Mr. Mime-GX – Celestial Storm Pokemon Review

aroramage

Today’s card is probably going to be either one of the most difficult to deal with or one of the most disappointing blockades to put up.

Mr. Mime-GX is a Basic Psychic Pokemon-GX, 150 HP, with no Weakness, no Resistance, and a Retreat Cost of 2. The reason this card might be hard to get rid of is because of the Ability Magic Evens, where any damage that results in…oh boy that’s a lot of numbers…okay, any increment of 20 going from 20-260 (i.e., 20, 40, 60, etc.) is completely negated. In other words, if the damage he’d take is an “even” number, it doesn’t count. I say “even”, because technically speaking all damage in the game is dealt in even numbers, as everything’s a multiple of 10, which is itself an even number. Don’t worry, that’s not the end of the math lesson today. Breakdown costs 2 Energy and puts a damage counter on your opponent’s Active Pokemon for every card in their hand, and to annoy your opponent further, Life Trick GX costs 1 Energy and heals all damage from Mr. Mime-GX.

Needless to say, this card can be extremely aggravating to get around, as you now have to calculate the numbers correctly in order to land on one of the numbers that Magic Evens doesn’t hit. Some decks won’t have a problem with this; Buzzwole-GX, for instance, has Jet Punch dealing 30 damage, so as long as he doesn’t have Choice Band attached (I’ll get to that more later), he can wallop Mr. Mime-GX for all that he’s worth. Compare that to Ultra Necrozma-GX, who starts out at 20 damage and does 80 more damage with each Energy it discards, and he can’t do anything against Mr. Mime-GX…for cheap.

Ignoring the attacks on this guy, cause chances are if you’re playing against Mr. Mime-GX it’s not because they’re going to “Breakdown” till you’re KO’d, how do you get around Magic Evens? Well there’s a reason it lists so many specific numbers on the card, and that’s not just cause the original Mr. Mime-ex which this is based off of did the same thing. After a while, the numbers stop at 260 – which means technically that if you were to do, say, 270 damage or more, Magic Evens wouldn’t work against that. Ultra Necrozma-GX can hit 340 damage by discarding 4 Metal Energies, which can circumvent Magic Evens, and cards like Charizard from Dragon’s Majesty have the chance of dealing upwards of 300 damage – but I’ll get back to Charizard in a bit.

Remember how I brought up Choice Band as something you don’t want to put on Buzzwole-GX? Here’s a fun little math trick: remember that any even number added with another even number, and an odd number added with any other odd number, will always equal an even number. Think about it: 2+2=4, 1+3=4, 18+12=30, you get the idea. It’s true for any number you can think of! But here’s the kicker: add any even number with an odd number, and the result will always be an odd number. 1+2=3, 7+8=15, 13+24=37! So when you attach a Choice Band to Buzzwole-GX, take off the 0s at the end and count the regular numbers – 3 + 3 = 6, which would make the damage 60, a number Mr. Mime-GX negates through Magic Evens. But something like, say, Ultra Necrozma-GX’s attack or Charizard’s Ability can do the same – a Choice Band lets Ultra Necrozma-GX hit for 130 or 210, much cheaper than before, and Charizard can hit for 150 with just Mr. Mime-GX in play!

…or alternatively you just use one of the Ability negators in the game. There are plenty to go around, trust me.

Rating

Standard: 2.5/5 (he’s a decent wall option, but he can be played around)

Expanded: 2.5/5 (damage manipulation is key to getting around Magic Evens)

Limited: 3/5 (course there’s always Ability negation, so that’s a thing too)

Arora Notealus: Seriously though, what is up with Mr. Mime? His name doesn’t even make sense anymore. He’s even got female versions of himself, and he’s also a Fairy too? Man, he oughta just be “Mime” or “Clownimime” or something, cause he’s definitely not just “Mr. Mime” anymore.

Next Time: Now how the heck did this not end up on that Top 5 List…

Vince

To Choice Band or not to Choice Band, that is the question! Mr. Mime-GX has a feature that’ll make you think twice, though probably not for too long, as it takes a little to figure out if you have to or not. And even if you did, you can correct it, like Field Blowing your own Choice Band so that you can actually damage it.

Mr. Mime-GX (SM Celestial Storm 56/168) is a spiritual successor of Mr. Mime-ex (EX Firered & Leafgreen 111/112) such that it has the same ability and one of its attacks. Whilst the old Magic Evens only prevent damage when the damage is exaxtly 20, 40, 60, 80, 100, 120, 140, 160, and 180, the new Mr. Mime-GX extends it further to 200, 220, 240, & 260. Breakdown costs PC and puts one damage counter on the Defending Pokémon for each card in your opponent’s hand. And then there’s Life Trick GX, which costs C and heals all damage from this Pokémon, assuming if it can actually survive one because with 150 HP, it get OHKOed by some of the popular decks hitting for triple digit numbers.

So how do we play around this ability? One way is to shut off Abilities. Standard has Alolan Muk and Glaceon-GX that laughs at Mr. Mime’s attempts of walling. Expanded has Garbodor that shuts off all abilities. Damage boosting items can help if it shifts from an even number to an odd number in increments of 10. Choice Band and Fighting Fury Belt (in Expanded) could help, but the Muscle Band is still hopeless. There are very few Pokémon that can hit more than 260 damage but doesn’t see as much competitive play. Dusk Mane Necrozma-GX and Charizard-GX are some examples.

Overall, Mr. Mime doesn’t have the punch to double as an attacker, but can still frustrate opponent’s if they don’t have the aforementioned cards that I’ve mentioned to play around this ability. Most of the Pokémon cards I saw are lopsided in terms of attacks. They might have one that hits very soft, followed by another attack that does a ton of damage. In Limited, this Pokemon is even better there, as it can still wall unprepared opponents, and since both player’s hand size gets bigger each turn because most of them are dead cards, Breakdown’s damage output is better there.

• Standard: 3.5/5
• Expanded: 3/5
• Limited: 4.5/5

21times
PokeDeck
Central

Mr. Mime GX (CES 56) mimics his way into the Standard format from the Celestial Storm expansion set. This Pokemon pretty much has one redeeming quality, its ability Magic Evens which prevents it from being damaged by even numbered attacks from twenty through 260.

260 damage = 0 damage. 280 + damage or any odd number attack = sad Mr. Mime.

Or you can just place damage counters on it like I did with Greninja GX. And at 150 HP, this is an extremely easy two prize cards. And if you’re an even numbered attacker – like Zoroark GX – just put on a Choice Band and Mr. Mime GX is OHKO’d.

I’ve faced Mr. Mime GX twice post rotation and won both times. Its attacks are maybe the most underwhelming attacks ever on a GX Pokemon. Breakdown allows you to put damage counters on the active Pokemon equal to the number of cards in your hand (which we know will be on average 5.39 from my study on Copycat)… and that’s a two attachment (Psychic and Colorless) attack. Its GX attack Life Trick costs only a single Colorless attachment and allows you to heal all damage on Mr. Mime GX… oh wait wasn’t Magic Evens supposed to protect it from being damaged? And good luck finding an odd damage feature Pokemon that does less than 150 damage.

Rating

Standard: 1.5 out of 5

Conclusion

Mr. Mime GX gives Kommo – No GX a run for its money as the worst GX card ever. I can’t even begin to imagine a scenario where this card has a place in the competitive meta.

Otaku

We begin this week with Mr. Mime-GX (SM – Celestial Storm 56/168), the “update” of Mr. Mime-ex (EX – FireRed & LeafGreen 111/112). This is a 150 HP Basic Pokémon-EX, which means it needs to be pretty great to compensate for being a comparatively easy two Prizes. That greatness may come from its Ability, “Magic Evens” which protects this card from the damage of your opponent’s Pokémon’s attacks if it is EXACTLY 20, 40, 60, 80, 100, 120, 140, 160, 180, 200, 220, 240 or 260 damage. So, 10, 30, 50, 70, 90, 110, 130, 150, 170, 190, 210, 230, 250, and 270+ all bypass this protection. This is in addition to decks that can shut down Abilities, have a way of ignoring effects on the Defending Pokémon, place damage counters (instead of doing actual damage), or KO via effect. Magic Evens may be most effective against [P] Pokémon, at least if the ones which do 130 or less damage, as this card’s [P] Weakness will double damage that normally would NOT be blocked into an amount that will. Of course, now 140+ damage blows through your protection. As you can tell, I’m not sold on Magic Evens… and feel I should remind you all that Choice Band exists. While annoying if you were hitting one of the blocked numbers via Choice Band, so you’ve got to settle for 30 less damage to Mr. Mime-GX to hurt it… it only has 150 HP and you’re doing 30 less instead of doing nothing.

Mr. Mime-GX supports the walling strategy with its GX-attack; for [C] you can use “Life Trick-GX” to remove all damage from Mr. Mime-GX itself. I’d be more impressed if I couldn’t gain a similar effect via Max Potion; sure you lose all attached Energy when using Max Potion, but I’m not sure that matters because the card’s other attack is “Breakdown” for [PC]. Breakdown places one damage counter on your opponent’s Active Pokémon for each card he or she has in hand. Unless you’re successfully walling – in which case Mr. Mime-GX probably has no damage on it to heal – Breakdown is a mediocre attack. Specifically, because of its yield. Even if your opponent can’t intentionally lower his or her hand size before ending his or her turn, I’m not seeing large enough hand sizes for this to be a particularly impressive amount. Placing damage counters but only on your opponent’s Active sacrifices exploiting [P] Weakness for bypassing a handful of effects, and I don’t expect you to often place more than four or five damage counters at a time.

Mr. Mime-GX is an update of Mr. Mime-ex (EX – FireRed & LeafGreen 111/112); I vaguely recall it seeing some success when it was Standard-legal, but I also don’t recall a good way of upping your attack’s damage. You had stuff like Strength Charm which only added 10 damage AND discarded itself after a Pokémon attacked. Mr. Mime-ex only had 80 HP, but I don’t recall a Basic Pokémon-ex with more than 120 at the time and its Breakdown attack is identical to the one on Mr. Mime-GX so… yeah, nerfed via power creep. Mr. Mime-GX isn’t something you should forget about, however; if a deck that falls only or mostly into the “blocked” range of damage output is strong, Mr. Mime-GX could be just the wall you’re for which you’re looking… unless that deck also runs Alolan Muk, something with “Shred” (or a similar) attack, etc. Expanded just has better walls.  I don’t recommend taking a +39 (or Mulligan) approach to Mr. Mime-GX in Limited; it’s a crapshoot as to whether or not Magic Evens will offer protection or not, and when it doesn’t even with the GX-attack 150 HP won’t go too far. I would, however, include it in most decks, just not as the star.

Ratings

Standard: 2/5

Expanded: 1.5/5

Limited: 3.25/5