Budding Expeditioner – Mythical Island
Date Reviewed: April 21, 2025
Ratings Summary:
Ratings are based on a 1 to 5 scale. 1 is horrible. 3 is average. 5 is great.
Reviews Below:
Otaku
Budding Expeditioner (A1a 066, 080) is a Trainer-Supporter returns your Active Mew ex to your hand. Anything attached to Mew ex (like Tools) or that are “on” Mew ex (like damage) goes way; other cards to the discard pile, damage to the ether. As soon as Mew ex leaves the field, something from your Bench must become your new Active; if you have no Bench, you lose the game as you now have no Pokémon in play. Budding Expeditioner is available as a ♦♦ and ★★ rare.
There are no card effects that apply to Trainers (yet). There are three counters to Supporters1, but they’ve seen little to no competitive success, even though they’ve been around since the first set. What matters about this aspect of the card is, if you use Budding Expeditioner, you’ll have to wait until the next turn to (or plan ahead and use in an earlier turn), any other Supporters.
Bounce effects can be very powerful. Yes, it erases your own setup, but you’re also flushing away all damage that is on that Pokémon. With a Basic target, you don’t have to worry about losing other Stages of Evolution, or having to wait to evolve before that Pokémon can hit the field. If it’s a Basic with either a low cost attack, or with access to Energy acceleration that can immediately re-ready it, you’re only out the Retreat Cost of whatever you promoted…
…assuming you want the Mew ex you just bounced to become your Active again, immediately. If you want something else Active, and it’s already ready, you’re only really out your Supporter and whatever you discarded from Mew ex. If you’re doing this because Mew ex was about to be KO’d, you’ve only given up the opportunity cost of Mew ex attacking with its current setup that turn. If you no longer want Mew ex in play, and it was going to be KO’d before you could attack with it, you’re only out Budding Expeditioner.
We only have one Mew ex right now, Mew ex (A1a 032, 077, 083, 086), even if it is available at four different rarities. It’s a (P) Basic Pokémon with 130 HP, (D) Weakness, (C) Retreat Cost, and two attacks. For (P), it can use “Psyshot” to do 20 damage to the opposing Active. The second attack is “Genome Hacking”, priced at (C)(C)(C). Genome Hacking has you select an attack from your opponent’s Active, and use it’s damage and effect(s) as the damage and effect(s) of Genome Hacking.
That Mew ex used to be everywhere. Typical damage output, especially early game, wasn’t too high. If you had room for Mew ex and Budding Expeditioner, you could allow a Mew ex to sit up front, take hits, and then a turn or two later, bounce it. During this time, ideally you were building your next attacker (even another Mew ex), on your Bench. Psychic decks had the option of attaching a (P) Energy to the Active Mew ex, so it could slowly chip away at the opposing Active’s HP… before eventually bouncing.
Now, Mew ex’s main use was for Genome Hacking, but even there, sometimes Budding Expeditioner was great. Mew ex’s 130 HP was and is low, but it wasn’t that low. There were times you could use Genome Hacking, survive until your next turn, and deny your opponent the two points they’d almost earned by bouncing your Mew ex and bringing out your next attacker, or meatshield. It was epic… or incredibly frustrating when you were the one attacking Mew ex.
Budding Expeditioner is not as good now. Mew ex is not headlining decks anymore. I think it still sees some competitive success, but not as a headliner. It’s a one-of in certain decks where it can safely be built up on the Bench, while countering some other threat the deck is worried about. The thing is, even if Mew ex was still huge, something else has changed.
Three (ish) things, in fact:
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Typical damage output has crept slightly higher.
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We have a wider variety of useful cards…
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…especially Supporters.
Even with access to something like Giant Cape (A2 147), Mew ex has become a probable OHKO, outside of extremely early game. Even using Mew ex as an opening meatshield carries a significantly higher risk of a 2HKO or 3HKO. The increase in useful cards in our cardpool means that everything has had to be reevaluated, with most being at least a little worse than they were in the past.
There’s even direct competition of a sort. There’s no generic bounce, but we do have a generic healing Supporter that is showing up in quite a few decks: Pokémon Center Lady (A2b 070, 089). If we we actually were talking about a dedicated Mew ex deck, she wouldn’t be competition, but when Mew ex is a supplemental attacker? When you probably need something to shake Special Conditions and/or the damage from the “Nightmare Aura” Ability on Darkrai ex (A2 110, 187, 202; P-A 042)?
Rating: 2/5
Yes, Budding Expeditioner still earns a two-out-of-five. It’s really good, and might become broken if we get the right (wrong?) Mew ex in the future. I’ve been focused on the existing Mew ex, because it is what we have. Budding Expeditioner will work with any card specifically named “Mew ex”. There’s also the chance we’ll get something that improves Mew ex usage, especially if it simple makes it more durable. There’s still so much potential here… as with many other recent reviews.
1Gengar (A1 122), Gengar ex (A1 123, 261, 277), and Psyduck (A1 057).
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