Celebi Prime (Triumphant TM 92) – Card of the Day

pokebeach.comToday’s Card of the Day is Celebi Prime from Triumphant. It’s a Basic, 60 HP Grass-type. Being Grass isn’t too bad at the moment, but a Fire weakness is bad with Emboar being released so soon. Having 60 HP is never a good thing. A Retreat Cost of one is better than anything higher than one.

Celebi’s Poké-power, “Forest Breath”, allows you to attach one Grass energy from your hand to one of your Pokémon, as long as Celebi is your active Pokémon. That’s… really not that great. It could make for a decent starter in a Grass deck, but there are probably better candidates out there.

Its only attack, “Time Circle”, for an awkward GPC, does 30 damage. Don’t stop reading! It also prevents all damage done to Celebi by your opponent’s Stage 1 or Stage 2 Pokémon next turn. It’s somewhat reminiscent of Umbreon Prime’s Moonlight Fang, although much more expensive.

There’s a few reasons why this is a really good effect. First of all, Pokémon SP are going to lose popularity or perhaps be rotated altogether, so the majority of decks will use Stage 1 or Stage 2 Pokémon. Second, since it’s not “The defending Pokémon”, your opponent won’t be able to switch twice to bypass the effect. They’ll have to use a basic to deal any significant amount of damage, and most basics – at least, HGSS-on basics – don’t do much damage.

Unfortunately, the attack doesn’t protect you from Pokémon LEGEND’s attacks, and there are still a few hard-hitting basics that will be prominent even in a HGSS-on format (Absol Prime, Mew Prime, Reshiram, Zekrom).

It could have potential in any deck that has an unfavorable matchup against Stage-1 or Stage-2 decks, although requiring 2 different types of energy hurts it. It’d be a hilarious tech in Machamp, forcing your opponents to make really tough decisions about what to use to attack.

Other than that, there’s not much to be said about Celebi Prime. The Umbreon-style Timetravel Pokémon’s inadequate Poké-power and cost-ineffective attack earns it a 1.5/5.

Reader Interactions

10 replies

  1. Anonymous

    My first inclination would be to put this in a psychic deck with a Rainbow Energy. However, that 10 damage will leave only 50hp left. There are too many options for hitting 50 damage, even in the next format.

  2. Anonymous

    i think 1.5 is a little low. his ability is decent in a few rogue decks like garchomp c. also a player at my league ran in a deck we call the iphone. it had a few cards to counter all big decks. like the iphone “there’s an app for that”. so he played against a gyrados and didnt drop any bench and just left a belted celebi up. and he time circledf the entire game and won:)

    • Sam W  → Anonymous

      It may seem low, but it’s an SP-dominated format. Sableye also exists, and while on the bench its hobbies include getting sniped and giving away free prizes

  3. nilay patel

    Hmm. Nice rating. Never thought about machamp deck with this dude.

  4. Martin Garcia

    The rating is a bit low, and the 60 hp is really a bad stat, but paired up with garchomp C makes a sniping machine, i won a few tournaments beating luxchomps with that.
    It will be better next format, when sp is gone tough.

  5. Sam Stevens

    shaymin lv.x ground form + expert belt + snowpoint temple gives celebi 140hp, it deals 50dmg due to belt and cant be dmg’d by any evolved pokemon… besides SP and fire-types thats a huge thing to get through, seeing as how your using shaymin x you can use shaymin UL to transfer the energy between celebi’s to have a constant stream of them, or swap the energy to mewtwo lv.x if playing SP, if celebi’s colorless energy in attack cost is psychic then that pays all of mewtwo x’s giga burn aswell as mewtwo gets snowpoint boost to 140hp (160hp with belt)

  6. Colin Peterik

    I agree that 1.5 is a little low. This guy is theoretically amazing with Garchomp C and Warp Energy, Unown Q, etc… He is the biggest cog in the sniping assembly line!

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