In honor of Charizard being this week’s Pokemon of the Week, we are going to take a look at what the future holds for the Flame Pokemon within the TCG.
The upcoming TCG set, Flashfire, promises to ignite the flames within the Fire Pokemon of the TCG. This will especially hold true for Charizard who will be the flagship Pokemon for this set. The set will have three Charizard EX cards, two Mega Charizard EX and a bunch of support cards that will ser the TCG metagame on fire.
This article will be talking about future cards in the TCG that have not be released or have official English translations. Now, join us as we take a look at how the TCG could change with Charizard entering the battlefield.
Charizard has always been a fan favorite within the TCG. The first Charizard card from the Base Set is one of the most iconic card within the TCG and is highly sought out even to this day. The problem that this card and almost every Charizard card that has came out since then is that they are not very playable. They all have high energy cost and negative side effects. The current playable Charizard from Boundaries Crossed requires you to attach five Energy and then discard an energy to do 150 damage. If you want to put this into perspective, Black Kyurem EX can do 200 damage by discarding three Energy but guarantees a knock out.
Do the upcoming Charizard EX cards promise to bring change to a line of Pokemon that have been mostly bad? Not really but they have a better chance then their predecessors.
All three Charizard EX cards have attacks that required four Energy to play. The first Charizard EX card has the attack Brave Fire which does thirty damage to itself after doing 120 to the opponent’s Pokemon. The attack limits this Charizard EX’s ability to survive to the next turn seeing that Pokemon can attack for 150 easily. This Charizard EX also has the attack called Mega Awakening which allows you to search for a M Charizard EX and put it in your hand. It is a waste of an attack when you still have to Mega Evolve next turn and there are better ways to Mega Evolve a Charzard EX while searching for it by using Evo-Soda. The second Charizard EX card can do a 150 damage by using Blaze Explosion but it won’t be able to use that attack next turn. If you slap a Muscle Band on this Charizard EX then that will be enough to knock out 170 HP Pokemon EXs. Add in Keldeo–Float then you could possibly use Blaze Explosion over and over again. The last Charizard EX could possibly be the one that sees the most play. This Charizard EX does 120 damage with Fire Blast but the main draw of this card is Flare Up which allows it to attach three Fire energy from the deck by a coin-flip. If successful then your opponent may see a 120 damage attack by your second turn.
There is more to Flashfire as it also introduce two M Charizard EX. The first of the M Charizard EX is a Dragon type Pokemon which is the worst of the two M Charizard EX cards. It has the destructive damaging power of 300 which can knock out anything in the game. The drawback is that it requires five energy to attack where two of them has to be a Fire and one Darkness. Then you have the major draw back of discarding five cards from the top of your deck. In total, you are paying ten cards to use one attack and potentially losing resources that could be useful later in the game. The second M Charizard EX is the better one where it does the same amount of damage and is a Fire type. Guren Dive only requires M Charizard EX do 50 damage to itself after attaching five energy to it where two of them has to be Fire. The backlash of this attack can be negated with a card that will mention later in this article.
What cards will help make these future Charizard easier to play? The first one is Emboar who has the Inferno Fandango ability. This ability allows the player to attach from their hand more then one Fire energy per turn. The problem is that it does little to counter Fire Pokemon’s tendency to burn energy by discarding them after using an attack. This means you need a constant stream of Fire Energy in order to ensure you will be attacking with your big attack next turn. Make sure to have Superior Energy Retrieval in your deck to retrieve much needed Fire energy and instant refueling for your next attacks.
A card from Flashfire that will do wonders to help ignite Charizard EX and M Charizard EX is the supporter card, Blacksmith. This card allows you to take two Fire energy from the discard and attach them to any Fire Pokemon on the field. This is similar to Dark Patch but it allows you to put it on any Pokemon including the active and it pulls out two energy instead of one. That could be useful in the late game when you find yourself running low on Fire energy in your hand or quickly power up a Pokemon in the early game. You will be able to discard Fire Energy early in the game by using cards like Ultra Ball or Flame Torch to pull out needed cards with little remorse knowing that you can retrieve them later by using Blacksmith.
Another card from Flashfire that will be welcomed by many Pokemon and especially by the Fire M Charizard EX is Protect Cube. When this tool is attached to a Pokemon, it prevents any recoil damage from their own attacks. That means M Charizard EX can use Guren Dive as many times as it wants without doing 50 damage to itself. This could put you in a position where you can knocked out your opponent’s Pokemon one after another and apply pressure that can make it difficult to respond quickly.
So, with all these cards and possibly more, how will the metagame change once trainers get their hands on these cards? The first thing that comes to mind is a drop in VirGen decks. Virizion EX and Genesect EX are going have a tough time countering Charizard EX decks with so many threats to deal with that hit each one of them for weakness. A Genesect EX with G Booster could take out Charizard EX easily but once they Mega Evolve then things becomes trickier. They will need to be crafty with their G Booster to slay a M Charizard EX with the combination of Virbank City Gym, Hypnotoxic Laser, Deoxys EX or Muscle Band. The problem is a response to when the trainer with the Charizard EX deck response with a Fire Pokemon that could knock out their Genesect EX or discard G Booster. Mewtwo EX or Yveltal EX could help but they still need to find away to do up to 130 more damage to knock a M Charizard EX.
The main problem many decks will have to worry about is how to knock out something that has over 200 HP which can easily knock out their attackers with one move. There are not many things that can survive a 300 damage attack. We may see a raise of Safeguard Pokemon like Sigilyph or Suicune to either stall or defeat these dragons of mass destruction. Blastoise variants that run M Blastoise EX and/or Keldeo EX could raise in an attempt to calm the flames. This may actually be enough to keep Charizard decks from causing a wild fire on the metagame. It depends if Charizard decks will run both M Charizard EXs and use them depending on what deck they are playing. Not every Blastoise deck will have a Fairy staple and not every Fairy deck will run a Water staple.
Another deck that may raise in power are Darkrai EX variants with heavy focus on Crushing Hammer and Garbodor. This deck will treat the Charizard decks like any other where Garbodor will be used to freeze the energy acceleration by using the Garbotoxin ability. It will then use several Crushing Hammer to keep energy off Charizard and prevent those heavy costing-heavy damage attack from being used. Half of this strategy is luck based and will depend on how fast Emboar will be set up. Darkrai-Garbodor can play conservatively but they eventually will have to go on the offensive which will be difficult if the do not get heads on Crushing Hammers and their attackers are knocked out.
Charizard has always been a popular Pokemon and it’s return in EX form will spark fans with attempts to make Charizard work. Flashfire will provide various support to help make this possible but it will all depend on what the other decks will do to counter such an explosive force. So keep an eye out on the news and prepare to be amazed when we get a peek at the next set when it is lights up the Japanese metagame in March.
