Mew ex – Mythical Islands
Date Reviewed: January 30, 2025
Ratings Summary:
Ratings are based on a 1 to 5 scale. 1 is horrible. 3 is average. 5 is great.
Reviews Below:
Otaku
Note: Most of this article was written with little-to-no knowledge of Space-Time Smackdown, the third Pokémon TCG Pocket set. Scans of the cards have been available for at least a day over at LimitlessTCG and Pokémon Zone.
The second best card of Mythical Island is Mew ex (A1a 032, 077, 083, 086)! It’s a (P) Type, Basic Pokémon ex with 130 HP, (D) Weakness, (C) Retreat Cost, and two attacks. For (P), Mew ex can use “Psyshot”, which does 20 damage to your opponent’s Active. The second attack is “Genome Hacking”, priced at (C)(C)(C). This attack lets you select an attack from the opposing Active, and use it. There are four versions of Mew ex: one ♦♦♦♦, two ★★, and one 🜲.
Sorry folks; this is going to be a long one.
Let’s get the “I know you know, but I have to say it.” stuff out of the way. Being a Pokémon ex should mean Mew ex has better stats and/or effects than it’d normally have, and does guarantee it’s worth two points when KO’d, and Tauros (A1a 060) swings for 120 – instead of 60 – with its “Fighting Tackle”. Being a Basic is the best Stage; there are no additional cards required to put it into play, or having to wait for it to evolve. Then the cherry on top; it can be fetched from your deck with Poké Ball. Well, a Poké Ball and luck or no other Basics left in your deck.
The (P) Typing is good! It grants Mew ex access to (more) Pokémon search via Mythical Slab (A1a 065), and Energy acceleration from the “Psy Shadow” Ability found on Gardevoir (A1 132). When it comes to exploiting Weakness, it rarely matters. You don’t just need to find competitive (P) Weak Pokémon, you need to find the ones where that Weakness significantly reduces how many turns it takes to score a KO. That whittles down 16 possible candidates to a handful, and that’s including cases where it turns a OHKO into a 2HKO, a 3HKO into a 2HKO, and a 2HKO into a OHKO with a Giovanni.
Mew ex has 130 HP, a little lower than the typical Basic Pokémon ex, but surprisingly relevant. It isn’t because there’s a lot of attackers who do 130 in one shot; it’s the staggering amount of attackers doing 100 to 120 that can combo into a OHKO. It can be as simple as squeezing Tauros into a deck that probably already runs Giovanni in a deck that otherwise has an unreliable, or expensive or total lack of OHKO capacity for something like Mew ex. Is it a massive amount? No. What makes it so significant is this is on top of what they already have for taking down the slightly larger targets.
The numbers just don’t align to turn a 2HKO into a OHKO, except where we don’t want it. Muk (A1 175) and Scolipede (A1a 055) can do 120 damage with their “Venoshock” attack, but only to an already Poisoned Active. That means Weakness just turns a safer effective OHKO into a riskier2 actual OHKO. It does make a few multi-hit KOs easier and/or possible, so you can’t ignore Mew ex’s Weakness entirely. Mew ex’s Retreat Cost of (C) is good! A single X Speed, let alone a Leaf, can zero it out. Even when you have to pay, there’s a decent chance you can afford one Energy.
Psyshot is a weak but mostly adequate first attack for Mew ex. Just one (P) Energy and Mew ex can do 20 damage. Definitely better than nothing, but if it was priced at (C) it would be so much better? Why? Mew ex’s second attack is what gets the card played, and since it has all (C) Energy costs, that includes multiple decks not running any (P) Energy! Psyshot is mostly here so Mew ex can do something when forced to build in the Active position, or when an opponent has no damaging attacks worth copying (and you still need to do at least a little damage).
Genome Hacking can be useless. When using it, Mew ex does not need to meet the Energy costs of the copied attack3, but does need to carry out as much of the attack as it can, including written costs or effects. For example, unless you have at least one (L) Pokémon on your Bench, copying the “Circle Circuit” attack of Pikachu ex (A1 096, 259, 281, 285) will always do zero damage. Even when an attack has damage and/or an effect you’d want to use, you may be horribly overpaying. Like if Mew ex is squaring off against Exeggutor ex (A1 023, 252), who only needs (G) to use its “Tropical Swing” attack to do 40 (or 80, if you flip “heads”).
However, this is a massive cost break for some of the best attacks in the game. The two big examples are Charizard ex (A1 36, 253, 280, 284) and Mewtwo ex (A1 129, 262, 282, 286). While these Pokémon ex both have two attacks, it’s they’re big attacks that we care about, “Crimson Storm” and “Psydrive”. The former costs (R)(R)(C)(C) and requires you discard (R)(R) from the Pokémon using it, but does 200 damage. The latter requires (P)(P)(C)(C) and that you discard (P)(P) from the Pokémon using it, and does 150.
Mew ex can not only copy the big attack on an active Charizard ex or Mewtwo ex, doing enough to OHKO them for one fewer Energy, and using Energy of any Type but if you don’t have any (R) Energy attached to Mew ex when copying from Charizard ex, or (P) Energy when attached copying Mew ex, you get to use these attacks without having to discard! If you do have Energy of the specified Type attached, you’ll have to discard two of it just like Charizard ex or Mewtwo ex do. If you only have one Energy (but still three total Energy attached to Mew ex), then you just have to discard the one.
If this still doesn’t sound that impressive, I understand. Three Energy, even for (C)(C)(C) Energy requirements, is still a lot, even when you’ve got compatible Energy acceleration. Every form of Energy acceleration we have is restricted to Pokémon of the same type. The only place you can Bench a Mew ex, promote it to the Active position, fully power-up Genome Hacking, and attack all in one turn, is Gardevoir (A1 132). Not just any setup, either, but two Gardevoir on your Bench and the Active needs to be able to retreat.
While the above is amazing when it happens, turns out telegraphing Mew ex is not a deal breaker. While Mew ex is being run in Gardevoir decks, it is also being run in a wide variety of other decks. Nearly all of them not (P) decks. What you need is a deck that, whether most of the time or in key match-ups, can at least sometimes spare their manual Energy attachments for Mew ex. Between decks with Energy acceleration they can use on something other than Mew ex, or just relying on Energy efficient attackers, turns out many decks qualify…
…because every deck wants an easier match-up against Mewtwo ex, even some Mewtwo ex decks! Nor is that the only match-up where Mew ex matters. If something can be seriously inconvenienced by having Mew ex copy its attack, that’s what matters. It may be because of Energy costs, or being a Basic versus being an Evolution, or having more HP4, etc. but many decks have a good reason to run Mew ex.
There’s more. Turns out Mew ex is a solid opener. How? Not because of Psyshot, but because of Budding Expeditioner (A1a 066, 080). This Trainer-Supporter’s effect lets you bounce your Active Mew ex back into your hand. For the first few turns of the game, that 130 HP is difficult to 2HKO and challenging to OHKO. So let Mew ex take some hits then bounce it to waste your opponent’s effort… or if you just need Mew ex to vacate the Active spot. It’s also nice insurance for the times when your attacking Mew ex doesn’t win you the game, doesn’t get KO’d by your opponent, and isn’t the best attacker to continue with the following turn.
This is so long, I may as well mention Mew (A1 283, A1a 031). Yeah, the one chase rare from Genetic Apex that was not present in a lower rarity. For some reason, the “regular” version didn’t show up until Mythical Island. It’s not a good combo partner for Mew ex. I’m only including it for the usual bench-marking, to show what being a Pokémon ex does for Mew ex. Both are Basic, (P) Pokémon with (D) Weakness an a Retreat Cost of (C). Mew ex has 70 more HP than “baby” Mew and an extra attack. Baby Mew’s attack, “Psy Report”, does 20 damage for (P) plus lets you look at your opponent’s hand.
Seeing what your opponent can do, even at the end of your turn, isn’t bad. It’s also not worth attacking with a 60 HP Basic, even if you’re also doing 20 damage. It would have been useful had Mew ex possessed Psy Report instead of Psyshot. Still, being a Pokémon ex netted Mew ex +70 HP, a great “big” attack in the form of Genome Hacking, and all it cost Mew is giving up an extra point when KO’d, and losing a mildly useful effect.
Rating: 4/5
Being a potent (P) Basic Pokémon ex that (usually) turns a deck’s best attack against it helped it define the post-Genetic Apex, pre-Space-Time Smackdown metagame of the Pokémon TCG Pocket. I doubt this latest set will change things too much. I doubt we’ll get many new attackers that are bad for Genome Hacking to copy. What I worry about is new attackers that make the 130 HP (maybe even the (D) Weakness), enough of a drawback that Mew ex sees less play. Even if that does happen, I don’t think Mew ex will go away entirely.
1Centiskorch (A1 052) is the only one I could find.
2 A Pokémon KO’d by Poison during the Pokémon Checkup won’t trigger the extra damage clause in the “Revenge” attack found on Marshadow (A1a 047, 074).
3Ditto (A1 205, 247) has the attack “Copy Anything”, lets you copy an attack from one of your opponent’s Pokémon (Active or Benched), and is priced at (C). However, Copy Anything’s text states Ditto also needs to have the right Energy attached to itself to meet the copied attack’s printed Energy cost.
4130 HP is a little low for a Basic Pokémon ex; but better than many that aren’t Pokémon ex, even some Evolutions!
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