Mimikyu – Darkness Ablaze Pokemon Review

Otaku

Mimikiyu (SW – Darkness Ablaze 081/189) has the Ability “Heal Jamming”; as the name implies, this prevents your opponent’s Pokémon from being healed.  It does not prevent anything else happening with damage counters, the effects that specifically count as “healing”.  This Ability will prevent your opponent using Hyper Potion to heal something, but it won’t keep Scoop Up Net from effectively healing a (compatible) Basic by bouncing it to your hand before you play it down again.  I don’t think it will stop effects that “move” or “switch” damage counters, either, such as the “Gritty Comeback” attack of Wobbuffet V.  It isn’t a fantastically powerful Ability but, it is at least “decent”, and could become great if we saw some ridiculously good healing cards, such as Max Potion, reprinted.

The rest of Mimikyu still matters, so we’ll address it, but the Ability is the main thing.  This is a single-Prize card, so while it likely won’t big or beefy, at least it doesn’t have to deal with the drawbacks of various multi-Prize cards.  Currently, the other cards named “Mimikyu” aren’t seeing heavy play; they have seen some, but not enough I expect we’ll run afoul of the 4 Copy Rule.  Nor is it like there are any card effects which reference cards named Mimikyu (though I can dream).  As a Basic, Mimikyu is as fast and space-efficient as possible, though the specifics of Basic support versus counters could be an issue.  Being a [P] type is okay; they still have a few ticks, but their best stuff is Expanded-only.

70 HP is low; at least it takes more than a 30-for-1 attack to OHKO Mimikyu, but this is still poor.  Mimikyu’s [D] Weakness is awful, but most serious Dark type attackers score the OHKO even before Weakness.  Any Resistance is better than none, so -30 [F] Resistance is appreciated.  A Retreat Cost of [C] is good an low.  [PC] pays for “Claw Slash”, which does 30 damage; this is a poor filler attack, though at least it isn’t absolutely abysmal.  It only hits for half to a third of what it needs to, but at least you don’t self-KO or anything crazy like that.

Ratings

• Standard: 2/5
• Expanded: 2/5
• Limited: 3/5

Mimikyu doesn’t strike me as worth it right now, but it is one of those cards you ought not to forget; if something relying on healing becomes big, they’re in trouble if this Mimikyu is on your Bench.  At a single event, it could spike to five-out-of-five territory!  I doubt that will happen anytime soon, though.  If you pull Mimikyu in the Limited Format and aren’t going with a Mulligan build for something else, make sure to include Mimikyu.  I counted six cards from this set that will hate seeing this on your Bench, and you should have both the deck and Bench-space.