Mewtwo V-Union
Date Reviewed:
November 3, 2021
Ratings Summary:
Standard: See Below
Expanded: See Below
Ratings are based on a 1 to 5 scale. 1 is horrible. 3 is average. 5 is great.
Reviews Below:
Otaku
Welcome to the second installment of our review of Mewtwo V-Union. If you’re just joining us, know that there are actually four cards named Mewtwo V-Union:
- SW – Black Star Promos SWSH159
- SW – Black Star Promos SWSH160
- SW – Black Star Promos SWSH161
- SW – Black Star Promos SWSH162
and all four of them together make up Mewtwo V-Union. If need you need a detailed explanation, read this article from the official website. If you can’t or won’t, I’ll try to go into enough detail you can still follow along with this article.
To put a V-Union into play, you need all four of its component cards in your discard pile, during your turn, with an open space on your Bench. Then you can just take all four cards from your discard pile and move them to your Bench, correctly arranging them to form an “oversized” Pokémon card. This only takes up one Bench space. The catch is that you can do all of this only once per game for a specific V-Union. So if you run more than one, each may only be put into play this way once per game. The method for putting a V-Union into play is printed on a Rule Box found on each card.
I won’t be going into detail discussing the stats or effects found on other pieces of Mewtwo V-Union; as each piece can have an attack and/or an Ability, there’s enough to discuss already! A second Rule Box split between SW – Black Star Promos SWSH161 and SW – Black Star Promos SWSH162 states that this Pokémon V-Union is worth three Prizes when KO’d. As it has two Rule Boxes, yeah, this is a “Rule Box” Pokémon. It has an Ability on a piece we haven’t reviewed, and Path to the Peak can shut that Ability off. Pokémon V-Union also count as Pokémon V. Effects that reference Pokémon V will work against a V-Union, but not those that specify “Basic Pokémon V” or “Pokémon VMAX”.
Each piece of Mewtwo V-Union has the same name (Mewtwo V-Union), typing (Psychic), Stage (V-Union), and the Rule Box explaining how to put it into play. The game will “recognize” these things with respect to other cards and mechanics. However, just because a card has (for example) no HP score printed on it, does not mean it qualifies for Level Ball’s “90 HP or less” search effect. As all four pieces share the same name, they do count against each other with respect to the 4 Copy Rule; either you run one of each, or you’re wasting deck space. If a piece is stuck in your Prizes, or worse still, sent to the Lost Zone, you can’t make use of the rest.
Being a Psychic type seems reasonably good for Mewtwo V-Union. It can benefit from the Energy accelerating-Ability found on Shadow Rider Calyrex VMAX, and hits a popular attacker – Rapid Strike Urshifu VMAX – for double damage due to that card’s Psychic Weakness. In Expanded, it’ll face more Resistance, but also more [P] Weak cards, and can access even more proven Psychic type support. Mewtwo V-Union is neither a Basic nor an Evolution or Evolved Pokémon. Its Stage is V-Union, so effects that work for Basic Pokémon or Evolution/Evolved Pokémon don’t work for Mewtwo V-Union. Effects that work for any Stage of Evolution will still work with Mewtwo V-Union, however. Any effect that, for example, puts a Pokémon directly into play – even those that let you skip lower Stages – also don’t work with V-Unions. Their individual cards are “incomplete” on their own, like the XY-era’s BREAK Evolutions.
Finally, we get to the stuff unique to this portion of Mewtwo V-Union. Mewtwo V-Union has 310 HP, on par with a small Pokémon VMAX. This isn’t enough to keep it from ever being OHKO’d, but it does make it tricky for the average deck. Even decks that can exploit Mewtwo V-Union’s Weakness are still going to have to hit somewhat hard to one-shot something this big. The other thing this portion of Mewtwo V-Union contains is an attack. For [PPC], its “Super Regeneration” heals 200 damage from itself. There are no other costs or conditions, and that is what keeps this attack from being useless. Much like Union Gain, I don’t expect it will be worth it most games, but it is a nice option to have. 200 damage per turn is about what many decks manage, so Mewtwo V-Union can attempt to stall with this much healing. A true stall deck will need more than just this, however.
In Expanded, the attack is a bit easier to use thanks to cards like Dimension Valley and/or Malamar (SM – Forbidden Light 51/131; SM – Black Star Promos SM117; Shiny Vault SV18/SV94). There’s a major caveat, however: if you’ve got enough Energy acceleration, you can just use Max Potion. That will let you flush away all damage counters currently on Mewtwo V-Union. Yes, it is an Item and so not reusable but… as I already mentioned you needed Energy acceleration, the idea is that you can still re-Energize Mewtwo V-Union and attack to do something other than heal itself. Though, if you have a true stall deck, you legitimately might use both to really frustrate an opponent that can’t quite OHKO Mewtwo V-Union.
When all is said and done, this isn’t a bad card, but it isn’t overly useful. As such, I’m going to award it a two-out-of-five in both Standard and Expanded.
Ratings
- Standard: 2/5
- Expanded: 2/5
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