Mewtwo EX is the most hyped card of
BW: Next Destinies, but how good is it actually? Let's break it down and see, but first as we are officially looking at the FA version, I'll comment on that: I think the normal version looks more dynamic; you might say "cooler". That isn't to say that the FA version looks bad, I just wish the illustration was as impressive as the standard version.
Stats
First and foremost,
Mewtwo EX is a Pokemon EX (of course!) so it is worth two Prize cards when KOed, before other effects. What other effects? Well off the top of my head,
Rayquaza & Deoxys LEGEND has the Poke-Body Space Virus, which would increase that by one. Yeah, two Prizes from a card is already significant; three is brutal! As those who played the game during the original (but technically not the same mechanic) Pokemon ex era know, it can be tricky calculating when that second Prize is worth it or not.
Mewtwo EX is a Psychic Type, so it can hit many cards for Weakness and will have a little support if you wanted to put it in an all or mostly Psychic deck. It sports an amazing 170 HP, but don't forget it is worth two Prizes. It isn't the same as having two 85 HP Pokemon (assuming you could have something with an HP score that wasn't a multiple of 10). Being bigger even always makes it easier to tank. Why is tanking "good"? You have a turn to heal (or make similar plays) and most important
it can mimic Energy acceleration. How? Hey, even if
Mewtwo EX does go down in two shots as if it was an 80 and a 90 HP Pokemon, you basically need half the Energy, since it is all on the same
Mewtwo.
Since
Mewtwo EX is Weak to Psychic Pokemon, that means most of what it can hit for double damage, in turns hits it back just as hard. The good news is many Psychic Pokemon don't focus on doing a lot of damage, but for the few that do, even with it's massive size
Mewtwo EX is in OHKO range. The lack of Resistance is annoying as always, but since this is such a large Pokemon worth two Prizes, it is more significant that it is missing; odds are it would have been at least twice as effective since the Pokemon in question would likely last twice as long!
Last we come to the Retreat Cost of two. This is functionally "average": usually you can afford to pay it, but most of the time you won't want to as it will use up a significant amount of resources. With the release of
Skyarrow Bridge and
Heavy Ball, having a Retreat Cost of two may now be on par with having a cost of three. Having a single Energy Retreat Cost is almost as good as having a free Retreat Cost, and thus still far better than either a cost of two or three, but a Retreat Cost of three would make it a legal target for
Heavy Ball to search, and having an Item yield a Pokemon is an excellent exchange.
Effects
Mewtwo EX has two attacks. The first is X Ball, which costs
colorless::colorless
and does 20 points of damage for each Energy attached to both Active Pokemon. This attack allows
Mewtwo EX to attack first turn for 40 points of damage with a
Double Colorless Energy or any form of first turn Energy acceleration I am aware of. That isn't bad if you
have to start out with
Mewtwo EX. It is a bit of a concern if you have to manually power it up one Energy at a time, though.
The real strength of the attack is that most Pokemon will have two or three Energy attached when
Mewtwo EX goes to attack. Note that the attack counts Energy and
not Energy cards! This means a
Mewtwo EX, as long as you can get your current Active Pokemon out of the way, can come out of no where and hit for between 40 and 100 points of damage before Weakness (depending on the amount of Energy your opponent has attached to the Defending Pokemon). This is most important when you're hitting for Weakness since now that's 40 points of damage per Energy; an easy 80 with a single
Double Colorless Energy and against most opponents, upwards of 200 points of damage!
Without Weakness, though it isn't going to carry the card. It is a big hit to take, but if something has that much Energy and you don't KO it, odds are it will his
Mewtwo EX next turn
just as hard but for two Prizes. Fortunately the second attack is Psydrive, which does 120 points of damage for
psychic:
sychic::colorless
and a single Energy discard. It isn't
Double Colorless Energy compliant, but that would make the card even more powerful, probably too powerful, so I am not complaining. The Energy discard isn't too bad either: factoring in Energy invested and treating the discard as if it were an extra Energy in the cost, you'd be at 50 points of damage, so doing another 70 is worth being a non-Evolving Basic Pokemon and Pokemon EX.
Psydrive is harder to pay for, but if
Mewtwo EX is attacking in general, it is the better deal most of the time: 120 for four (I count the discard as an extra Energy requirement) beats 80 for four, and Defending Pokemon has to have at least three Energy to make X Ball better (assuming you can pay for both).
Still, these are two great attacks, worth of a Stage 2 attacker. On a Basic Pokemon, even one worth two Prizes, they remain great.
Usage
For the foreseeable future,
Mewtwo EX will be everywhere because it is a popular Pokemon even outside of the TCG, and this is quite a good card. Does it deserve to be everywhere? Yes, but mostly because for now it is the best counter available for itself. If we continue getting good, solid Pokemon EX for specific decks,
Mewtwo EX will find its influence diminishing.
Even though you can slap
Eviolite on it to survive even more hits, the talk I've heard is that it can't function well enough as the main attacker, and when I think about it, it sounds like a credible claim. This is a format where it is quite easy to hit for over 90 damage a turn. Even with
Eviolite, if
Mewtwo EX is taking 100 damage a turn (still a reasonable expectation for most decks), it is going down while at best staying even in Prizes. After all, most of what it will be attacking (besides unlucky openers or underdeveloped Benched Pokemon you force up with
Pokemon Catcher) will be just big enough to survive a single shot from X Ball because they are either big Stage 2 Pokemon with at least 130 HP or big Basic Pokemon with
Eviolite.
You don't want to open with
Mewtwo EX, because that means your opponent has a 50% chance of getting a free shot in on it, and a free shot can lead to a KO the next turn, which becomes a trade in their favor of one Prize for two. Even if you start, you have to be able to take down something in one hit that has no Energy, because if you don't again the combos will start flying and pretty quickly your opponent is Knocking Out your
Mewtwo EX once, twice, and the third one for game!
You want to wait until
Mewtwo EX can slip into play and take a Prize right away. Now with its formidable attacks and impressive size it can easily take a second Prize, and at least break even in Prize count (while costing significantly less than what your opponent lost in card advantage). The only time you want to start with it is when you are tricking your opponent:
Mewtwo EX is an expensive decoy. So for example, it'd probably be a surprisingly good opener for
Vileplume decks. If your opponent tries to take out your
Oddish,
Mewtwo starts stomping on them. If they go for
Mewtwo, sure you're down in Prizes but they've had time to get
Vileplume in play and are easily able to drop
Twins.
So what about Unlimited? Rules state Pokemon EX are
not the same as Pokemon ex. What does this mean? First, you could have a deck that ran a ridiculous amount of
Mewtwo now: four of your preferred regular version, four
Mewtwo ex, and four
Mewtwo EX. More importantly, all those classic cards that expressly didn't work for Pokemon ex? Should work fine with Pokemon EX. You then get to tap into cards that were just obscenely powerful when first introduced anyway, like
Scoop Up and
Focus Band. I don't know if
Mewtwo EX could anchor a deck as the main attacker, but it still can be a great number two for just about any deck; with a
Double Colorless Energy it can OHKO
Slowking! In fact, the only thing hurting it's score in this format is the dominance of decks that either win or set-up a virtual lock first turn.
If you pull this in Limited and aren't worried about potentially ruining it's value, you run this. Any deck can easily accommodate it thanks to X Ball, and if you have a few
Psychic Energy, all the better. Just remember that it is worth
half your Prizes (since Limited play only starts with four), and try to play it only for the win, or when your opponent has already taken three Prizes.
Ratings
Unlimited: 8/10
Modified: 9/10
Limited: 10/10
Summary
Mewtwo EX doesn't live up to
all of the hype, but it works for
most of it. This will be a format of
Mewtwo EX being everywhere, at least for those who can snag a copy or two. It isn't really good enough to be the focus of its own deck, in part because it really does counter itself, but as the secondary or co-primary attacker its great. Get used to running it or running your own counter for it.
I'd be annoyed at how powerful it is, but honestly it still strikes me as more balanced than the likes of the plain
Reshiram and
Zekrom. For the format how it is, it
is balanced, and since balancing this format means cutting all the things that would have "broken" this in a hypothetical "other" format, I think this is exactly how
Mewtwo EX needs to be. :thumb:
