Mythical Slab – Mythical Island
Date Reviewed: April 22, 2025
Ratings Summary:
Ratings are based on a 1 to 5 scale. 1 is horrible. 3 is average. 5 is great.
Reviews Below:
Otaku
Mythical Slab (A1a 065) is a Trainer-Item that lets you look at the top card of your deck. If it is a (P) Pokémon, you add the card to your hand; otherwise, you place the card on the bottom of your deck. There is a chance I’ll mistakenly refer to it as “Mystical Slab”, much like I struggle not to refer to the set at “Mystical Island”. Just some malfunction in my brain. Mystical Slab is available at the ♦♦ rarity.
There are no card effects in Pocket that apply specifically to Trainer cards, nor are there any that apply specifically to Item cards. I state this because at times, there have been such card effects in the full TCG. They’ll vary from forgotten filler to format defining staples that were eventually banned, so it’s probably for the best they aren’t in Pocket.
Item cards are one of the weaker Trainers in terms of comparative effect strength, but that’s because they’re the least costly to use. There’s no universal, built in cost to using an Item, other than the truly universal cost of playing a card from your hand. They tend to be about half as powerful as the equivalent Supporter, as demonstrated by X Speed (P-A 002) and Leaf (Ala 068, 082). There’s no easy, direct comparison with Tools, so I cannot tell you whether they’re generally stronger or weaker than general Item cards.
Mythical Slab can easily be considered a form of conditional draw or a shortest range, restricted target search effect. You can’t get shorter for a deck search than checking a single card, after all… but again, by that point it functions as much as unreliable “draw” power as it does search. Especially when Mythical Slab was “new”, having an Item-based method of adding a (P) Pokémon to your hand was great!
In the present, however, it’s barely “okay”, and so not seeing much play. Why the difference? Competition. When Mythical Slab released, we had zero Trainer cards (let alone Item cards) that could add a non-Basic Pokémon from your deck, to your hand. Now we have Pokémon Communication (A2 146). Not only does it work with Pokémon of any Type, but it cannot whiff1 on adding a Pokémon to your hand… though it absolutely can add a Pokémon you don’t need.
There’s also many more worthwhile Trainer cards (and probably Pokémon) you can add to your deck now versus then. So Mythical Slab isn’t just competing against Pokémon Communication in (P) decks, but arguably Cyrus (A2 150, 190), Pokémon Center Lady (A2b 070, 089), Red (A2b 071, 090), etc. The last issue is that, with the addition of Darkrai ex (A2 110, 187, 202; P-A 042) to the game, (P) practically went extinct until Giratina ex (A2b 035, 083, 096) revived them. We’re now seeing all Basic (P) decks, and they don’t worry about using Mythical Slab.
It’s not all bad, though. To begin with, we have seen some Psychic decks return to competitive, or at least, borderline competitive play. Plus, if you really need a Pokémon more than anything else, the downside of Mythical Slab becomes a bonus: a Trainer you don’t need at the moment is moved out of the way, to the bottom of your deck.
Rating: 2/5
This wasn’t supposed to be a week of two-out-of-five Trainers, but it’s doing an excellent job of faking it. Mythical Slab could easily bounce back, if Psychic decks make more of a comeback. Pokémon Communication is stiff competition, though, whether you’re talking about Psychic Evolutions or Basics. What I’m saying is, the score could easily go up or down, even with just the next expansion.
1I think it can whiff if you have no Pokémon left in your deck, but I am uncertain. This is partially because, in the full TCG, Pokémon Communication can grab the Pokémon you returned to the deck, from the deck. In Pocket, I do not recall if this is the case.
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