Tsareena – Celestial Guardians
Date Reviewed: May 12, 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 14th best card of Celestial Guardians is Tsareena (A3 020, 158)! She’s a Stage 2, Grass-Type Pokémon that evolves from Steenee. Tsareena has 130 HP, (R) Weakness, (C)(C) Retreat Cost, and the attack “Three Kick Combo.” For (G), this attack has you flip three coins, and for each “heads”, Tsareena does 50 damage to the opponent’s Active Pokémon. Tsareena is available at the ♦♦♦ and ★ rarities.
While Stage 2 Pokémon still aren’t as good as Basic Pokémon, they’re a lot closer post-Celestial Guardians. Rare Candy (A3 144) is an Item that lets you jump from the Basic to the Stage 2 in an Evolution line. Lillie (A3 155, 197, 209) lets you select one of your injured Stage 2 Pokémon and heal 60 damage from it. I’m not sure about Lillie, but Rare Candy is absolutely a big benefit for Tsareena. Besides the usual reason, her low attack cost combos especially well with it.
The Grass Type has a lot of support, however, half of it is underused or obsolete.1 Erika (A1 0219, 266) and Sprigatito (A2b 005; P-A 052) might help Tsareena, while Leaf Cape (A3 147) is almost guaranteed to be run with her. It’s a Tool that only works for (G) Types, granting them +30 HP while attached. We’ll come back to the other two later. Most of the (F) Types that see current competitive success have (G) Weakness, and Tsareena’s damage output is such it might matter.
130 HP is a little low for a Stage 2. There are attackers who do 130 exactly, but it’s not as critical a threshold as – for example – 140 or 150 on a two point Pokémon ex. Similarly, Tsareena’s (R) Weakness won’t matter the vast majority of the time. The popular (R) attackers – main and supporting – either hit so hard Weakness doesn’t matter, or still whiff on the OHKO even with it. Tsareena’s Retreat Cost of (C)(C) is normally good, but I dislike a Retreat Cost being higher than the attack cost.
Three Kick Combo is very affordable, only requiring a (G) Energy. Unless Pocket adds “zero Energy” attacks (which sometimes exist in the full TCG), the only way it could be better would be with a (C) Energy cost instead. The coin flips make the damage output variable, which is a nicer way of saying “unreliable”. Three Kick Combo can do 0 (zero), 50, 100, or even 150 damage. So, what are the odds of these different damage amounts?
Using proper statistics, I don’t know. Instead, I’ll use a crude approximation, based on there being eight possible outcomes2 when you flip three coins. One out of eight (12.5%) result in doing zero damage, three out of eight (37.5%) result in 50 damage, another three out of eight (37.5%) result in 100 damage, and a final one out of eight (12.5%) result in 150 damage. I already stated the minimum and maximum damage; the mean and median damage is 753, while the mode is 50.
Overall, this is a good damage-to-Energy ratio. Not when you flip all “tails”, of course, but even 50 for one Energy is decent when it’s not the only thing a Stage 2 can do. If your luck is pretty normal, you’ll do 100+ damage half the time, before other card effects. It’s still awful when Three Kick Combo whiffs, but those 150 damage hits are amazing… if their timing isn’t bad. Remember, you might flip three “heads” when just one would score the KO.
Let’s tackle the Tsareena’s lower Stages. Bounsweet (A3 018) and Steenee (A3 019) are (G) Pokémon with (R) Weakness, (C) Retreat Costs, and one attack priced at (G). Bounsweet is a Basic Pokémon with 50 HP, and the attack “Stampede”, which does 20 damage to the opponent’s Active. Steenee is a Stage 1 with 80 HP, and the attack Double Spin. This attack has you flip two coins, and for each “heads” does 30 damage. Vanilla filler, but not especially bad.
Then there’s Mallow (A3 154, 196). This Supporter lets you heal all damage from one of your Pokémon named “Shiinotic” or “Tsareena”, then discard all Energy attached to that Pokémon. No, I’m not going to subject you to a mini-review of Shiinotic (A1a 008) and/or Shiinotic (A3 017). They don’t appear to have experienced any recent competitive success, and probably none at all. Nor do I think they’ve been overlooked. There’s not a Tsareena/Shiinotic deck floating around.
What we can find is Tsareena/Meowscarada (A2b 007, 073), though it’s barely been tried: 33 instances over at Limitless TCG. It’s Win Rate is 49.69%. Not great, but if more usage doesn’t drop the Win Rate (or drop it by much), it still makes for a good deck. There are other, even less used decks listed over in the LimitlessTCG tournament results, but with even fewer instances and/or lower Win Rates. As such, I’m going to just focus on this one.
Meowscarada both was and still is good. While it doesn’t take advantage of Rare Candy as well as Tsareena, only needing two Energy to attack and attacking with Sprigatito often being beneficial means it’s close. Meowscarada is great against Pokémon ex, since it’s attack’s effect causes it to do 130 damage for just (G)(G). Against everything else, though, it only does 60, and that’s Tsareena’s cue. Her attack make be flippy, but before other card effects, she always has the chance to do up to 150 damage.
I didn’t have time to do an exhaustive study of the deck’s list, but when I checked some of the best performing, almost all opted for Erika, Lillie, or a combination of the two when it came to healing. One – and not one of the higher performing lists – did include one Mallow, but she suffers from the same problem that plagues Tsareena as a whole: direct competition. Everything I’ve mentioned except Mallow can be used with a different Grass-Type and/or Stage 2 Pokémon.
Rating: 3/5
Tsareena is not a mind-blowing card, but she’s a good, solid Stage 2 that can really take advantage of Rare Candy. Unfortunately, she chose an already crowded niche, likely limiting her growth potential. Especially if you enjoy coin flips, give her a shot. Plus, keep an eye out for things that could help her out later, like better lower Stages, even more (G) support, or if a future Shiinotic proves worthwhile.
1Caterpie (A1 005), Leafeon ex (A2a 010, 082, 091), Lilligant (A1 30), and Serperior (006, 070).
2While ignoring outliers like a flipped coin managing to land on it’s edge.
3Yes, even though you cannot actually get that specific result.
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