Ancient Mew & Birthday Pikachu

[dmon2]

I read these cards were banned from play. If they are, why? If they're not, were they ever?

[BJJ763]

Yes they are banned from Organized play.

Ancient Mew because there is no readable equivalent.

______'s Pikachu because it gives an unfair advantage to someone who just happens to have a birthday the day of the tournament. It also creates birthday verification problems.

[dmon2]

When it was released as a promo through some event back in the day, though, a translation of what it can do was also made available. Whatever happened to that?

[BrocktheRock]

how does ____'s pikachu give an unfair advantage, an advantage yes but unfair? i mean that's wut the card does ppl shuld b able to use it to their advantage

[PokePop]

It's unfair because the advantage is not available to all people on any given date.
Someone who just happens to have their birthday on the same day as a big tournament would be able to make better use of it than anyone else.

[InterFed_OV]

I read somewhere that ________'s Pikachu was banned because people cheated and said it was their birthday when it wasn't so they could get the damage boost.

[PokePop]

No, I'm not aware of that.
It might have happened, but I don't think it factored into the decision.
The card was banned from the day it was released.
In fact, if you look at the original Japanese card, you will see little white text (in Japanese) saying that it cannot be played in ttournaments.

[YaBakura]

I never understood why they didn't just make a tournament rule for the Pikachu saying, "You can't use the coin-flip effect at all." That way the card would be useable.

Ancient Mew, though, is obviously illegal. The card back is different, and the card isn't in English. By the way,

Name: Mew
HP: 30
Attack: Psyche, 40
Text below picture: New Specie, Little God... or Evil
Weakness: Psychic
Resistance: none
Retreat Cost: 2

It was pretty fun to translate.