Today’s card is an alt art reprint of the one we got in
Undaunted. However, we didn’t review it then, so we
might as well give it a go now.
Mawile
has to be one of the strangest-looking Pokémon out there
and I must admit, I’m puzzled
about how this would ever be used in a deck too. It’s an
unevolving Basic with a low-ish
60 HP and Weakness to Fire (not that most non-Fire
Pokémon would have any trouble
KOing it either). It
does have
Psychic Resistance though, which is nice as it makes it
less of a cheap Prize for something like an
Uxie LV X.
Mawile
has two attacks. The first, Selfish Draw, costs
only one Energy of any Colour
and lets you draw a card. If you don’t like it, you can
discard it and draw another one. Is this useful? Well,
sort of . . . but there are other cards that have better
drawing ability (such as Aerodactyl
GL and Relicanth CL), and
those don’t see any play. For a starter to be viable in
this format, it needs to do a lot more than that (see:
Spiritomb AR,
Smeargle UD, and
Sableye SF for details).
Even the discard option, which some decks can make use
of, is better performed by cards like Junk Arm and
Regice.
Destructive Jaw, Mawile’s
second attack, does a mere 30
damage, but does give you a coin flip for some very nice
bonuses: Paralysis and an Energy discard. Unfortunately,
putting [M][C][C] on a 60 HP
Pokémon is just not a sensible strategy: even if the
attack was a whole lot better, you wouldn’t want to do
that.
So, all we are left with is a very sub-par draw starter
that is never going to see play, I’m afraid.
Rating
Modified: 1.5 (Not utterly useless, but nowhere near
competitive standard)
Limited: 4 (if you are playing limited, you play all the
draw you can get your hands on)
conical
2/24/11: Mawile(Call of Legends)
Mawile is technically one of the reprints that make up
half the set. Unlike most of them, however, we did not
review Mawile back when it was originally printed in
Undaunted, so we're reviewing today.
I want to make this clear from the beginning: this was
intended to be for Limited play. Chances are, Selfish
Draw will never be remotely good enough drawpower to
fuel any deck in Modified. That said, it's a pretty good
Limited card, for what it's worth. It's a common, so
you're more likely to find multiples of the card, plus
the fact that it's a basic and only has 1 retreat means
that this is a pretty solid draw engine at a prerelease.
Destructive Jaw isn't half bad as an attack, either,
provided you flip heads. Of course, given that it has 60
HP, you probably won't be using it for long.
Modified: 1.5/5
Limited: 4/5
virusyosh
Happy Thursday, Pojo! Today's Card of the Day is a
card from Call of Legends originally printed in the
Undaunted expansion. Today's Card of the Day is Mawile.
Mawile is a Basic Metal Pokemon. Metal Pokemon haven't
seen much play in Modified recently, but you will
occasionally see Dialga G Lv. X, Steelix Prime, and
Scizor Prime; not to mention that Bronzong G is a very
widely used tech in most SP builds. 60 HP for a
non-evolving Basic is a bit low, meaning that Mawile
will either have to be used as a set-up Pokemon or a
very good supporting Pokemon. Fire Weakness means that
Charizard and Blaziken FB will hurt, Psychic Resistance
keeps Gengar and pixies away (at least for a bit), and a
Retreat Cost of 1 is good.
Mawile has two attacks, Selfish Draw and Destructive
Jaw. Selfish Draw allows you to pick up the top card of
your deck and either put it into your hand or discard it
and draw a card for a single Colorless Energy. In
Modified there are better options for set-up Pokemon (Sableye
SF, Spiritomb AR, Jirachi RR, the list goes on) but it
is in Limited where this attack really shines, as being
able to cycle through your deck is always very good in
Limited, and the cheap cost really makes this possible.
Destructive Jaw deals a rather paltry 30 damage for
[MCC], but if you flip heads, the Defending Pokemon is
Paralyzed and you discard an Energy from them as well.
This works as a decent stall tactic in Limited, but
chances are that your opponent has quite a few ways to
get around it in Modified. Additionally, the attack is
very slow for Modified, so you probably want to be
investing your Energy elsewhere.
Modified: 1.5/5 It's not the worst card in Modified, but
there are too many things that can do what Mawile does
better.
Limited: 4/5 Selfish Draw is great here, and Destructive
Jaw can really give your opponent problems.
Unfortunately, 60 HP is very low, and there is quite a
bit of Fire in Call of Legends, so make sure that you
don't build Mawile up only for it to get torched later.
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