#10 Charizard
EX #12
Hello and welcome to our countdown of
the top 10 cards from the
Flashfire
set. As the name suggests, there is an
emphasis on Fire Types and plenty of
support for them too, so I guess it’s
only appropriate that we kick off with
the most famous Fire Pokémon of all . .
. Charizard!
To be honest, this
Charizard is a fairly standard EX
Pokémon. Certainly nothing as major as
the likes of
Yveltal
, Darkrai
or Rayquaza
have been in the past. But he does have
two things in his favour that just about
push him into our top 10.
The first is the fact that he can hit
for 150 damage with
Combustion Blast. That means that
with help from Muscle Band, he can hit
the 170 needed to KO a lot of other EXs
in the format (Mewtwo,
Keldeo,
Thundurus,
Deoxys).
With Hypnotoxic
Laser and Virbank
City Gym, he can deal with the 180 HP
ones like Darkrai
and Black Kyurem
too. This is what makes
Charizard
superior to the
Xerneas EX we saw in XY that did
140 with a very similar attack. That
extra 10 damage is crucial in securing
so many key KOs.
The second thing in
Charizard’s favour is the support
he gets from the set. I won’t talk too
much about cards that will appear later
in the top 10, but the fact that he can
be partnered with a nice draw card and
some useful Energy acceleration means
that a Charizard
deck should be relatively consistent and
will have a way to pay
Charizard’s
substantial Energy costs.
So, do we finally have a playable
Charizard?
The jury is still out on exactly how
competitive he is, but at worst he is a
solid, well-supported EX and that will
be more than enough to convince some
players to give him a try.
Rating
Modified: 3 (an average EX elevated by
support)
Limited: 4.5 (pull the right Trainers
and he could tear through a game very
quickly)
