Mespirit – Unified Minds Pokemon Review

Vince

Mesprit from SM Unified Minds might not look like much, being a Basic Psychic Type with 60 HP, weak to Psychic, and a retreat cost of one. Both First Contact and Mumble cost a single Psychic energy, the former letting you fetch three Basic Pokémon from your deck into your Bench and the ladder doing a measly 20 damage.

For years, we’ve been used to such attacks that fetches Pokemon and puts them in play, but at the cost of using your attack. Some Pokémon with such attack occasionally sees play and others don’t see as much play. The reason “Call for Family” variants that see some use could be caused by various factors: little to no competition from other cards from other categories (For items, see Nest Ball or pre-errata Great Ball. For Supporters, see Roseanne’s Research, Pokemon Collector, or Pokemon Fan Club); using “Call for Family” when no other options are available on your turn; thinning your deck while potentially letting your Pokémon evolve on the following turn; and keeps you from being donked and have Bench Pokémon to replace.

While a majority of Call for Family variants fetches you one or two Basic Pokémon, Mesprit is one of the few Pokémon that can fetch THREE basics for you; the other being Dunsparce from SM Celestial Storm (with the option to switch your Dunsparce) and Pachirisu from DP Great Encounters. However, because it costs a Psychic energy to use, it is not as splashable as the others, where both Dunsparce and the no-longer-legal-10+-rotations-ago Pachirisu needs just a Colorless Energy to use. Mesprit can be, at best, restricted to Psychic decks, where one questions whether it’s worth a deck slot to include a Pokémon that can send out even more Pokémon, which you would hope to start with during game setup and choose to go second.

For Standard and Expanded, not so much, though I wouldn’t count Mesprit out if we’re entering in a hypothetical format where other Trainer cards that fetches Pokemon become lackluster. Out of all summoners, Emolga from BW Dragons Exalted was the most played Call for Family user, due to a combination of free retreat, Colorless attack, and little to no competition from trainer cards (Professor Juniper and N were heavily used into oblivion and Ultra Ball the only Pokémon searcher available). Mesprit can work wonders on the Limited and Theme format where it would be worth using if you also pulled other basic Pokémon, and there’s a good amount of Pokémon to work with in the Laser Focus Theme Deck (we’ll also look at the cover star of this Theme Deck: Necrozma). That’s assuming you can get that Pokémon into your starting hand.

Ratings:

• Standard: 1.8/5
• Expanded: 1.7/5
• Limited: 3/5
• Theme: 4.3/5

aroramage

Mesprit’s really good for calling out stuff from your Deck and putting it onto your Bench.

That’s pretty much the review in a nutshell, isn’t it?

Mesprit is a Basic Psychic Pokemon, 60 HP, with a Psychic Weakness, no Resistance, and a Retreat Cost of 1. First Contact is the attack in question, letting you bring out 3 Basic Pokemon from your deck. I know they were designing it with the intention of calling out Uxie and Azelf, but let’s be honest, everybody just bringing out Mewtwo & Mew-GX. Mumble also exists, but it’s a 1-for-30 vanilla move that you won’t even notice is there by the time Mesprit is out of the Active slot.

Not much else to say about this card. It’s something you can experiment with certainly, but given the Psychic Energy restriction, not every deck is going to be able to run it. Probably for the best, since some decks might get worse with access to something that can bring out big Tag Team-GX straight out of the deck for virtually free. Good set-up Pokemon, but outside of that, not a whole lot of use for it.

Rating

Standard: 2.5/5 (bring out yer Basics!)

Expanded: 2/5 (bring out yer Basics!)

Limited: 4/5 (bring out yer Basics!)

Arora Notealus: I think Expanded has better starters to work with in general, and a lot of decks will skip out on Mesprit’s 60 HP body in favor of something with either a little more HP or a lot bigger OOMPH while it’s Active.

Next Time: Ride the waves on the call of mighty ancients!

Otaku

Mesprit (SM – Unified Minds 84/236) is a Basic Pokémon, easy to run and it can even open.  Its [P] Typing lets it take advantage of Mysterious Treasure.  60 HP means you can fetch Mesprit with Professor Elm’s Lecture but also that is an easy OHKO, even from spread.  The HP makes the [P] Weakness and (lack) of Resistance pretty meaningless.  A less obvious connection is it makes the Retreat Cost of [C] less impressive; a free Retreat Cost would have fit the card better for the few times it would matter.

Mesprit has two attacks, both priced at [P].  “First Contact” lets you search your deck for up to three Basic Pokémon and Bench them.  “Mumble” does 20 damage.  Both attacks are too expensive for what they do.  Attacks that are as good or better cost [C] and on similar cards.  For an example of a card that fills the “opening Active searcher” role better,  see Dunsparce (SM – Celestial Storm 110/168).  10 less HP and no access to Mysterious Treasure, but Dunsparce can attack for [C]…

…and that is still too pricey because of the T1 rules.  When you basically need to go second and burn an Energy attachment, fetching three Basics from the deck isn’t as good of a deal as it may appear to be and was many, many years ago.  Mesprit might possibly have some niche if you’ve got a [P] Energy using deck that also wants to run Uxie (SM – Unified Minds 83/236), as its Ability requires you have a Mesprit and Azelf in play to function, and that Ability changes all Weakness in play to x4.

Otherwise, I don’t see a real use for Mesprit in Standard and even less in Expanded.  In the Limited Format, you have more time to set up so even though the player going first cannot attack, you might use First Contact the turn after.  Mesprit is good in the Theme Format but not great.  Some of that is the deck:  “Laser Focus” can luck into a fast open, and has multiple openers as good as Mesprit… without the issue of Mesprit being pretty useles after attacking once.

Ratings

• Standard: 1.4/5
• Expanded: 1.1/5
• Limited: 3/5
• Theme: 3/5