Celebi Prism Star – Lost Thunder Pokemon Review

Otaku

Celebi {*} is… a Prism Star Pokémon!

…

Yes, I need to point this out, as it means its name isn’t he same as “Cebeli”, “Shining Celebi”, etc.  It means that when Celebi {*} would go to your discard pile for any reason, it is instead sent to the Lost Zone.  It also means you may run only zero or one copy of Celebi {*} in a deck.  It probably won’t ever matter, but this also means it can’t feed the Lost March attack found on certain Pokémon, Wobbuffet (SM – Lost Thunder 93/214) can prevent it from attacking via its Ability, though only while Wobuffet is on your Bench.  Lisia lets you add up to two Prism Star cards from your deck to your hand, assuming you can spare your Supporter for the turn.

Celebi {*} is a Grass type.  This isn’t good when it comes to exploiting Weakness or avoiding Resistance, though the type does have some decent pieces of support.  Celebi {*} is a Basic Pokémon, so it is fast and efficient.  90 HP is low and easy to OHKO, but it actually could be much worse.  [R] Weakness gives you a taste of that, as it means a [R] attacker just needs to do 50 damage for the OHKO.  Fire Weakness is pretty bad to have right now, though the HP limits the impact.  No Resistance is the worst, but it is also the most common and wouldn’t make much of a difference if it were present.  A Retreat Cost of [C] is low; besides using switching effects, you can likely afford the Retreat Cost or easily zero it out.

Celebi {*} knows two attacks.  For [C] it can use “Time Distortion”, an unusual attack; it lets you devolve any number of your own Benched Pokémon, including devolving the same one more than once.  Normally, devolving is a bad thing; you risk your Pokémon being KO’d if their max HP drops too low, and you’ll have to wait until your next turn to re-evolve… giving your opponent time to then shuffle your hand away!  So, why do it?  There are Pokémon with coming-into-play effects, especially when it happens with the entire line such as with Galarian Zigzagoon, Galarian Linoone, and Galarian Obstagoon.  Time Distortion is a very specialized, but potent in its area, attack.

For [G], Celebi {*} can also use “Leech Seed” to do 20 damage while healing 20 from itself.  Which would be lacking even if it was on something like a beefy Pokémon V, but is near worthless on something so small.  So Celebi {*} is all about its first attack and I can’t say I’ve seen many current, competitive decks running it.  Of course, with time of the essence, my typical resource for checking such things is down, so I’m going by memory.  I think a few decks experimented with it, to spam certain coming-into-play effects, but it just wasn’t worth it.  Time Distortion really needs to be an Ability, not an attack.

Ratings

• Standard: 1/5
• Expanded: 1/5
• Limited: 1/5

Celebi {*} received a review just because I wanted to cover all the Prism Star cards.  Maybe we’ll get some killer combo for it eventually, but devolving all your own stuff right before your opponent’s turn is dangerous in all Formats, even if you’re hoping to exploit it on your next turn.