Otaku |
Didn’t get enough of Charizard when we reviewed
Charizard (Generations RC05/RC32)
last week?
Here’s hoping because today we are covering
Charizard-EX (Generations 11/83)! This
strikes me as another card where it will be more
efficient to just cover all releases at once because
they are very similar and many were released when
I was not reviewing. So we’ll be discussing
Charizard-EX (XY: Flashfire 11/106, 100/106;
XY: Black Star Promos XY29), Charizard-EX
(XY: Flashfire 12/106), and Charizard-EX (XY:
Black Star Promos XY17) as well.
All of these are Fire Types. Fire Type support
isn’t deep but it has some spiffy options that are
probably better now than when they released, like
Blacksmith and Scorched Earth. Nearly
all Grass Type and Metal Type Pokémon are Fire Weak and
at least the former is still a major factor in the game,
though often with smaller targets so the Weakness is a
bit less important. There are some anti-Fire Type
effects but they just aren’t used competitively and
there is no Fire Resistance unless we go to Unlimited
play and we aren’t. Being a Pokémon-EX means
giving up an extra Prize when KOed, being the target of
certain detrimental effects, and being the unable to
access certain beneficial effects. That is also
the order of significance with the extra Prize shaping
the format, the handful of useful effects they cannot
access being mostly negligible, and the anti-Pokémon-EX
effects being somewhere in between. One additional
thing that does not always apply is that a Pokémon-EX is
either a Basic or Mega Evolution regardless of its
actual Stage: that means Charizard gets to be a Basic
instead of a Stage 2. Being a Basic is the best so
this is a good deal for our favorite charred lizard.
Just drop Charizard-EX into play and it’s good to
go; a few effects punish a player for using a Basic or
reward playing Evolutions but the natural synergy with
game mechanics plus the cards that explicitly help Basic
Pokémon easily outweigh such things.
180 HP is the higher of the two typical amounts seen on
Basic Pokémon-EX. We’ll have to wait until the set
after XY: Fates Collide to know if HP
scores are going up in general, for certain Stages or
just for certain Pokémon: that set contains a Snorlax
with 140 and the new Zygarde-EX gives us our
third Basic Pokémon-EX with 190 HP. These could be
anomalies or the new norm for the “bigger” Pokémon. 180
is still plenty good as you’ll often survive a hit with
at least a small chunk of your HP intact even after many
decks “get going” with their main tactic and a solid
setup. Water Weakness is not good, especially on
Basic Pokémon-EX: protected Pokémon like Suicune
(BW: Plasma Blast 20/101) and Regice (XY:
Ancient Origins 24/98) would be a problem for a
Pokémon-EX anyway, but thanks to Weakness these two can
score a OHKO against a Charizard-EX unless it is
using and able to keep Fighting Fury Belt
attached. The lack of Resistance is typical so
we’ll move onto the Retreat Cost. Here we get the
first bit of variety; all but XY: Black Star Promo
XY17 have a Retreat Cost of [CC] which is low enough you
probably can afford it but high enough you’d prefer not
to. XY: Black Star Promo XY17 has a Retreat Cost
of [CCC] which is chunky enough you really need to avoid
paying it, at least at full price. It could make
use of Heavy Ball or Heavy Boots but those
aren’t exactly important to competitive play right now.
No Charizard-EX has an Ability or an Ancient
Trait but all at least have two attacks. Charizard-EX
(XY: Flashfire 11/106, 100/106; XY: Black Star
Promos XY29) has “Stoke” for [C] and “Fire Blast”
for [RCCC]. The former gives you a coin flip and
on “heads” you search your deck for up to three Basic
Energy cards and attach them to Charizard-EX.
It is good that it can be any Type of Basic Energy in
case you are running more than just Fire Energy
and three Energy is a good amount but “tails
fails” and even if you succeed, you attached Energy at
the end of your turn. That means
Charizard-EX has to survive a turn before it can
actually capitalize on that Energy and several
significant attackers will even be able to hit
Charizard-EX harder because their attacks do more
damage based on the Energy attached to the opponent’s
Active. Fire Blast does 120 damage and you have to
discard an Energy from Charizard-EX itself; this
strikes me as potentially adequate if we are just using
this card as a stepping stone to the Mega Evolution but
that also means we need an M Charizard-EX worth
running and still it could be replaced by
something better. Still, it is 120 damage for four
so most things fall into 2HKO range, with smaller
Pokémon in the OHKO range. It just is not big
enough to build into OHKO range for say typical Basic
Pokémon-EX without investing a bunch of resources
that work better for other Pokémon. CotD reviewer
Baby Mario weighed in on this card
here
and got it pretty much spot on.
Charizard-EX
(XY: Flashfire 12/106) can use “Wing Attack” for
[RCC] and while its “Combustion Blast” requires [RRCC]
to do 150 damage but that specific
Charizard-EX cannot use it again next turn. It
can be easy to sell this card short, especially with
that first attack. Wing Attack is basically your
emergency fallback for when you cannot pull off a
Combustion Blast, but it is enough to set-up for or
finish pulling off a 2HKO when paired with something
bigger, like the aforementioned Combustion Blast.
While 120 damage could be built up to actually or
effectively score OHKOs on 170 or 180 HP Pokémon-EX, it
would require a lot of effort. Combustion Blast
requires a Muscle Band to take out the 170 HP
crowd plus a Hypnotoxic Laser (in Expanded) or
Giovanni (in either format) to manage the 180 HP.
Remember how earlier I was talking about Zygarde-EX
potentially signaling more 190 HP Basic Pokémon-EX?
Combustion Blast + Muscle Band + Giovanni
still can handle that. Of course Giovanni
precludes using Blacksmith that turn, and that is
an option you want to keep open as Blacksmith for
two basic Fire Energy cards and a Double
Colorless Energy from hand means this
Charizard-EX goes from nothing to Combustion Blast
in a single turn. Being unable to use Combustion
Blast twice in a row can be an issue but often won’t be:
Charizard-EX has to survive the next turn, lack a
decent use for Wing Attack, and/or lack a simple trick
like Keldeo-EX with Float Stone to reset
the attack effect. No wonder this was our
10th place pick
for XY: Flashfire. Not that I was a part of
that “we” at the time.
Charizard-EX
(XY: Black Star Promos XY17) can use its “Mega
Ascension” for [RC] to search your deck for M
Charizard-EX and add it to your hand (after showing
it to your opponent, of course). Its “Brave Fire”
attack can also score a decent 120 damage, but this
Charizard-EX also does 30 damage to itself.
This card is not rubbish but it is
disappointing. Mega Ascension should just be
“Ascension”, an attack seen on more than one worthwhile
Evolving Basic, including examples that pre- and
post-date this Charizard-EX. While it would
make M Charizard-EX a little easier to use, that
would not have been a bad thing. The improvement
would be relative as you would still be giving up an
attack to Mega Evolve, so there would be a turn wait
before an M Charizard-EX could attack.
Since it would be Active it would only really help if
some sort of “turbo” build came out that needed a player
to attack with M Charizard-EX on his or her
second turn. Brave Bird is overpriced as it
basically should have done the same 150 as Combustion
Blast, maybe more. If it needed to have its cost
bumped up to [RRCC] then so be it. Since you are
doing enough self damage that something hitting for 150
can OHKO this Charizard-EX without any additional
damage buffs it could also “pay” for more damage by
hitting both the opponent’s Active and itself harder.
It does none of these things though so while it still
isn’t totally hopeless, it falls below both of its
XY: Flashfire cousins. We (yeah this time I
was there) took a look at it
here
and I was a little too generous even though I only
awarded it a two out of five.
At last we come to today’s Charizard-EX (Generations
11/83); will it become the new best or worst option or
just give us another one in between? For [RC] it
can use its “Flame Cloak” attack to do 30 damage while
attaching a [R] Energy card from your discard pile to
itself. For [RRCC] it brings “Burning Breath” to
the table, which does 80 damage plus flips two coins:
each “heads” means an extra 40 damage while “tails” adds
nothing but at least has no additional drawbacks.
Flame Cloak should probably only cost [R] or even [C]
but it isn’t bad; same concerns with prepping something
while it is Active as I had with Stoke earlier, but
while it only attaches a single Energy it does damage
and does not rely on coin flips. Unfortunately
Burning Breath relies on coin flips, though at least
you’ll get 80 damage as a base. Possible results
are double “tails” for 80 damage, double “heads” for
160, or one of each for 120. While only one
quarter of the possible outcomes, that 80 just isn’t
enough of a base for me. I mean 120 wouldn’t have
been enough for this attack even if it did straight,
reliable damage. Maybe if the two flips still
added 40 each a base damage of 100 would have sufficed.
The good news is that once again, this isn’t horrible;
if you and your deck can cope with the variance it may
even still be adequate. Just remember the usual
issues with fluctuating damage based on things you can
only influence but cannot actually control (like coin
flips): unless you are lucky your average effective
damage will be lower than your average damage.
Sometimes you’ll find yourself getting double “heads” to
finish off something that had low enough HP you didn’t
even need one.
So… should you use this Charizard-EX? On
its own, definitely not: XY: Flashfire 12/106
retains its title as the “good” Charizard-EX.
So what about with M Charizard-EX? Our
options there are XY: Flashfire 13/106 (and
107/106),XY: Flashfire 69/106 (and 108/106), and
Generations 12/83. XY: Flashfire 13/106
never got a review but XY: Flashfire 69/106,
108/106
did
and Charizard-EX (Generations 12/83) will
be reviewed
tomorrow.
That last fact means I won’t go in depth here, but a
quick read through suggests you might actually consider
today’s Charizard-EX because it can reliably
attach an Energy and all three M Charizard-EX
have reasons for wanting major amounts of Energy
acceleration. I would still be inclined to stick
with Charizard-EX (XY: Flashfire 12/106),
though, and use other forms of Energy
acceleration. Generations 11/83 at least is
better than the promo version and possibly on par with
XY: Flashfire 11/106. So what about Limited
where it is all on its lonesome? Well I’ll stress
that there isn’t a lot of opportunity to use
Generations for Limited play but if you can manage
it, then it is a good pull. You could probably
risk running it as a +39 deck (where your 40 card
Limited deck contains just one Basic Pokémon) but the
uncertain nature of Burning Breath means some bad flips
might give your opponent just enough time to build up to
180 damage on Charizard-EX.
Ratings
Standard:
2/5
Expanded:
1.75/5
Limited:
3.75/5
Summary:
Another Charizard-EX but while it isn’t another
mainstream contender at least it has a potential niche
usage. It is a specialization unlikely to really
matter outside of fun decks, but at least it is there.
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