Celestic Town Elder – Triumphant Light
Date Reviewed: April 25, 2025
Ratings Summary:
Ratings are based on a 1 to 5 scale. 1 is horrible. 3 is average. 5 is great.
Reviews Below:
Otaku
Celestic Town Elder (A2a 073, 088) is a Trainer-Supporter that adds a random Basic Pokémon from your discard pile to your hand. She is available as a ♦♦ and ★★ rare.
Yes, I’ve seen some of the cards revealed for Celestial Guardians a.k.a. set A3. I don’t think anything revealed so far affects how much play Celestic Town Elder will or won’t see. So far, no card effects that apply to all Trainers, or new card effects1 that apply to all Supporters. As such, the usual concerns over deck space, and the small concern of Celestic Town Elder justifying herself over other Supporters for your once-per-turn Supporter use, are all that really apply.
I believe this is the only card effect right now that can reach into your discard pile, to add a card from there to your hand. Besides regaining access to that specific Basic, if it was part of an Evolution line or combo, that can enable an extra use (or restore a lost use) of those. This effect is… underpowered. Let’s skip the obvious (and often ridiculous) ways we could increase her potency, and focus on why this kind of effect, especially in Pocket, is rarely going to be worth it.
In the full Pokémon TCG, there are many differences in game mechanics. Some, like “Resistance”, matter very little. Others, like having 60 card decks (instead of 20), and Energy coming from cards you run in those decks (instead of from the Energy Zone), are pretty significant. Most important to Celestic Town Elder, though, are Prize Cards versus points.
In the full TCG, after setting up similar to how it works in Pocket, before both players flip over their in-play Pokémon, each takes the top six cards of their deck and sets them aside, facedown, in an easily countable manner. Unless another card effect says otherwise, whenever an opponent’s Pokémon is KO’d, you get to take one of your facedown Prize cards, and add it to your current hand. Some Pokémon are worth less or more when KO’d.
This is instead of taking points, and you’ll notice I said “six” Prize Cards, not three. You need to KO twice as many Pokémon in the full TCG. Another important difference are discard costs. Many great cards in the full TCG, often Trainer cards, have a “discard cost” as part of their card effect(s). So many that, over the most of the TCG’s history, it was rare for a deck to lack any, and often they had several! Which gave you a potential need to reclaim a formerly discarded Basic, besides stuff being KO’d.
How is this relevant to Celestic Town Elder? In Pocket, Pokémon rarely hit the discard pile through anything other than being KO’d. A Basic that is KO’d means your opponent is at least one-third of the way towards having won, or two-thirds if it was a Pokémon ex or the second non-Pokémon ex. You probably won’t have time to evolve a Basic you recycled, or to attach enough Energy to it if you wanted to attack with it.
Yes, there are some Basics you just need in play, for their effect or the effects of other cards. For example, Arceus ex (A2a 071, 086, 095, 096) being in play allows you to use the Ability on an entire series of Pokémon. There’s also Pokémon like Shaymin (A2 022, 159) or Shaymin (A2a 069, 081), who each have an Ability you can use if that particular Shaymin is in play. Keep in mind, these are the best examples I could think of; while not an exhaustive list, there’s not much else.
The, to top it off… it’s random. If you only have a single Basic in your discard pile, and you need it, great, you’ll get it. Each copy of something you don’t want, though, decreases your odds of getting something you do. As someone who is used to the full TCG, I’m used to a Supporter letting me shuffle several (like five or six) Pokémon2 into my deck, from my discard pile. Then having the raw draw/search power to often get what I needed into my hand… or to avoid decking out.3
Rating: 1.5/5
Like Pokémon Flute (A1 064), Celestic Town Elder is far too niche in what it reclaims from the discard pile. Even taking into account the lower “power level” of Pocket cards versus the full TCG, it’s just not enough to randomly add a Basic from the discard pile to your hand. Maybe this will change in the future, but we’d need something like an 18 Trainer deck that was built around single point Basics… as the 18 (and now 17) Trainer decks that exist and work well are built around Pokémon ex. If two of those are KO’d, it’s game over.
1The existing effects that apply to Supporters are found on Gengar (A1 122), Gengar ex (A1 123, 261, 277) and Psyduck (A1 057). Gengar ex has an Ability that, while it is Active, prevents your opponent from using Supporters. The other two have single-Energy attacks that stop an opponent from playing a Supporter during their next turn.
2Often Pokémon and/or Energy cards.
3In the full TCG, you lose the game if, when you go to draw at the start of your turn, you have no cards left in your deck. There is no such Win Condition in Pocket.
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