The Great Mewtwo EX

Like a boss

Hello all The Deck Out followers!

I know that everyone on every site has covered Mewtwo EX already a thousand times but I’ll do it once more. However, I won’t stop to this article, oh no, I’ll be making Mewtwo EX entries the whole February through. This can be considered as the first part of my Mewtwo EX series, which has at the moment an unknown amount of parts.

At the moment the plan for my Mewtwo EX series looks like this:

Part 1: Mewtwo EX
Part 2: Mewtwo EX & Gardevoir
Part 3: Mewtwo EX & Celebi Prime
Part 4: Mewtwo EX & Emboar
Part 5: Mewtwo EX & Typhlosion Prime
Part 6: Mewtwo EX & Eelektrik

The order of the entries may change during the series but I’ll be covering at least these combinations. If you have request of what would you like to see analyzed with Mewtwo EX, please leave a request in the comment field of this article. Anyways, let’s start with the real article and get-to-know the new star of this format – Mewtwo EX.

What is Mewtwo EX?

Mewtwo EX is a Psychic type Basic Pokémon, which has 170 HP. It’s an “EX” Pokémon which means that when it’s KOed, the opponent takes 2 prizes instead of 1 prize card. It has a retreat of 2 and has two attacks named “X-Ball” and “Psydrive”. So far so good but there isn’t anything too good in Mewtwo EX when we look only at the stats. Not that good HP for an EX-Pokémon and not that small retreat cost. Looking its stats only, it seems like a mediocre card at best.

Mewtwo EX was described by my Japanese friend with words: ”almost all the players are now agreeing that Mewtwo EX is the strongest and most powerful card in BW3 (maybe one of the strongest cards ever).” I think this was the sentence that hit the Pokémon community all over the world. It’s a lot to say and before players had time to spell “theorymon”, the price of Mewtwo EX was over 60$ and there was nothing anyone could do to stop the endless Mewtwo EX hype. Only time will tell if it was the strongest card ever in the western Pokémon TCG community as well and before we can make decisions about that, we need to look closer at the card. What makes it so good? That is the next question.


Why is Mewtwo EX SO good?

If the answer can be found from its stats, it must be found from its attacks and that assumption is correct. As said earlier, Mewtwo EX has two attacks: X-Ball and Psydrive. Let’s take a closer look at these attacks.

X-Ball

This is the attack, which makes Mewtwo EX so good. The attack cost tells you part of the truth – X-Ball requires 2 colorless energy to be used. That means that you can tech Mewtwo EX in any deck, no matter, which type the deck is. X-Ball attacks 20x for each energy attached to Mewtwo EX AND to your opponent’s active Pokémon. I didn’t read the card correctly first and tested it before I released my Eye on Japan article with the effect that it hit only 20x for each energy attached to it. It was still good! However, after I re-read the card, it soon became a beast.

X-Ball takes the advantage of this formats energy acceleration Pokémons. X-Ball is a straight counter against Pokémons that require a lot of energy to be able to hit and need energy accelerators to load them but at the same time, Mewtwo EX works well with the very same energy accelerators as the other Pokémon. The funny truth is that Zekrom works well with Eelektrik. Reshiram works well with Typhlosion Prime but Mewtwo EX works well with any energy accelerator in the format. Mewtwo EX doesn’t care if it has Fire, Water or Grass energy attached to it, it still deals 20x for each energy attached to it and to the defending Pokémon.

Do the energy accelerators and high energy cost attacks explain the whole success of the Mewtwo? No, the reason why Mewtwo EX is SO good is a sum of many different things that happen to be as they are in the current format. There is one certain card, which makes Mewtwo EX to be even better than it would already be. That card is Double Colorless Energy, also known as DCE. The minimum energy cost of X-Ball is 2 Colorless energy meaning that with one DCE Mewtwo EX hits for 40 damage. Under normal circumstances it wouldn’t be that meaningful but in the metagame at the moment hitting 40 in T1 is just huge. The reason for this is the most played Basics in this format, which are OHKOed by 40. Good examples of these Pokémons are cards like every Baby Pokémon, Tynamo, Oddish, Litwick(due to weakness), Mew Prime and the list goes on. As you can see those Pokémons cover almost half of the Basic Pokémons that the most played and most successful decks of the City Championships play. 40 is a magical number that can get an easy lead for you.

Still, there is even more to X-Ball than the previously mentioned things.  Usually any attacker that deals “heavy early game” damage, deals the same amount of damage in the late game as well. This is what keeps things in balance. However, with Mewtwo EX, the thing isn’t the same. In fact, it’s the opposite. The longer the game goes on, the faster Mewtwo EX can be loaded to deal even more damage than in the early turns. Mewtwo EX is a strange fast attacker in the history of Pokémon because the longer you let it attack, the stronger it will get every turn.

As you know Mewtwo EX is its own worst enemy and that is due X-Ball being the main attack of Mewtwo EX. You know the math. Mewtwo EX with a DCE OHKOs a Mewtwo EX, which has 3 energy attached to it. That means that Mewtwo EX mirrors will be very interesting and nerve-wrecking. Also, there isn’t a turn you are able to miss if you decide to go with the prize race of Mewtwo EXs. OHKOing a Mewtwo EX with X-Ball is too easy and I’ll discuss this issue all over again many many times in the upcoming articles.

Psydrive

Did you know that Mewtwo EX had 2 attacks? It doesn’t matter even if you didn’t – you won’t be using it at all. It’s funny, I needed to double check Psydrive’s attack name because I didn’t remember what it was. Feel free to guess if I remembered X-Ball’s name or not…

Psydrive isn’t even a bad attack. It hits for 2 Psychic and 1 Colorless 120 damage and you need to discard any one energy card from Mewtwo EX after that. So, practically it’s a better version of Reshiram’s and Zekrom’s attacks. However, since there isn’t a good energy accelerator for Pyschic energy (Jirachi is flippy and I’ll analyze Gardevoir in my next article) Psydrive won’t be used that often.

As I said, Psydrive is by no means a horrible attack – in fact it can be called even a decent attack. However, the fact that X-Ball is faster, more versatile and more destructive is what makes Psydrive so useless. Mewtwo EX would be as good as it is even if it only had X-Ball as its only attack. X-Ball is too good and it overshadows Psydrive.


The metagame and Mewtwo EX

Mewtwo EX will have a huge impact on every deck of the format because it will be the most played card of the whole format. If the deck hasn’t any tools against Mewtwo EX; it will lose to a Mewtwo EX immediately. A good example of this is a Cobalion/Kyurem/Electrode deck. Even though Cobalion is a straight answer against Mewtwo EX, the old build most be changed. They concentrated on attacking with Kyurem and used Terrakion, Landorus and Cobalion as secondary attackers. However, because of Mewtwo EX, the deck has to have more focus on attacking with Cobalion. Kyurem is a horrible attacker against Mewtwo EX with Eviolite and Terrakion isn’t that much of a better attacker.

As you could see about the series list, Mewtwo EX can be used in almost every metagame deck. Energy accelerating support Pokémons are the perfect fit for Mewtwo EX since they make X-Ball the most useful attack. There are many kind of energy accelerating Pokémons in the current format and they all want to have Mewtwo EX with them. Not only Mewtwo EX is a great counter against Mewtwo EX, it also is a game-winning card if the opponent’s deck isn’t prepared for it by any means.

Mewtwo EX is THE card to defeat in the format and every metagame deck should be prepared to play it or against it. However, there is one deck that feasts on the popularity on Mewtwo EX and doesn’t have to change its game plan that much even with Mewtwo EX in the format. You guessed it – Durant. Durant will only grow stronger because the format doesn’t have a proper counter against it and it has a Psychic resistance to Mewtwo EX. It pretty much kills Mewtwo EXs attack strength with Lost Removers and Crushing Hammers so Mewtwo EX is not a threat to it. Durant still has one chance to blossom before it is killed by Heatmor.

Countering Mewtwo EX

Well, if Mewtwo EX is THE card to defeat in the format, you should be countering it in your deck, right? Correct. Thankfully the current format has a lot of cards that are able to counter Mewtwo EX. However, they all rely on the same thing – weakness of Mewtwo EX. If Mewtwo EX is able to get rid of its weakness (like via Leavanny), it will soon become very destructive. Here is the list of the easiest counters against Mewtwo EX with a short explanation.

Mewtwo EX(NDE) – Well, as said a hundred times, Mewtwo EX is its own worst enemy. X-Ball is the perfect attack to kill Mewtwo EX.

Mew Prime(TM) – Mew Prime can see Off a lot of good cards that are able to OHKO Mewtwo EX among other things. Good examples would be Zoroark, Cinccino and Jumpluff.

Weezing(HS) – This self-destructing gas ball is at its best when it’s in a deck that is able to energy accelerate energy to it and has a Defender in them. You don’t want to give a free prize to your opponent by blowing up yourself in the progress.

Darmanitan(NDE) – If you enjoy flipping and heavy damage, Darmanitan is your guy. It hits 50x each heads you are able to hit so it can work against any EX Pokémon – not only against Mewtwo EX.

Xatu(UL) – Xatu was probably the very first counter everyone thought of when Mewtwo EX was released. However, the fact is that Mewtwo EX should have 5 energy attached to it so Xatu can OHKO it. I don’t know if that’s realistic because Mewtwo EX can OHKO Xatu and Natus with 2-3 energy.

Exegguttor(HS) – Another flipping machine. I would go with Darmanitan over Exegguttor any day.

To be continued…

As I said, this is only the beginning. After this entry, I’ll be starting the real deck analysis with Mewtwo EX in them. All the entries will have various lists relating to the combo in the entry. I hope this gave you a little bit more in-depth point of view into Mewtwo EX and why it is so good. If you were looking a good Mewtwo EX counter, I also hope this helped you with that as well.

Anyways, let me know if you have any other requests about which cards would you liked to see along with Mewtwo EX that aren’t in the list of the beginning of this entry. I hope you enjoyed this entry and feel free to leave any comments, thoughts or questions about this entry. Thanks for reading!