Carnivine – Triumphant Light
Date Reviewed: March 23, 2025
Ratings Summary:
Ratings are based on a 1 to 5 scale. 1 is horrible. 3 is average. 5 is great.
Reviews Below:
Otaku
Note: I (Otaku), misread the schedule I wrote for today, and reviewed the wrong card. Which led to this page going live with no review, before I noticed my error and wrote the following article. My apologies to those who came here before then and were disappointed.
Carnivine (A2a 009) is a Basic, Grass Pokémon with 80 HP, (R) Weakness, (C) Retreat Cost, the Ability “Power Link”, and the attack “Vine Whip”. When you have at least one card named “Arceus” and/or “Arceus ex” on your side of the field, Power Link says to increase the damage of attacks from this Carnivine, done to the opponent’s Active Pokémon, by 30. Vine Whip costs (G), and let’s Carnivine do 20 damage to the opposing Active. Carnivine is only available as a ♦♦♦ rare.
Being a Basic is the best; Carnivine requires no extra cards or turns to be put into play. Celestic Town Elder (A2a 073, 088), the attack on Combee (A2 017), and Poké Ball (P-A 005) give you the chance to randomly add a Basic to your hand from the discard pile (Celestic Elder) or your deck (the latter two). Shaymin (A2a 069, 081) has an Ability that reduces the Retreat Cost of all your in-play Basic Pokémon by (C) while it is on your Bench.
Yes, there are anti-Basic effects as well; Pokémon Flute (A1a 064) lets your opponent Bench a Basic Pokémon of their choice from your discard pile, while Victreebel (A1 020) has an Ability that, while it is Active, lets you force an opposing, Benched Basic into the opponent’s Active spot, once during the Victreebel player’s turn. Out of all of these, Poké Ball and Shaymin are the only ones who see consistent, successful competitive play.
The Grass Type has a lot going for it. Caterpie (A1 005) has an attack that adds a random (G) Pokémon from your deck to your hand. Erika (A1 219, 266) can heal up to 50 damage from any one of your Grass Pokémon. Leafeon (A2a 010, 082, 091) has an Ability that, while Leafeon ex itself is your Active, lets you attach an extra (G) Energy to one of your (G) Pokémon.
Lilligant (A1 030) can attack to attach an extra (G) Energy as well. Serperior (A1a 006, 070) has an Ability that causes all (G) Energy attached to (G) Pokémon to provide count as double. Out of these, Erika is probably the only one that will matter to Carnivine, but with this and the Basic effects paragraphs, I wanted to be thorough, since I hadn’t been for a while.
80 HP is good for a non-evolving Basic Pokémon. It’ll take at least three “heads” on a Misty (A1 220, 267) and having one of the better, Basic Water Type attackers as their Active, for an opponent to score a Turn 1 donk. Turn 2 is a little riskier, but you’re out of range of most (if not all) non-Misty donk tactics that I can remember right now. By your opponent’s second or third turn, though, you’re definitely in OHKO territory, but at least light attacks will still fall short.
(R) Weakness is a minor problem, given your HP. Moltres ex (A1 047, 255, 274; P-A 025) gets a OHKO it just barely was missing. As a reminder, it’s usually attacking to accelerate Energy and it costs Moltres ex three Energy to do this. Similarly, various evolving Basics and Stage 1 Pokémon, as well as supporting attacks on “bigger” hitters, can move into OHKO range… but by the time they can, you’re already expecting Carnivine to be OHKO. Carnivine has a (C) Retreat Cost. This is great! If you must pay it, it’s on the affordable end of things. Leaf (A1a 068, 082), X Speed (P-A 002) or the aforementioned Shaymin all zero this out cost out.
Power Link is an amazing Ability. Is it possible for it to go to waste? Absolutely. I mean, slap it on something that cannot do damage, or cannot do damage effectively, or that doesn’t need the damage buff, and congrats, you’ve just squandered Power Link. Otherwise, you’ve got an Ability that offers triple the damage buff provided by Giovanni (A1 223, 270), and all it requires is having Arceus ex (A2a 071, 086, 095, 096) or Arceus (A2a 070) in play. We’ll come back to that…
…but first is Carnivine’s attack, Vine Whip. Priced at just (G). It only does 20 damage, but with the Ability, that becomes 50! I was going to point out it’d be more inline to cost (C), but then I remembered how Arceus ex decks tend to work. 50 for one, often on Turn 2, is great! Even though Carnivine isn’t likely to last long, it can shoot for an early lead, in damage dealing if not in points. It’d be pretty nuts if it could easily work with any Energy Type (and thus any partners) in the deck.
There is one other Carnivine. Carnivine (A2 019, 158) has 10 more HP, but otherwise has the same stats as today’s Carnivine. Carnivine (A2 019, 158) has no Ability, and still has only one attack. “Flog” costs (G)(G)(C) and does 40 damage, plus it has you flip a coin. If “tails”, nothing changes, but if “heads”, then Flog does +50 damage, or 90 total. 90-for-three on a Basic is pretty good, but 40-for-three is not. Don’t worry about mixing the two, or needing to run this version instead of today’s.
Okay, now let’s talk about Arceus and Arceus ex. The former is “okay”; if we ever get a reason to not run Arceus ex instead, baby1 Arceus is a solid meatshield. If we had Energy acceleration that worked for it but not for Arceus ex, that might help as well, as baby Arceus attack would go from mediocre to good, or at least decent.
Arceus ex, as the link earlier shows, is the star of multiple decks. The most notable is when it is paired with Dialga ex (A2 119, 188, 205, 207), to make the only Top Tier deck in the metagame right now. At least, according to Pokémon Zone, to whom I am deferring. Fortunately for us, but unfortunately for Carnivine, it isn’t likely worth it to run both (M) and (G) Energy just to enjoy Carnivine’s hard-hitting open.
According to LimitlessTCG, Carnivine, backed by Arceus ex, is one of the better decks right now. Not amazing, but good. On the exact day I’m writing this, the deck has a 50.59% Win Rate, and a meta share of 1.43% with 480 instances of it recorded in competitive play. There’s also a build for it listed over at Pokémon Zone. Don’t get excited, for once I’m using the same link twice in one article, because Arceus ex/Carnivine is a bit buried among the other lists.
The concept is simple; pack some solid, Basic, single Energy attackers alongside Arceus ex. The Basics soften up the opponent while you manually build Arceus ex on your Bench. Ideally, they’ll take a point or two before Arceus ex goes for the win. Rotom (A2 035) and the Retreat Cost-lowering Shaymin are also usually in the deck. I even saw at least one successful list using baby Arceus, which makes me happier than it should.
Rating: 3.25/5
I’m tempted to rank Carnivine higher, but I’m not seeing it show up in other Arceus ex decks, or at least, the ones that are doing well. When I first saw the various “Link” Abilities, I thought they’d be more inclined to overlap, but most of the ones that might be a little too good, seem to require too much deck space or not the right Energy to play well with the others.
I do wonder what might happen if anti-Ability effects are introduced to Pocket. They’re often but not always present in the full TCG’s metagame…
1In this case, “baby” is just the easy way to refer to the non-ex form of a popular Pokémon ex, as it is sometimes used in the full TCG. As opposed to how it is used, officially and unofficially, for certain full TCG mechanics, or in the video games.
We would love more volunteers to help us with our Card of the Day reviews. If you want to share your ideas on cards with other fans, feel free to drop us an email. We’d be happy to link back to your blog / YouTube Channel / etc. 😉 Click here to read our Pokémon Card of the Day Archive. We have reviewed nearly 5000 Pokémon cards over the last 25 + years!