Mr. Mime – Pokemon Review

Vince

Today’s review is all going to be about Mr. Mime’s ability called Pantomime. This ability works when you play this from your hand onto your Bench, and it will let you switch the top card with one of your face down prize cards. This can be helpful because if you somehow reveal the top card from your deck, whether it be Ingo & Emmet, and it’s the card that you don’t need, you can trade it away! Macgargo’s Smooth Over can also let you pick a useless card and place it on top of your deck, only for it to be switch with a random card from the prizes. I don’t know how strict it is to shuffle your prizes, but if it comes a time where players don’t have to shuffle their prizes, then players will exactly know which cards are positioned. Town Map ruins the ability, as it makes prize cards face up for the rest of the game; the ability will fail.

Overall, it is difficult for me to rate this because of the awkwardness of whether players must shuffle their prizes or not. If they don’t shuffle, then they’ll have a supreme advantage. If they are required to shuffle, then it can only be as useful as putting away an useless card for the hope of a better card from the top of your deck. For now, I’m just going to assume – for rating purposes – that prizes are shuffled, and I’m going to stand on this decision.

Ratings:

Standard: 3/5

Expanded: 3/5

Limited: N/A

Otaku

Mr. Mime (Detective Pikachu 11/18) is another Pokémon all about its effects, so I’ll actually review the aspects of this card in the reverse of my usual order. Mr. Mime knows one attack, called “Juggling”, which requires [PC] to use and has you flip four coins. For each “heads”, the attack does 20 damage. You’ll score between zero and 80 damage, with a mean damage output of 40; certainly not a good attack, but not especially bad attack. If it had been priced at [CC], it’d have been decent, but still a “filler” attack. Even as is, it is acceptable so long as the card does something else worthwhile. Mr. Mime has the Ability “Pantomime”; when you play it from your hand onto your Bench, you may take the top card of your deck and switch it with one of your facedown Prize cards (you choose which one). As the card must be facedown, you cannot combo this effect with something like Town Map that leaves your Prize cards faceup, but any effect which lets you see your facedown Prize cards while returning them facedown, in the same order, works perfectly well. I’d prefer if Pantomime was a once-per-turn Ability instead of a coming-into-play one, but that may have been too powerful.

…

On its own, Pantomime isn’t all that impressive. Juggling doesn’t help it, but it doesn’t hurt it, either. Mr. Mime being a Basic Pokémon – and most decks not already maxing out cards named “Mr. Mime” – is pretty important; Mr. Mime takes the minimal amount of deck space and time to field and is more easily bounced, recycled, etc. than an Evolution. The [P] Typing is probably important due to Mysterious Treasure; other prominent [P] Type Pokémon support may useful if a deck already runs it, but I don’t think it would be required. It is mostly a net-positive for Juggling, should you actually need to attack with Mr. Mime; most [D] and [M] Pokémon are Resistant but with luck and/or a damage buff, you might slap a Buzzwole or Buzzwole-GX silly (by which I mean score a OHKO). 80 HP is fragile, but not especially fragile; Mr. Mime is a goner if it is stuck in your Active slot or is targeted on the Bench by a serious Bench strike, but it’ll take spread or bonus Bench hits two or three uses to accumulate enough for the KO. In Expanded, Level Ball becomes an option and that may again prove quite important. Its own [P] Weakness and lack of Resistance are unfortunate but not major issues; the 80 HP is a mitigating factor. While a free Retreat Cost would be ideal, [C] is still very good. You’ll only have to burn a single Energy or slap an Escape Rope on Mr. Mime to get it to the Bench.

…

I needed to finish explaining the rest of the card before I got to what specifically makes Pantomime so important: the combos. Somewhat sadly, the best option I found for glancing at your facedown Prize cards without also leaving them faceup or having to shuffle them around is Poiple (SM – Lost Thunder 107/214). Its “Eye Opener” attack which is priced at [C] and lets you look at all of your Prizes before returning them facedown, in the same order. In the past, similar things have appeared as a non-attack or Item effect; keep an eye out in case it happens again. This means the most obvious use for Mr. Mime, helping you get something useful out of your Prizes without having taken a KO, may not be sufficiently cost-effective. It is not like those decks have no other option; we still have Gladion. I believe Mr. Mime and its Pantomime are potent because of two combos, one of which is plausible for many decks. Jirachi {*} has the Ability “Wish Upon A Star”; it only triggers when you take a facedown Jirachi {*} as a Prize and have an open slot on your Bench because Wish Upon A Star the Benches Jirachi and has you take another Prize. On its own, Mr. Mime still wouldn’t make this worthwhile… but what if the deck ALREADY runs Magcargo (SM – Celestial Storm 24/168) or Mallow?

This is far from a must-run combo. Magcargo and Mallow are useful enough on their own, but Mr. Mime and Jirachi {*} are worse than just deadweight on your Bench: unless you’ve got something jucier worth targeting, they’re easy OHKOs. Abilities on Basics are also relatively easy to counter in both Standard and Expanded. Being able to turn a single Prize KO into two, a double-Prize KO into a triple, etc. is amazing. You’ll need to check and see if a deck can or cannot handle it. If you’ve got an attacker like Cofagrigus (SM – Lost Thunder 100/214) or M Gardevoir-EX (XY – Steam Siege 79/114, 112/114), you not only have the attack power but can ditch Mr. Mime and Jirachi {*} after they’ve been used. Speaking of M Gardevoir-EX, this may be one of those odd times when a new card is better in Expanded. Yes, Mr. Mime may have to compete with Mr. Mime (BW – Plasma Freeze 47/116) or Mr. Mime (XY – BREAKthrough 97/162; Generations 52/83) AND it faces even more Ability counters, but it gains valuable to new (old) partners. Jirachi {*} can’t be “recycled” in the conventional way; Ninja Boy can help with that or you could risk Greedy Dice. Instead of a Prism Star Pokémon, now you’re dealing with an Item card, though it only works half the time (requires a coin flip). You may also run up to four copies of Greedy Dice, and they can chain. If you’re a Johnny, this lets you try for crazy decks where you use something like Kartana-GX’s “Blade-GX” attack or four copies (at once) of Lucky Clover to take a Prize, hit Jirachi {*}, use its Ability, hit your run of Greedy Dice to take all six Prizes without actually scoring a KO!

No, that is not realistic. So let’s dial it back a bit, but only a bit. Don’t count on flipping heads for everything but do plan on reusing Pantomime, either through multiple copies of Mr. Mime or bouncing/recycling the one copy, maybe recycling Jirachi {*}, and making up the rest with Greedy Dice. That is probably a third of your deck, so the rest will need to be a lean and mean beatdown deck, a stall/control deck, or something that requires a detailed explanation. The first two probably deserve a small explanation as well; you’re reducing the deck’s utility and versatility to make it faster at taking Prizes without making it faster at taking actual KO’s. The third option is actually multiple other niche options. There are already tricks which allow you to additional Prizes when the correct attacker scores a KO. Maybe it is time to bust out ye olde Lugia-EX (BW – Plasma Storm 108/135, 134; BW – Black Star Promos BW83; BW – Legendary Treasures 102/113) or create a Guzzlord-GX deck that is more than just a meme? There may even be simpler options I’ve missed. Pikachu & Zekrom-GX decks, if they could make room for even just one or two Mallow, one or two Mr. Mime, and a Jirachi {*} on top of everything they’re already running? Their “Tag Bolt-GX” attack already has a good chance of taking three or four Prizes, but imagine if you pull it off with two or three Electropower against an opponent’s Active Tag Team Pokémon, a Benched Tapu Lele-GX… and knowing you’re going to take Jirachi as one of those five – now six – Prizes!

Ratings

Standard: 3.2/5

Expanded: 3.5/5

Limited: N/A

Yes, this review is mostly hype and Theorymon. It will take a lot of luck or work to make the combos I described pay off, and that is assuming they can pay off. The above scores actually reflect that. Even if everything I mentioned ends up being a bust for now, Mr. Mime is one of those “time bombs” for the Expanded Format.