Serena – Silver Tempest
Date Reviewed: June 11, 2023
Ratings Summary:
Standard: 3.5
Expanded: 3.0
Limited: 5.0
Ratings are based on a 1 to 5 scale. 1 is horrible. 3 is average. 5 is great.
Reviews Below:
Vince
Never thought the day would come when Serena (SWSH Silver Tempest 164/195) would get her own card in the TCG after being debuted almost 10 years ago! But here she is, and she’s the third female player being featured as a Supporter card, after Rosa and Gloria. There are other characters like Dawn and May, but they were under a Pokemon card via Character Rares (Blaziken V and VMAX, and Cosmic Eclipse Piplup). Maybe one day they could be featured in a card.
Anyhow, she is also a Supporter card which has mulitple options, but you can only choose one of them. The first one states that you must discard up to three cards in your hand in order to draw cards until you have five cards in your hand. The second one states that you can switch one of your opponent’s Pokemon-V with their Active Pokemon. By Pokemon-V, it covers VMAX, VSTAR, and V-UNION. Her effects aren’t powerful, and she faces competition from other cards. Professor’s Research is still one of the most powerful draw-based Supporters in this format. Boss’s Orders isn’t restricted to just Pokemon-V; it can target any Pokemon whatsoever. There’s also the chance that even if you discarded three cards from your hand, you won’t get to draw any. Also adding that Moon and Sun Badge protects Espeon and Umbreon V/VMAX from Supporter effects.
Despite her effects being mediocre, she still has a place in several deck archetypes, based on Limitless. No, not Braixen/Delphox, but rather Lugia/Archeops, Gardevoir, Miraidon/Flaaffy, and Lost Zone variants. Those decks only ran a single copy of her. Braixen/Delphox doesn’t see any play at the moment, but that rogue deck would be one of the few times you would use a full four copy of Serena. Their Flare Parade attack does 60 damage times the number of Serena card in your discard pile, so you can only do 240 damage at most. Braixen’s Flare Parade costs CC to use while Delphox’s Flare Parade only costs C to use. Even though it’s extremely cheap for that much damage output, they are a Stage 1/2, making them harder to get into play. These attacks won’t OHKO most things without help, but they comfortably 2HKO anything in the game. Still, if you wanted to create a casual thematic deck, Serena’s Delphox is one of the decent decks to consider.
On another note, the only reason why I think the Full Art Serena card is very expensive than the Hyper Rare version is definitely because not only she is a somewhat competitive card, but she also doubles down as being a chase card due to being a fan favorite card. Maybe not as expensive as Rosa from Cosmic Eclipse, but several years down the road, she could be.
Ratings:
Standard: 3.5/5
Expanded: 3/5
Limited: 5/5
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 more than 4700 Pokemon cards over the last 23 + years!
