Banette – Celestial Guardians
Date Reviewed: May 13, 2025
Ratings Summary:
Ratings are based on a 1 to 5 scale. 1 is horrible. 3 is average. 5 is great.
Reviews Below:
Otaku
The 13th best card of Celestial Guardians is Banette (A3 075)! It’s a Psychic-Type, Stage 1 Pokémon that evolves from Shuppet. Banette has 90 HP, (D) Weakness, (C) Retreat Cost, and the attack “Night Bind”. Priced at (P), Night Bind does 30 damage to the opponent’s Active while also preventing your opponent from attaching Energy – from their Energy Zone – to their Active Pokémon, during their next turn. Banette is only available as a ♦♦♦ rare.
Gardevoir (A1 132) has an Ability that, once during your turn, let’s you attach a (P) Energy from your Energy Zone to your Active (P) Pokémon.1 Mythical Slab (A1a 065) is an Item that let’s you see the top card of your deck, and add it to your hand if it is a (P) Pokémon, or bottom deck it if it isn’t. Though not limited to (P) Types, Comfey (A3 080, 168) has an Ability that protects your Pokémon from Special Conditions if they have a (P) Energy attached.
If this sounds good for the Psychic-Type, I’m still waiting to see if any of that matters in the post-Celestial Guardians metagame. Exploiting (P) Weakness is iffy. Banette is not a big damage dealer, and while it nearly doubles the damage done, that’s because you’re going from 30 to 50. Meaning, with Weakness, you’re finally able to 2HKO stuff like Lucario (A2 092, 170). Which is significantly better than it being a 4HKO, but far from great.
Unlike Stage 2 Pokémon, Stage 1 Pokémon still haven’t received any support. In general, Basics still have it the best but now Stage 1 and Stage 2 Pokémon are on par with each other. Aerodactyl ex (A1a 046, 078, 084), via it’s “Primeval Law” Ability, can prevent your Active Shuppet from evolving into Banette. One of Banette’s strengths is not needing to be prepped on the Bench, so this might be a stumbling block should an opponent Bench an Aerodactyl ex before you can evolve into Banette.
Banette has 90 HP, making Banette a fairly easy OHKO once your opponent’s deck gets going. I wish pretty much all evolving Stage 1 Pokémon had better HP scores, because I think that’s improve game balance… but with Banette’s strategy, that 90 can be stretched further than normal. I normally wouldn’t sweat (D) Weakness when there’s only 90 HP, but the Darkness-Type likes its combos; they’ll be more reliable, or even unneeded, thanks to Weakness. At least the Retreat Cost of (C) is still very good!
Night Bind is clearly not a bastion of raw power. In terms of damage, it’s mid-range for a light attack. Fortunately, the Energy cost is almost as low as they go in Pocket2 and preventing an opponent from attaching Energy to their Active can be very effective at delaying a good counterattack. For the Energy, I’d say that’s a good deal. If Night Bind did zero damage, you couldn’t use damage boosting effects, and it’d be purely a delay tactic without some combo to Poison or Burn the opponent’s Active.
30 damage and a very good, if not great, effect for just (P) is is a sound tactical trade off. Especially for a single-point Stage 1. Yet it’s far from foolproof. Your opponent can still retreat or attack if they’ve got enough Energy already attached, have an Energy cost reduction combo, or an Energy acceleration combo, but it’s going to hinder many, many decks. Either by forcing them to use those tricks earlier and/or more often than normal, or just making the opponent sacrifice something up front.
Shuppet (A3 074) is currently our only option for getting Banette into play. It’s a (P) Type, Basic Pokémon with 60 HP, (D) Weakness, (C) Retreat Cost, and one attack. “Will-O-Wisp” has a fun name, but it’s just a vanilla 20 for (P). Shuppet is not an advantage for Banette, but it’s also not really a disadvantage. 60 may be an easy OHKO after a turn or two, but on a player’s first turn, it’s… well, not safe, but at least it requires combos and/or multiple successful coin tosses.
Banette is already the star of a Mid Tier deck. We’ve got a profile for it over at Pokémon Zone, but at the time of writing, there’s no decklist. Fortunately, we’ve got good ol’ LimitlessTCG to find a collection of decklists, complete with records. Speaking of which, the deck is not tearing up the tournament scene. LimitlessTCG currently lists 43 instances of it in tournaments, meaning it has a 0.69% metagame share. It’s Win Rate is 48.68%, but it’s low usage means that it could easily be higher or lower.
As for the actual deck, you hope to have a Banette Active and attacking Turn 3 or 4. Ideally, Banette’s Night Bind will leave your opponent in a bind, by stranding something upfront that doesn’t have enough Energy to attack or retreat. Banette will then just keep attacking, chipping away at it’s HP. The deck runs a wide assortment of Supporters, though this means many are singles; good for versatility, bad for reliability.
The list I’ve been testing – with mixed results – uses one Cyrus (A2 150, 190), one Giant Cape (A2 147), one Guzma (A3 151, 193. 208), one Mars (A2 155, 195), two Poké Ball (P-A 005; A2b 111), one Pokémon Center Lady (A2b 070, 089), two Professor’s Research (P-A 007), one Red (A2b 071, 090), one Sabrina (A1 225, 272), and two Team Rocket Grunt (A2b 072, 091). Most of these are staples, or at least, very common. Team Rocket Grunt helps when something powers up anyway, while Guzma I squeezed in because Banette doesn’t like attacking something big that has Rocky Helmet (A2 148).
Then there are the other Pokémon. Your opponent is likely to build something on their Bench, which is where set-mate Tapu Lele (A3 084, 170) factors in: for (P) it’s attack can pick any one of your opponent’s Pokémon, and do 20 damage per Energy attached to the target. Just remember, something injured that discards all its Energy by retreating to the Bench is totally safe from Tapu Lele’s wrath.
Oricorio (A3 077) is the Psychic-Type version of Marshadow (A1a 047, 074). It has a little less HP, and does less damage (20+60 instead of 40+60), but Oricorio only needs (P) to attack, instead of (F)(C). Which is probably why the deck also runs good ol’ Mewtwo ex (A1 129, 262, 282, 286; P-A 050). The goal is to manually build its “Psydrive” attack while Mewtwo ex is on your Bench, and the others are doing their thing. Handy for one-shotting many (but not all) Basic Pokémon ex and single-point Pokémon.
Playing the deck, I understand now why some consider it a toolbox. After all, you’ve got a pretty wide variety of cards, most designed to answer specific situations. I don’t know if me not referring to it as such is just me being stubborn, or if there’s some element of toolbox decks I’m spacing off, that would justify my feeling. The deck definitely has the downside of a toolbox build; I’ve probably played it half a dozen times, but already had more than one game where I just couldn’t get the answer I had for a given situation.
Rating: 3/5
Banette is another good, solid card. Even more than yesterday’s Tsareena (A3 020, 158), it has great potential. Over at LimitlessTCG, with how they rank their decks, Banette/Mewtwo ex is two slots above Tsareena/Meowscarada (A2b 007, 073). I’ve tried that deck out a little as well, and if my results aren’t too abnormal, it seems to fit. Neither deck performed overly well, but Banette did better than Tsareena. I’d like think that means I ranked the two correctly for this countdown.
1As per usual, this does not affect your normal once-per-turn Energy attachment from the Energy Zone.
2Not counting certain card effects that can completely eliminate attack costs, or the “zero Energy” printed attacks sometimes found in the full TCG.
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