COTD – 5th September 2011 – Mew Prime

Welcome to Monday’s Card of the Day and today, we’re going to be looking at Mew Prime from the HS: Triumphant set. As we all know, Triumphant brought us some insanely good Primes for this format and does Mew keep the trend? Let’s have a look..

At first glance, we can see a Basic with Psychic typing, a rather average 60HP, a single Poke Body and an attack. A Basic with a Poke Body is always intriguing to the competitive player, so let’s see what it does.

Mew’s Poke Body is called ‘Lost Link’ and it allows Mews to use all of the attacks of all of the Pokemon in the Lost Zone as its own, as long as it has the correct energy. This means that even if there is a Stage 2 in the Lost Zone, then Mew can copy its attack with the correct energy and we saw that in a semi-competitive deck last format featuring Ryperior Lv.X, with Mew copying its free ‘Hard Crush’ attack to do massive damage much quicker than Ryperior could ever achieve. This kind of deck just shows how versatile Mew can be and its second attack really can put this Poke Body to work.

‘See Off’ is Mew’s attack and for a single Psychic Energy, you can search your deck for a Pokemon and throw it into the Lost Zone. Hopefully, you can see the synergy here already, use See Off to put a good attacker into the Lost Zone and then use its attack through Lost Link to build a big attack, without the need of as much setting up.

Currently, Mew has been seen in a lot of decks based around Vileplume, since it can utilise a lot of the ‘locking’ attacks to play tricks with the opponent’s field without actually having to set up that original Pokemon. One See Off target in particular is Muk from Undaunted. Muk has an attack called ‘Sludge Drag’ for a single Psychic energy and allows you to switch one of your opponent’s Pokemon with one of their bench and Confuse and Poison it. Typically, you will aiming for Pokemon with huge retreat such as Magnezone and Emboar, along with the occasional energyless Reshiram. This forces the opponent to either attach and retreat, wasting energy, or risk the Confusion flip to attack which can go horribly wrong for them.

Other useful targets we’ve seen for Mew include Jumpluff HS with its attack ‘Mass Attack’ which can rack up a seriously high 120 damage for just a single Grass energy and another interesting one is Leavanny from Emerging Powers. It has an attack that is similar to Spiritomb from Arceus in the way that you can search your deck for a Pokemon that evolves from one you already have in play and then play it onto that Pokemon. With Mew using this from the Lost Zone, you don’t have to set up the Stage 2 Leavanny to get it working and it could work wonders to set up that Vileplume in just two turns, also avoiding that Oddish from being there too long.

So overall, Mew has some really crazy strategies it can be combined with and can make for some seriously competitive decks as we saw with Jason Klaczynsky’s Mew variant that won The Top Cut Invitational 2011. However, Mew does come with the price that it is incredibly low on HP. Having just 60HP makes it a perfect target of a OHKO from the likes of Donphan, Yanmega, Kingdra etc. and this can prove quite the problem for the Mew player. However, when Mew has done its duties, it could be happily KO’d once a lock has been activated, if your opponent can take a prize that is. With Mew’s incredible versatility, I’m going to give it a solid 6.5/10. It has the makings of a great card, but does the HP just let it down too much?

Artwork: Now we haven’t seen a Mew card for a very long time before this one and the Prime artwork has to be some of my favourites, this one is no exception. Mew has always been the high-pitched, peace-loving Pokemon that can pack a punch when called upon and this picture really does capture this nature. With Mew swooping around in the galaxy behind, it looks as though it wouldn’t hurt a fly, but the expression on its face shows some serious concern for what it’s looking at and could find itself feeling the full force of Mew any second. Overall, I really like the way the artist has tackled the image and has captured the nature of Mew perfectly. I’m going to give it a very nice 8.5/10. Mew in space? What’s not to like?

Thanks for reading today’s Card of the Day and please vote for what you think about this card below with the star rating system!