Mew – Fates Collide – Pokemon Review

Vince

Another card about to leave is Mew from Fates Collide. It was reviewed once as the 4th best card of the set (https://www.pojo.com/COTD/2016/May/17.shtml). This Pokémon has a feature that made it a must-run or a loose staple in certain decks. That is due to its ability, Memories of Dawn, which lets you use any attacks from your Basic Pokémon in play. This can include pretty much all Basic Pokémon regardless if it is a GX/EX or not. Despite limiting to that category, it is still good that most of the Basic EX/GX as well as few solid one-prize Basic attackers have very good attacks. It serves as a placeholder as a tech for those situations where you don’t want your main attacker get KOed and your opponent taking two prizes; you use Mew that worth only one prize; and your main attacker will still be there if Mew gets KOed. 

Free retreat helps as well, so that if Mew isn’t the right Pokémon to use, you can retreat to a different attacker. For Buzzwole-GX, Mew itself cannot benefit anything related to fighting types, thus actually needing to use Buzzwole-GX for the job. What Mew does is exploiting Psychic weakness, which a good chunk of Pokémon is weak to, mostly found on opposing Fighting or Psychic Pokemon. It’s attack is seldom used; you wouldn’t want to search for one Pokémon, only to have a serious chance of being OHKOed (not hard to do since it has 50 HP) or having your hand shuffled.

Overall, this card will be missed, and unless the developers make another Mew that does something similar, I’m afraid that we’re not going to see a card like this for quite a while, for Standard at least. Expanded welcomes every card from Black & White onwards, so Mew has a place to be continued using.

Standard: 3.5/5

Expanded: 3.75/5

Limited: 3/5 (not much to copy there)

aroramage

Remember way back in the day when Mew was an elusive Pokemon with no easy way to get to him? I mean you either had to attend a special event, which meant…shudders social interaction, or you had to go through an overly long process of abusing glitches in order to hack him into your game. At least he’s not so hard to get in card form…well, except maybe Ancient Mew.

Mew and Mew-EX come from different sets – Mew coming from Fates Collide, and Mew-EX being a reprint that originated back in Dragons Exalted – but have very similar Abilities and attacks. Mew (FCO) is a Basic Psychic Pokemon, 50 HP, with a Psychic Weakness, no Resistance, and no Retreat Cost. His Ability Memories of Dawn lets him use the attacks of any of your Basic Pokemon in play, while Encounter lets you add a Pokemon from your deck to your hand. Essentially, he’s a weaker version of Mew-EX, a Basic Psychic Pokemon-EX, 120 HP, with a Psychic Weakness, no Resistance, and a Retreat Cost of 1. His Versatile Ability lets him utilize the attacks of any Pokemon in play, while Replace lets you rearrange the Energy attachments on all of your Pokemon. Oh, and the Abilities still require you to have the right Energy for the cost of the attack that you’re using.

Now both of these Mew have similar Abilities that allow them to work out in different ways. Mew-EX can take advantage of a wider variety of attacks, provided he has the right amount of Energy for the attack. This can be useful to copy and utilize powerful moves, including GX Attacks (albeit you’re still limited to 1 GX Attack per game, even if you’re copying it via Versatlile), but it also depends strongly on the kind of deck you’re facing as well as the deck you’ve put him in. Mew is a little more limited in that he can only focus on Basic Pokemon, but at least Encounter lets you search for those Basic Pokemon.

Each of them works particularly well with attacks that only require Colorless Energy, and this has worked out in a particular deck in Expanded fairly well: the Night March deck. By attaching a DCE and keeping something like Joltik in play, or even utilizing Dimension Valley to remove an Energy from the cost, Mew and Mew-EX become beefier better versions of the main Night March users. In essence, they’re like an extra copy of your Night March cards! But that’s just one deck in Expanded that really benefits off the two of them – what about decks in Standard?

Well, long story short…there hasn’t been much need of them in Standard. Even with all of the plethora of Basic Pokemon that could be utilized, including the new Basic Pokemon-GX, Mew from Fates Collide didn’t really find a spot in too many decks. One off-the-wall idea was to use him in a Passimian deck, utilizing Memories of Dawn to copy Team Play and get even more benefit off the effect than any one Passimian could do! But Passimian decks remained generally noncompetitive, but at least it’s a fun idea. Another more competitively-minded deck was the idea of Malamar-Mew, utilizing strong Psychic attackers like Necrozma-GX and Ultra Necrozma-GX, fueled up with Malamar in order to use Mew and unleash strong attacks. But something about it fell flat in the long run, seeing as Buzzwole-GX continued to dominate the format; that might be because while starting out with a strong Mew could lead to sudden KOs against the deck, it only takes a couple of good Jet Punches to KO Mew – and only 3 Jet Punches to KO a Benched Malamar. Never mind the set-up required to make Mew turn the tables on Buzzwole-GX would be difficult, or the fact that he couldn’t as easily KO Lycanroc-GX, who not only could OHKO it with Claw Slash but even use Bloodthirsty Eyes to switch out the Malamar and remove a huge amount of Energy acceleration for the deck.

Needless to say, Mew and Mew-EX are very powerful cards with a lot of potential, but that potential is entirely based on the card pool they’re in. In Expanded, there are plenty of options of Pokemon – and attacks – to copy over onto the two, but in Standard, the card pool is smaller. Coupled with the limitations on what Mew could copy, and competing with a deck that could put out a lot of damage right away, it proved to not be as strong as the days of old.

Rating

Standard: N/A (since they’re both rotating out of Standard with Fates Collide and the rest of the XY Promos, there’s not much to score here; however, I will say that Mew and Mew-EX both had very strong partners to work alongside)

Expanded: 4/5 (and it’s possible that we’ll see them appear in Expanded with different partners over time as more are introduced into the format)

Limited: 4/5 (this rating only really applies to the Mew from Fates Collide, since Mew-EX was released as a promo in this time and thus didn’t have a set)

Arora Notealus: Mew is said to be the originator of all the Pokemon, having the ability to utilize just about any move in the game. You can teach a Mew any TM or HM, and you can have it tutor’d to learn any move in the game, with the exceptions of Draco Meteor and Sacred Sword. Still though, that’s a lot of moves to know…how does he keep up with all of that…

Next Time: The OG Team Skull member that was never a member of Team Skull.

21times
PokeDeck
Central

Mew (FAC 29) developed into one of my most used Pokemon over the past couple of months. Its ability Memories of Dawn let you replicate the attacks of so many of the Big Basic GX’s – Buzzwole, Dusk Mane Necrozma, Dawn Wings Necrozma, the list goes on – but it’s only a single prize Pokemon. It may only be a 50 HP Pokemon, but let’s face it: with so many basic Pokemon out there right now that can do absolutely ridiculous amounts of damage (my Rayquaza GX decks have routinely been hitting damage counts in the 300’s… yes that’s three hundred PLUS damage sustainable on multiple consecutive turns… I’ve posted a couple of different versions on my youtube channel PokeDeckCentral), the difference between 50 and 190 is much smaller than 140 HP.

I’ve used Mew with these Big Basics to stream multiple single prize attackers. You can frequently turn the game into a seven prize card match, and if you’re lucky, you can even have your opponent run through three Mews early and then bring in your real big Basics to close out a victory.

I’ve also used it to help get your board set up – it can replicate Drampa’s Big Wheel GX – and I’ve also used Tapu Lele GX’s seldom used GX attack Tapu Cure GX to completely wipe the damage accumulated on two of my Big Basic Pokemon on the bench. And Mew’s own attack Encounter can let you go get the aforementioned Tapu Lele GX, so it’s as good as being able to go search out a Supporter card with its own attack.

I’ll miss Mew FAC, its ability was unique and extremely versatile. Mew FAC helped me win a ton of matches, I’ll bet it helped you too.

Rating

Standard: 3.5 out of 5