Mew-EX – XY126 Promo – Pokemon Review

Vince

Mew-EX was first printed on BW Dragons Exalted while its latest print was from a XY Promo. It was reviewed three times:

• the 9th best card of the set 
• a regular review in BW Legendary Treasures when they spend the week looking at pretty-in-pink cards
• and when they review as much XY cards as they can before Sun & Moon comes out. This will be the second time leaving Standard, the first being in late 2015.

This Pokémon is all about the ability called Versatile, in which it can use any attacks from any Pokemon in play (yes, both you and your opponent) as long as you’ve meet that energy cost. Not surprisingly, you have to everything the attack says, so you can’t worm your way out. You can copy a GX attack, but that means you can’t use more than one per game. This makes Mew-EX splashable in many decks as a Psychic tech that can exploit weakness. I guess if we go by what’s meta at the moment, Mew-EX can easily take care of Buzzwole-GX and Malamar, while having other partners taking down other partners.

If you think there aren’t any options regarding the ability to copy attacks, I’m pretty sure Marshadow-GX comes close to fulfilling that role in a similar manner to Mew from XY Fates Collide.

Standard: 3.5/5
Expanded: 3.5/5
Limited: 2.5/5
Legacy: 4/5

aroramage

Remember way back in the day when Mew was an elusive Pokemon with no easy way to get to him? I mean you either had to attend a special event, which meant…shudders social interaction, or you had to go through an overly long process of abusing glitches in order to hack him into your game. At least he’s not so hard to get in card form…well, except maybe Ancient Mew.

Mew and Mew-EX come from different sets – Mew coming from Fates Collide, and Mew-EX being a reprint that originated back in Dragons Exalted – but have very similar Abilities and attacks. Mew (FCO) is a Basic Psychic Pokemon, 50 HP, with a Psychic Weakness, no Resistance, and no Retreat Cost. His Ability Memories of Dawn lets him use the attacks of any of your Basic Pokemon in play, while Encounter lets you add a Pokemon from your deck to your hand. Essentially, he’s a weaker version of Mew-EX, a Basic Psychic Pokemon-EX, 120 HP, with a Psychic Weakness, no Resistance, and a Retreat Cost of 1. His Versatile Ability lets him utilize the attacks of any Pokemon in play, while Replace lets you rearrange the Energy attachments on all of your Pokemon. Oh, and the Abilities still require you to have the right Energy for the cost of the attack that you’re using.

Now both of these Mew have similar Abilities that allow them to work out in different ways. Mew-EX can take advantage of a wider variety of attacks, provided he has the right amount of Energy for the attack. This can be useful to copy and utilize powerful moves, including GX Attacks (albeit you’re still limited to 1 GX Attack per game, even if you’re copying it via Versatlile), but it also depends strongly on the kind of deck you’re facing as well as the deck you’ve put him in. Mew is a little more limited in that he can only focus on Basic Pokemon, but at least Encounter lets you search for those Basic Pokemon.

Each of them works particularly well with attacks that only require Colorless Energy, and this has worked out in a particular deck in Expanded fairly well: the Night March deck. By attaching a DCE and keeping something like Joltik in play, or even utilizing Dimension Valley to remove an Energy from the cost, Mew and Mew-EX become beefier better versions of the main Night March users. In essence, they’re like an extra copy of your Night March cards! But that’s just one deck in Expanded that really benefits off the two of them – what about decks in Standard?

Well, long story short…there hasn’t been much need of them in Standard. Even with all of the plethora of Basic Pokemon that could be utilized, including the new Basic Pokemon-GX, Mew from Fates Collide didn’t really find a spot in too many decks. One off-the-wall idea was to use him in a Passimian deck, utilizing Memories of Dawn to copy Team Play and get even more benefit off the effect than any one Passimian could do! But Passimian decks remained generally noncompetitive, but at least it’s a fun idea. Another more competitively-minded deck was the idea of Malamar-Mew, utilizing strong Psychic attackers like Necrozma-GX and Ultra Necrozma-GX, fueled up with Malamar in order to use Mew and unleash strong attacks. But something about it fell flat in the long run, seeing as Buzzwole-GX continued to dominate the format; that might be because while starting out with a strong Mew could lead to sudden KOs against the deck, it only takes a couple of good Jet Punches to KO Mew – and only 3 Jet Punches to KO a Benched Malamar. Never mind the set-up required to make Mew turn the tables on Buzzwole-GX would be difficult, or the fact that he couldn’t as easily KO Lycanroc-GX, who not only could OHKO it with Claw Slash but even use Bloodthirsty Eyes to switch out the Malamar and remove a huge amount of Energy acceleration for the deck.

Needless to say, Mew and Mew-EX are very powerful cards with a lot of potential, but that potential is entirely based on the card pool they’re in. In Expanded, there are plenty of options of Pokemon – and attacks – to copy over onto the two, but in Standard, the card pool is smaller. Coupled with the limitations on what Mew could copy, and competing with a deck that could put out a lot of damage right away, it proved to not be as strong as the days of old.

Rating

Standard: N/A (since they’re both rotating out of Standard with Fates Collide and the rest of the XY Promos, there’s not much to score here; however, I will say that Mew and Mew-EX both had very strong partners to work alongside)

Expanded: 4/5 (and it’s possible that we’ll see them appear in Expanded with different partners over time as more are introduced into the format)

Limited: 4/5 (this rating only really applies to the Mew from Fates Collide, since Mew-EX was released as a promo in this time and thus didn’t have a set)

Arora Notealus: Mew is said to be the originator of all the Pokemon, having the ability to utilize just about any move in the game. You can teach a Mew any TM or HM, and you can have it tutor’d to learn any move in the game, with the exceptions of Draco Meteor and Sacred Sword. Still though, that’s a lot of moves to know…how does he keep up with all of that…

Next Time: The OG Team Skull member that was never a member of Team Skull.

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PokeDeck
Central

Mew EX (XY Promo 126) did not ever see use in any of my decks. Although Mew EX’s ability made it even more dangerous and versatile than Mew FAC, its fragile 120 HP also made it virtually unplayable. When Buzzwole GX’s Jet Punch can OHKO you for two prizes, it kind of defeats the purpose of being a Buzzwole counter. I’m exaggerating a little bit, Jet Punch usually tops out at 100 damage, but you get my point. There are so many single prize counters to Buzz that Mew EX just wasn’t worth the two prizes. I did just fine with Mew FAC, and really a lot of your opponent’s attacks aren’t worth copying (Ultra Necrozma GX Photon Geyser, Zoroark GX Riotous Beating, and now Rayquaza GX’s Dragon Break are all good examples of attacks that Mew EX just can’t simply replicate effectively). Now if Mew EX were able to replicate the ability of your opponent’s Pokemon….

Rating

Standard: 2 out of 5