It seems redundant to put in another article about Charizard when so many
have been done, but I think I have a good explanation of why Charizard isn't
that great. So many articles have dissed Charizard based on the fact that he
has to discard 2 energies to use his attack, but they haven't really
investigated what his attack does. Let's investigate. His attack does 100
damage for 4 energies (not necessarily fire), and you have to discard 2
energies. They key element of why so many people are attracted to him is the
100 damage, and therein lies the core of my argument. WHY would you need to
do so much damage?? True, it takes care of big beefy Pokemon like Rhydon or
Arcanine, but usually what you have is an overkill. Say you have a Charizard
up against a Farfetch'd. You waste 2 energies to deal TWICE the necessary
amount of damage to knock the poor duck out. Sheesh, why would you want that
kind of overkill? I'd rather have attacks like Ninetales' Fire Blast, which
does 80 and you only have to discard 1 fire energy. Even better would be
Arcanine's Flamethrower, which does 50 damage for RRC, with a discard of 1
fire energy. You see, more often than not you're going to be up against a
Pokemon with a lot less HP than 100, and in that situation I'd prefer to have
an attack that's a little less flamboyant. To summarize, Fire Spin requires
too much discard in order to do more damage than necessary. There's my $.02.
-Dogbert717@aol.com (aka "Ninetales")