It’s Time to Talk Mew (Again)
Hello everyone! As the Silver Tempest/Crown Zenith format finally draws to a close, Lugia VSTAR remains as dominant as ever. Many people are already looking towards rotation, but for competitive players, there’s still a few events left in this format. This may be my final article about this format, though.
At the recent Vancouver Regionals, I wanted to play Mew VMAX / Aerodactyl VSTAR, but my testing group as a whole decided to go with vanilla Lugia. I wanted to try out Lugia at a tournament at least once, but I felt that Mew was the better play. I went 7-1-1 in Day 1, but I had a miserable Day 2. That’s neither here nor there, but my one loss in Day 1 was against Mew / Aerodactyl.
When Xander Pero first unveiled Aerodactyl VSTAR, I thought it was just a bad gimmick. I’ve always been critical of how Mew lists are built, and this was no exception. However, after a bit of time, I have come around on the deck. Not only do I think it’s the right way to play Mew, but I think it’s the right way to play the format.
The reason for this is Lugia’s dominance. Lugia has no bad matchups, except for Aerodactyl. In other words, Mew with Aerodactyl is the only real deck in the game that has a positive Lugia matchup.
When Mew goes first, it can fairly consistently get the turn-two Ancient Star attack, winning the game immediately. The only major impediment to this is when Aerodactyl VSTAR is prized, which is only a ten percent chance. (Hisuian Heavy Ball can retrieve the Basic Aerodactyl V from the Prize cards if needed.) In any case, even when Lugia goes first, it has to draw the absolute nuts in order to win. Lugia is not very consistent and, as such, does not often draw the absolute nuts. If Lugia only sets up one Archeops, Mew will swiftly KO it and checkmate them. Lugia must go first and get the full combo on exactly turn two. If it whiffs, Ancient Star seals up the game. The numbers greatly favor Mew here.
I mentioned that I originally thought Aerodactyl was bad, but I think my problem was with the traditional lists at the time rather than Aerodactyl itself. Since Aerodactyl seems like a gimmick, I attributed my disdain of the list to it alone. However, I’ve come around on it because it is what swings the Lugia matchup. This attribute is the most important thing you can possibly have in this format.
I’ve never been a fan of multiple Path to the Peak and Lost Vacuum in Mew, because the hand disruption gimmick severely hinders the consistency of the deck. Mew’s explosiveness and consistency allow it to straight-up beat other decks either by bullying them with hyper-aggressiveness or by consistently applying Aerodactyl’s Ancient Star on turn two as a win condition. In other words, cards that not only don’t help Mew with its aforementioned win conditions, but actively hinder the deck as well, make no sense at all. I’ll elaborate upon this shortly, but let’s look at my current list first:
This concludes the public portion of this article.
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