have Musharna in the next few Black & White sets (maybe one with a draw-based Ability), then this Munna could be played. As it stands, this card won't go anywhere but the shoebox.
 
Although I must admit, seeing 2 Munna trying to take each other out with Dream Eater would be really funny for the first few turns. It would be like seeing Metapod versus Metapod ("Use Harden!") except with a lot of coin flipping.
 
Modified: 1.75 (the cheap stall, decent HP and soon-to-be-obscure weakness are good but the retreat cost and lack of good Musharna are very bad)
 
Limited: 2 (the stall is cheap and you could get lucky with Dream Eater, but the retreat cost is still terrible. Only run it if you also run Musharna or if you think there is a good chance of a mirror match for the laughs)
 
Combos with: sweet dreams of a powerful Musharna that will come to liberate this poor Munna from the shoebox. Hypno HGSS could fit as well.


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