Celebi & Venusaur-GX – Pokemon Team Up Review

Vince

Celebi and Venusaur GX isn’t an unusual pairing, as it shares the same type in the TCG. Both Venusaur and Celebi could be Grass or Psychic (although we have yet to see a Psychic typed Venusaur despite being part Poison in the games). Both also have the ability to manipulate nature, and if you still don’t get it, well you’ll have to look at various origins from those Pokémon.

Lore and Legend aside, this is a Tag Team GX card. It gets the usual baggage of having considerable high HP and a GX attack, but gives up three prizes if its knocked out and you’ll have to deal with various anti-GX cards along the way. They are also a Basic Pokémon, which makes it easy to be put into play and takes the minimal deck slot. Anti-Basic card’s exists for both Standard and Expanded, but they’re few and far between. The grass typing allows you to exploit weakness found on Water or Fighting types, as well as having some type specific support from Net Ball, Gardenia, or Life Forest. 270 HP is the second highest printed on the TCG, though the Fire weakness can still pose problems; Blacephalon-GX only needs three energies to OKHO them via Mind Blown. The retreat cost of CCCC is hefty, but it also enables Buff Padding to increase its HP by 50, making them have 320 HP.

Celebi and Venusaur-GX has three attacks. Pollen Hazard costs GCC for 50 damage, as well as placing three Special Conditions: Burned, Poisoned, and Confused. Three damage counters in between turns will guarantee to happen due to two from Burn and one from Poison. Confusion is kinda iffy, you may buy yourself a turn and place 3 more damage counters on the affected Defending Pokémon or your opponent can simply switch to a different Pokémon. Burn can sometimes go away if your opponent flipped heads. So the only guaranteed constant special condition is Poison unless – again – your opponent Defending Pokemon switches out or leaves play. There’s a reason why a Pokémon cannot be Asleep, Paralyzed, and Confused at the same time; those Special Conditions replaces each other when you try to inflict another Special Condition; only Poison and Burn stays. All in all, this is a good starting attack for these Pokémon. Solar beam costs GGCC for 150 damage, which isn’t the most exciting attack out there, but it cleanly 2HKOs anything in the game, and even OHKO Magikarp & Wailord-GX for easy three prizes. Add in Choice Band and Shrine of Punishment, and 190 damage will help you OHKO most Basic EX/GX Pokemon in the card pool.

Evergreen GX costs GGCC for 180 damage and heals all damage from this Pokémon. Additionally, if these Pokémon have one extra Grass Energy attached to it, acting like GGGCC, then you shuffle all cards from your discard pile onto your deck. This effect is very worthy of a GX attack, because the aspect of getting everything back goes as far as Lysandre’s Trump Card. Lysandre Trump Card gives both players everything back from the discard pile to their deck except for Lysandre’s Trump Card. Despite excluding itself, VS Seeker recovers that card, creating an endless loop on both players not decking out, eliminating a win condition. That Supporter card was deemed unhealthy and was banned mid to late 2015. By putting this awesome effect as a GX attack, you get to benefit from this effect once per game, and that also locks you from using other GX attacks. Still, you can ease your worries about wasting resources, but once you used up Evergreen, you have to actually mind what you’re using and the consequences following it.

Putting it all together, how do we use them? Looking at Limitless, only one deck made a showing and was placed 69th place. Ryne Morgan took that deck to Collinsville Illinois Regional. The deck was best described as straight Celebi & Venusaur, because it runs a full four count of these Pokémon. Shaymin was there to heal an Active Grass Pokemon by 20, and that ability can stack dependent on how many Shaymins in play. I’m not certain what Shaymin Prism Star is used for, but I guess it’s an alternate attacker. But with just six Grass energy, Flower Storm can do 180 damage at most. No energy acceleration support was used. Aether Paradise is for tanking attacks; Life Forest for healing; Wondrous Labyrinth for disruption. Buff Padding is even in there and so is Gardenia and Potion for healing. Yes, Potion! An outclassed item sees play!!! Even more disruption cards are present such as Enhanced Hammer, Crushing Hammer, and Plumeria for energies. I realized I went into this deck too far, but that’s how this Tag Team card would be used. They act similar to Wailord based decks in which they capitalize on their enormous HP. I’ve seen players trying to make it work with Venusaur from Shining Legends or Vikavolt from Sun & Moon, but didn’t really pan out.

So Standard already has a place for Celebi & Venusaur-GX, but how about Expanded? Like most cards, they got more to work with but with even more counters than in Standard. Max Elixir might be its saving grace for these Pokémon’s expensive attacks. In Limited, if you pulled one, then you can easily work it to a +39 deck.

Ratings:

• Standard: 3/5
• Expanded: 3/5
• Limited: 4.5/5

Conclusion:

Although I wanted to rate this less than a 3 due to current popular archetypes keeping them in check (I would’ve did 2.5/5 in both formats), Celebi & Venusaur isn’t without merit. Once you know how to utilize them, it becomes a sturdier Pokemon which frustrates many decks not named Fire.

aroramage

I think it’s only fair for me to start this review out by saying, although it would’ve been inevitable for HP scores to get higher, I can appreciate the concept of what they were going for, as well as the balance of it, but looking at the general overview of how Tag Team GX are meant to work, it’s hard to garner appeal for them at the moment. As of this review, there are 6 Tag Team-GX in the game, and we’ve taken a look at 3 of them so far. Course naturally there are more on the way, but I’m not going to talk about them right now cause they’re not relevant to today’s review.

Celebi & Venusaur-GX is a Basic Grass Pokemon Tag Team-GX, 270 HP, with a Fire Weakness, no Resistance, and a Retreat Cost of 4. Pollen Hazard is a 3-for-50 move that throws up a bunch of Status Conditions on their Active Pokemon – Burned, Confused, Poisoned, Sniffling, Sneezing, Coughing, Sore Throat, the works. Solar Beam then is a 4-for-150 that lets you stand up on the table and wildly cry out in a loud voice while raising your arms above your head at 45″ angles, “PRAISE THE SUN!!” Chances are a good portion of you got that.

Evergreen GX though is a 4-for-180 that showcases the Tag Team-GX’s main gimmick. The attack heals off all damage from Celebi & Venusaur-GX, but then if you have 1 extra Grass Energy attached – in addition to what you’re using for the attack itself – you get to shuffle all your cards in the discard pile back into your deck. Naturally this will not include any <Prism> cards in your Lost Zone, so keep that in mind, we wouldn’t want you trying to shuffle those back in by mistake.

Here’s my thing about Tag Team-GX’s mechanics: they require a LOT of Energy to get going. Evergreen-GX needs 5 Energy in total to do all of its effects, and ideally you want to be using all of the effects of the attack you can only use once per game. It’s not hard to see why this would be a problem in Expanded, where there are several Pokemon who will absolutely prey upon you for having so much Energy, so the bigger question is how they’ll impact Standard. And the long and short of it is, if there are Pokemon that can take advantage of such large amounts of Energy for relatively cheap, they would rise up against these Tag Team-GX easily, and it doesn’t matter how many HP more you have if you can be taken down in 2-3 hits anyway. And that’s not even TOUCHING on how these guys cost you 3 PRIZES when they get KO’d.

Pikachu & Zekrom-GX shows the most promise so far, having seen tournament success and having a pair of attacks that work towards each other, even though they’d require 6 Energy in total to get the most out of their GX Attack. Magikarp & Wailord-GX has the fattest stat of 300 HP but are otherwise too costly to make work reasonably. And while Eevee & Snorlax-GX has some good aspects to it, it’s not on the same level as this card or Pikachu & Zekrom-GX. 

I’d be waiting to hear how there’s a Hammer-based deck involving Celebi & Venusaur-GX that could prevent the opponent from doing much while dishing out heaping loads of Statuses and finishing them off with Solar Beam, and if things get dicey just healing off all the damage while shuffling everything back, but it’s hard to say whether that would be practical in today’s game. There are some advantages and some major disadvantages in Expanded to work around, but we’ll see if the heavy-set tactics of Celebi & Venusaur-GX can match up to raw Lightning power.

Rating

Standard: 3.5/5 (there are some perks, but I can’t say if it’ll ever be good enough)

Expanded: 2/5 (I feel I have to rate it much lower, just because the speed of its attacks is slower and does less overall)

Limited: 5/5 (no question about it though, if you get it here, you run that guy)

Arora Notealus: Having Pokemon Team-Up is a really neat concept, and it reminds me a little of the Legend cards, only it doesn’t require you to play 2 cards at once to work it out. I can understand the reluctance to make these guys powerful right away though, since we’ve seen what happens when the power creep hits really hard before, so it’ll be a while before we see some particularly powerful Tag Team-GX.

Weekend Thought: What cards from Team Up have gotten you excited? Have you tried out some of this week’s cards? Do you think they can be put into your decks? What are your thoughts on the Tag Team-GX mechanic? Are they worth running at their current status, or are they unplayable? What team-ups are you looking forward to potentially having on a GX card?

Otaku

We close out the week with Celebi & Venusaur-GX (SM – Team Up 1/182, 159/181, 182/181). This was not a runner-up in our countdown but earned its way here through its recent performance.  Even if you haven’t ever seen the card, from the name alone you know that this is a Tag Team Pokémon; that means all the pros and cons of being a Pokémon-GX but you’re guaranteed to be a Basic Pokémon (regardless of usual TCG Stage) and worth three Prizes when KO’d. Being a Basic means Celebi & Venusaur-GX is the easiest Stage to run and to field, and can even function as your opening Basic. Being a [G] Type means access to some decent support, and while there have been counters, the only ones I’d (barely) worry about are Parallel City (in the Expanded Format) and Fairy Charm [G]. It also comes in handy for exploiting Weakness, as most [W] and some [F] Types sport it; [G] Resistance doesn’t exist unless we look at the Unlimited Format’s cardpool… and we’re not. 270 HP isn’t record-setting for a Tag Team Pokémon but seems to be average-to-high for them. Even [R] Type attackers need a competent setup to score the OHKO, and that is because they score double damage due to the card’s [R] Weakness. Everything else has to do properly, and some decks likely just cannot do it in a single hit. Lack of Resistance is probably justified with that HP score; even a simple -20 damage per attack can add up when it takes two or three tries to score a OHKO. The Retreat Cost of [CCCC] means you’ll be running switching cards to get Celebi & Venusaur-GX out of the Active position, and makes Buff Padding an option you ought to consider.

This card has no Ability, but two regular attacks and one GX-attack. The first is “Pollen Hazard” for [GCC], doing 50 damage to your opponent’s Active Pokémon as well as Burning, Confusing, and Poisoning it. 50 for three is very low, and any of those three Special Conditions alone wouldn’t make for enough compensation but something happens when you afflict all three at once. No, I don’t mean some triggered effect, I mean that there is great synergy within the attack. It is only 50 damage, but Burn-plus-Poison places another three damage counters, while Confusion can place another three damage counters while wasting your opponent’s attack. It isn’t guaranteed, but if your opponent is in a bad way, it actually hurts quite a bit. [GGCC] pays for “Solar Beam”, which does 150 damage. That’s it; no effects, good or bad. This isn’t a great attack… but with Choice Band it can usually score a OHKO against a Basic Pokémon-EX/GX. The same [GGCC] can pay for “Evergreen-GX”, which does 180 damage, with two effects; it heals all damage from Celebi & Venusaur-GX and IF you have at least one extra [G] Energy attached that isn’t being applied to that [GGCC] Energy cost, all cards from your discard pile are shuffled back into your deck. The improved damage is nice, bringing even more targets into OHKO range. Healing normally isn’t great, but coupled with Celebi & Venusaur-GX’s massive 270HP it makes for a strong attack… but a mediocre if you can’t get that spare [G] Energy for the recycling effect. Why is that so important?

Celebi & Venusaur-GX has its own deck. Is it competitive? Ryne Morgan managed a 69th place finish in the Masters Division of the Collinsville, IL Regional Championship, a tournament with 1056 players. That’s the top 6.6% of decks (rounding up)! When I first started running into this deck, I wrote it off as a troll deck, but it managed to finish this well at an event where Blacephalon-GX/Naganadel took 1st! How does the deck work? You make your opponent hurry up and do nothing by spamming healing and disruption. Celebi & Venusaur-GX is the deck’s focus, with Shaymin (SM – Lost Thunder 33/214) for reusable healing and Shaymin {*} for a non-Pokémon-GX attacker. The deck just tanks hits via surviving and healing so well that you’d think it was auditioning to be a [M] Type, while stripping away your Energy through Crushing Hammer, Enhanced Hammer, etc. Which burns through your deck pretty quickly… good thing Evergreen-GX can recycle it all. Still, relying on so many Abilities and Trainers (especially Item cards) comes with risks, and the threat is far greater in Expanded, so I don’t know if this deck is even viable there. A lone Celebi & Venusaur-GX should be worthwhile for Limited Format play; don’t worry about other Pokémon, just build this up and start taking OHKO’s… with an Evergreen-GX refresher when your HP gets low.

Ratings

• Standard: 3.2/5
• Expanded: 2/5
• Limited: 4.5/5

I definitely underestimated this card, so maybe it is appropriate that Celebi & Venusaur-GX use several other cards I thought weren’t very good to do its thing. I’m not fond of these kinds of decks, but specifically because they seem to either be too weak (so they’re frustrating to run) or too good (so they’re frustrating to face). I’ve got to give credit where credit is due, though.