How Mewtwo Broke the Pokemon Card Game 

There's one other thing worth noting - Mewtwo EX was the feature of its own tin. You could literally buy the thing reliably, so _everybody_ had one.

It's crazy that Mewtwo essentially took up 75% of top cut. We have a card in MTG called Ragavan thats taking up about 30% of the metagame in its format and people are literally begging for it to be banned.

DCE is a hell of a drug

Ik you touched on it in this vid but I'd like to see you do a deep dive into darkrai's reign of terror. It was dominant for 3-4 years and kept getting reprinted

It's worth noting that until the final BW set, all of the EX Pokémon were legendary Pokémon. So we *technically* didn't know that EX Pokémon would always be basic until right before the next generation.

DCE was the problem. There's a reason they made Twin and Double Turbo, and even those can still create problems.

I think Double-Colorless was the problem more than anything else. When it was first released it made Garchomp C LvX way too strong. Only for the problem to then shift to Mewtwo EX a year later.

It's crazy that Mewtwo EX got completely removed from the meta without an errata or even much power creep. It was still an awesome card, the meta was just incredibly hostile to it between competing EX cards that didn't stink like Darkrai and Keldeo, and Psychic type coverage becoming a bad type with how popular Darkrai was.

Mewtwo Wars, I still remember them like it was yesterday... Oh wow, were are the days. Time really flies!!

not gonna lie, this was my childhood era of pokemon tcg and i loved this deck. I won my locals with this deck at a solid 11 years old, was very fun.

Big basics, the cardinal sin of pokemon card design.

I liked the S&M era Gx card they felt more balanced than the EX era cards design also was getting better as well with the cards so they looked nice in collections as well

One thing to point out is that since scaling energy attacks are rare in the game, that double colorless energy counts as two energy for the purposes of attack effects and not just its cost.

I’ll take Mewtwo Wars over the kind of coin flip matchups we have now. Say what you will about the game back then but you could still win if you stumbled on turn 1 and 2. Nowadays if you don’t have a decent board and taking prizes on turn 2 your best bet is usually just picking it up and moving on to the next game and hope for the best.

This is literally the Modern Pokemon equivalent to Haymaker. I'm glad we're going back to lower case ex cards. As soon as the latter half of Sword And Shield rotates out, the game can heal.

Man this brought me back, as a pre-teen I stopped playing pokemon because it wasnt cool anymore and this was the era I got back into it when I was like 16-17ish and I have so much nostalgia for the ex era of pokemon cards. Played so much on ptcgo

Love the retro content!! TCG history feels like it’s missing from the current content stream. Big shoutout to you for keeping things fresh with these blasts from the past👌

ahh Mewtwo EX, I was already phasing out of Pokemon tcg when Gen 5 came around as most of the cards I had were rotated out but then when I was considering coming back we had Mewtwo EX, a card worth 80$ a pop and if you didn't run 4 then don't even bother playing, so that my Cue to not come back. Fast forward 2 generations, Sun & Moon is relatively new (they were at like set 3, burning shadows) and I buy a starter deck to at least get familiar with any rule change and go from there, go to a card shop that has local events and see what that's like, not actually enter or anything but to play a game or 2 see how deckbuilding changed and whatnot. Then what do I see? Tapu Lele GX which is Mewtwo EX but with a fetch supporter when played on top of it and of course when I checked to see its price the lowest price was 85$ a pop and everyone there had 4 with the fantastic advice of "if ya don't run 4 then don't bother". So yeah that was a quick "I'm in aaaaaaand I'm out" P.S. the prices I quoted here were in Canadian Dollar before anyone asks.

I remember playing Darkrai EX and destroying everyone at school. Much to my horror no one wanted to play with me anymore. You should definitely do a video on that card 😂

Mega Mewtwo Ex was my first deck right before Sun & Moon. I didn't know how strong the regular Ex was for its era.

Man right over the time period that I played. The best part is that running no pokemon but four Mewtwo EXwas a actual viable strat because that is what the metagame demanded. Because of that it meant the second attack also had some merit. Hope you do one about darkai/terrakian era. since I wasn't around for that takeover.

This is also not the last time we would hear about Mewtwo reigning, as Mega Mewtwo Y would be an upgrade to Mewtwo EX, with more damage and the same self-countering issue, albeit requiring more setup.

Making all of the strongest Pokemon big HP basics was a strange decision. It's no wonder that strategies compiled of just big basics and decks built to counter them dominted the game for years. The suit of disruptive trainer cards certainly didn't help either. There were just not good enough reasons to invest into an evolution that is weaker than the EX basics, takes up more deckspace, and can quite easily be disrupted with Pokemon Catcher and Hypnotoxic Laser. The switch to the GXs was in my opinion a good choice, multi prize Pokemon shouldn't be of just one evolution stage, more variety is better in my opinion.

Been hoping to see this one. Between this, Yveltal, and Darkrai, what a few years it was in the competitive TCG

Mewtwo EX was and still is a card I have a love-hate relationship with. I LOVED using it in my decks back in the day, since I could run it with basically anything and have great results. I hated it because my opponent could do the same. Battles against my brother usually came down to who managed to get Mewtwo EX set up the quickest, but running only 1 each meant it wasn't as frustrating to deal with.

TPCi seems to be leaning more into this type of thing, sadly. Every new set introduces a new BDIF that takes 20% of playshare and makes a ton of interesting builds non-viable. Not as bad as the reign of Mewtwo EX, but still frustrating for anyone who wants to see a diverse metagame.

Been playing the game for a long time and Mewtwo EX caused me to completely stop playing when it came out. Didn't come back until the Sun & Moon Era

Honestly looking back I don't even think Mewtwo's psychic weakness was a real issue. The only other weakness that would've made sense at the time was dark, and that would've made Darkrai all that more oppressive. Theoretically they could've given it a grass weakness to represent bug, but that would've likely just brought Shaymin EX into the spotlight more which would in turn also be easily answered by Darkrai with either Night Spear bench chip damage, Dark Claw, or laser bank once Plasma Storm came around. Mewtwo was always going to see high usage (especially during its first 3 months before Dark Explorers) due to how splashable it was being a big basic working off colorless energy, specifically DCE, and while the weakness to itself exacerbated the issue slightly I still think it's a pretty overblown aspect of the card's overall popularity/dominance.

Would I have banned Mewtwo EX? No, I would have banned DCE

"If you were to ask Pokemon TCG players what they enjoy about the Pokemon Card Game, they'd probably tell you things like battling with their favorite Pokemon..." I fail to see the problem here. ...but then again, I'm probably a little biased. (No but seriously, Mewtwo fans and fanatics have been extremely lucky with the Pokemon TCG. I learned proper strategy in playing the TCG from Movie Promo Mewtwo, and to have my favorite Pokemon be competitively viable right as Mewtwo Strikes Back came out was nothing short of amazing back then. Fast forwarding there was another wave of dominance with Mewtwo & Mew Tag Team GX...but this part in the middle, this era right here...as Mewtwo fans and referring to a chunk of the Mewtwo fanbase in general, we were in a serious mental funk at the time. That period between the beginning of 2008 and near the end of 2014 - the period of time when Super Smash Bros. Brawl's roster was shown to be final, and Mewtwo wasn't there...and Super Smash Bros. WiiU/3DS showed that Mewtwo would be added in the future as DLC...we NEEDED this. I realize that the game was healthier overall for this having been power crept out of dominance, but seeing the game have that period of time where you played Mewtwo, countered Mewtwo (with other Mewtwo), or lost...it was a victory of sorts, and gave us some hope that we hadn't been forgotten about. Thanks for giving me some nostalgia to one of the things that kept our corner of the Pokemon world going until our big guy got invited back into the living video game hall of fame that is Smash.)

I would say that the 2010-pre worlds 2011 was the pinnacle of this game. Maybe even of any game. Its truly unfortunate that after it has been in steep decline Here's to wish that the upcoming years would regain even some of the deep gameplay of the 2010 year

Dude, those videos are perfect! Love to visit the history of the Pokémon TCG, keep up the great work!

I had one Mewtwo Ex I got in a trade in 2016-ish, and it was the joy of my childhood to annihilate older teenagers. Didn't know about the metagame, but it makes perfect sense.

My deck from that era also had darkrais and a Mewtwo EX. So you certainly have a point with that. I was in middle school the last time I played an irl tournament but I had used mostly evolution pokemon and a balanced 20:20:20 set up. But the fact i included a Mewtwo EX for opponents' mewtwos is certainly something.

I'm saying this now because I used to do a competitively. Mewtwo was a breath of fresh air as there was no counter play previously to a lot of nonsense. And the fact that you just needed a Mewtwo to counter play a lot of the EX Pokemon was a godsend. But in doing so it created its own meta because it needed to be that strong to deal with a lot of the ex cards.

I was playing back in the day. When next destinies drops shit went wild and then Darkrai EX came and became a even more dominant, at least no "Darkrai wars" happened

Fantastic editing and production value. Thanks for the hard work. This is the exact era I got back into the tcg initially for.

I played the Pokémon tcg for the first time when this, Keldeo ex and Darkrai were dominant. I have not played since.

My fondest memory of Mewtwo EX was splashing it into my TCG Online deck. Someone talked crap about me using it, so I proceeded to win without touching it on my bench, granted I did use X-Ball with Mew EX once. As a Mew fan, Mew EX made for a great, and cheap, TCGO ladder counter for Mewtwo EX since Mew EX could turn your opponents X-Ball against them and hit Mewtwo EX for weakness. Granted the poor thing was one-shot far too easily at 50 HP, but it was still fun.

I really liked the Mewtwo EX deck, was the reason I came back to play pokemon

5th Gen's EX mechanic is what fundamentally shifted the game to be about Big Basics and it has never really recovered. My friends and I banned Rule-Box Cards as a way to go back to playing the game how it should be played, with real tradeoffs between evolutions and basics.

People were getting into fist fights at my locals over Darkrai Ex and Mewtwo Ex.

I was much younger back then, maybe middle school aged. I remember always losing to that card because I just didn't have one. Went online to see if anyone else had a strategy and was surprised to see active discussion about it. Needless to say, I tried Siglyph but since I was still a kid and didn't know much about good deck building, I just had the 1 card and had to hope I drew into it haha

I have 1 copy in the TCGO and won some friendlies with my friends due to abusing the ball cards to dig through my deck for it ... now to dig through my login credentials for the nostalgia...

i can remember pulling a mewtwo ex at the next destinies pre-release i went to, and the guy running the event, offered me an entire unopened box of the next destinies set! I turned him down on his offer, saying that while it was a generous offer, i didn't feel confident that i would find another one. i wasn't the only one that day to get mewtwo ex. and the same guy made the same deal with the other chap. this chap excepted the offer, and we all watched him as he blasted through the entire box! Funny story... his box didn't have a single mewtwo ex in it! not one. i felt somewhat relieved by that!

I remember trying to pull for this in tcgo

>Mewtwo being so overpowered that everything revolves around it. RBY Ubers: First time?

Say what you will, darkrai was a hell of a skilltesting mirror

That’s funny to me that mewtwo was OP my brother and i got the duel boxes with mewtwo and a darkrai as our first Pokémon and I always stomped him with darkrai

All I remember is the extreme cost of this one card.

DCE was the problem. Almost every deck ran it and if you were running it you might as well run some mewtwo as well.

It’s funny that x ball is such a useless move now, it’s literally on mew v (a basic ultra rare) and nobody uses it

i remember getting the tin for this card when i was a kid and using that mewtwo to destroy my brother lmao we weren’t even playing the game right

Mewtwo Ex was a force to be recon with until turbo Darkrai came out 😊

Bruh, this channel is single-handedly making me want to get into Pokémon TCG

0:13 good god where are their card sleeves this ad causes me pain. I bet they bridge shuffle their decks too.

Love these types of videos. Would love to see more. Great vid

I made a energy control deck with 4 team yell grunts and crushing hammers. With Palkia Gx. And intelleon vmax

Even in the TCG, Mewtwo still reign supreme albeit for a short time

so what you're saying, is that Mewtwo started it. lol, great video as always

1. Weakness to itself AND damage scaling/punishment with GENERIC energy accel (dce and every other type) meant everyone wanted at least one no matter what meta deck they played 2. The non-Mewtwo Next Destinies EXes were all subpar by comparison, as was the trend through the B/W EX blocks (one chase card and a supporting cast of set filler EXes) 3. Immediately succeeding sets introduced one clear frontrunner EX that was on-par with Mewtwo to the point of building decks around them along with more supporting EXes with cool abilities that were healthier In hindsight Mew-EX from DRX was the ideal poster-child for a healthy EX Era where Mewtwo-EX was released later in the BW EX block. Delaying Mewtwo even one set into Dark Explorers or DRX as a trade-off would have given half a year of play time with Mew's Adaptability and Darkrai vs Terrakion formats, even letting things like BW Klinklang shine some more without forcing Mewtwo wars immediately. Timing Mewtwo's release at the beginning of the EX block meant that it was the gold standard from day one, and was always a viable option until it rotated years later. Timing Mewtwo's release later in a format that already had two or three truly viable alternatives or non-mirror threats would have made a healthier release, but realistically TPCi needed cash BADLY after the back to back stinker sets of NVI and EPO and Mewtwo was the fastest surefire solution.

As someone who's getting back to the games and stuff, I'm surprised that there's no strong card with "prevent all effects of attacks, including damage, done to this pokemon by the opponent's EX" kinda like what you have in SwSh with Decidueye and Miltank (also I'm surprised there's only these two) for Vs.

Dark-Armed Mewtwo 😳

This is a great video! Thank you for Sharing!!!

X ball came back in Mew V just that it’s 30* instead of 20*

If EX pokemon generally were broken then Shaymin, Kyurem, Zekrom, and Reshiram EX should've also been boken on release.

i think you could also attack on turn one back then, that didnt help at all

I own 4 of these cards because I was absolutely destroyed by a ten year old with a deck that used this card. It scarred me...

Next Destinies Mewtwo EX and Dark Explorers Darkrai EX owned the B&W era

It still befuddles me that they didn't fix psychic being weak to itself until Sword&Shield

Why don't we have DCE anymore? this guys why. then they printed another one with Yveltal woooooooow and they were legal together! (can't remember for how long but I know Mewtwo was in Legendary Treasures and then got an XY promo with Mew, also tcg mew can go stuff itself I sure love copy graveyard).

sounds like the format now with lugia running rampant

I've loved pokemon all my life (I'm 22) and I collected the cards but I'm just now getting into how to play. I had a Mewtwo EX but I've never been fond of Legendaries other than Darkrai and Giratina just because I think relying on Legendaries is kinda a "no skill/easy win" type of play style. So my big question for a new tcg player...is there any LV X or EX cards that would be viable in today's tcg meta? Specifically LV X because I had an Arceus LV X and my friends and I kinda made our own rule (which weren't to far off from the official rules) and I smashed with Arceus LV X and Raichu LV X. Cause Raichu is my fav pokemon so I had a few😅

With Mewtwo being the most broken Pokemon in the original games... Figured it'd also be the most broken Pokemon card lol

It seems like the introduction of EX which were all basics was the beginning of the downfall for TCG. Admittedly it didn't happen immediately, as I found the XY era still had a lot of fun options for single-prizer decks, and the Mega evolution rule helped to keep Mega EX cards in check. But as things currently are, it's quite rare to see stage 2 pokemon used much unless they have a very specific support ability (such as shady dealings). V, Vmax and Vstar are so powerful and fast that out-with casual play on PTCGO or TCG Live, stage 2 pokemon or even just single prize decks in general are almost completely unviable anywhere. Even then, in more casual matches it is difficult to get a decent W/L ratio with decks that don't centre around pokemon V. Admittedly it was even worse when ADP was in standard, but it's not much better just now. With much more emphasis on the stage 1 and 2 pokemon in DPP and early BW, it looked way more fun to play, with longer and more involved matches. I really wish I had played the game in those days.

i loved using that card. basically a cheat code lmao

I played a similar yveltal ex deck

I want to be buried with my playset of HGSS Double Colorless Energy

Still less toxic than Mew VMAX and Lugia VSTAR

Big basic gang

Banger video

I HAD THIS CARDDDD

as a non pokemon player, what is this shift of design you are talking about exactly ?

I don't know about anyone else but I find the shake transition between shots in this video extremely distracting

And the 2023 ex cards are the same as the ones 10 years prior

Lol half the time I just ran 56 psychic energy and four mewtwo ex. Lol 80% of the time it worked every time.

Just looking at this format, it feels like something I would've dug because I prefer quick games over long ones. It's why I dropped the game during Gen 7, and won't be surprised if Gen 9 does the same thing. A 10 minute game with back and forth between strong basic Pokemon and utility Basic/Stage 1 mons feels much more fun than a 20-30 minute slog of trying to reach your Stage 2s and finding that many pieces in your deck at a time. Speaking from experience playing some 2008-era PTCG with Zach Lesage, a single game took over an hour and it was absolutely miserable.

i have a signed version of mewtwo ex

Nah, it's fine. FluffyChomp eviscerated Mewtwo EX. One of many reasons it was my deck of choice at the time.

Is Mewtwo ex rare irl? I have that card

How do you find these deck lists

Ayo I have a jumbo card of this laying around

Mewtwo was supposed to be that good as all of his cards should be.

dce is a card that seems too be different for pokemon to balance and it’s a shame their solution has just been its removal

I dont even play the Pokemon tcg and just reading the Mewtwo X ball skill had me going "Yup thats broken as fuck 😅" Seriously why would someone make something like this? It looks like a move designed to punish to for playing the game as it was intended

No wonder celebrations brought it back

When that card was costing 70$

Ah Mewtwo EX the card that priced me out of the game

DeathXmon In digimon bt9-ex03😂

Well it's wasn't and it won't cause no one plays it. More people play flesh n blood than pokemon. Pokemon does sell way more tho cause people just collect