Charizard ex – Genetic Apex
Date Reviewed: February 17, 2025
Ratings Summary:
Ratings are based on a 1 to 5 scale. 1 is horrible. 3 is average. 5 is great.
Reviews Below:
Otaku
Today’s subject is Charizard ex (A1 036, 253, 280, 284). It’s a (R) Type, Stage 2 Pokémon ex that evolves from Charmeleon, which in turn evolves from Charmander. Charizard ex has 180 HP, (W) Weakness, (C)(C) Retreat Cost, and two attacks. For (R)(C)(C), Charizard ex can use “Slash” to do 60 damage. Charizard ex’s second attack is “Crimson Storm”, which costs (R)(R)(C)(C). This attack lets Charizard ex do 200 damage, and discard two (R) Energy from itself. Charizard ex is available at the ♦♦♦♦, ★★, ★★★, and 🜲 rarities.
The main piece of (R) support is Moltres ex (A1 047, 255, 274; P-A 025). Besides being one of the few Fire Types that are not (W) Weak, it’s the one form of (R) Energy acceleration in the game. There are technically two cards with anti-(R) effects1, but they haven’t seen any competitive success. As Crimson Storm can OHKO everything in the game by raw damage2, exploiting (R) Weakness isn’t likely to matter all that often.
Stage 2 Pokémon require the most cards and turns to hit the field. Pokémon ex are worth an extra point when KO’d. The “Primeval Law” Ability on Aerodactyl ex (A1a 042, 078, 084) can prevents evolving your Active Pokémon, while Tauros (A1a 060) can use its “Fighting Tackle” attack to do 120 damage to a Pokémon ex for just (C)(C)(C). Later in the review, we’ll cover lower Stages, as well as the non-ex version of Charizard, to see if these hassles are worth it.
Charizard ex has 180 HP; even 2HKOs can be tricky. Other than it’s own Crimson Storm, I don’t believe any attack can OHKO Charizard ex without relying on coin flips, Weakness, or combos. Speaking of Weakness, (W) isn’t the worst, but neither is it one of the “safer” ones. Only a few (W) Types can OHKO Charizard ex via Weakness; the bigger concern are the 2HKOs that become possible, easier, and/or more reliable due to Weakness. Charizard ex’s Retreat Cost of (C)(C) is decent. If you have to retreat at full price, you should have enough left after a Crimson Storm.
Slash is an adequate attack. You’ll only want to use it when you either don’t or can’t use Crimson Storm… or when the 60 damage from Slash is all you need for the KO. If it was the card’s only attack, it would be badly under-powered. Crimson Storm is expensive; not only does it cost four Energy, with two of those requirements being (R), but Crimson Storm discards two (R) Energy from the Pokémon using it. No, that won’t prevent Mew ex (A1a 032, 077, 083, 086) from copying it. The wording is such that Mew ex’s “Genome Hacking” would do as much as it could of the attack; 200 damage, but only discarding (R) Energy if there were some attached to Mew ex.
The payout is worth it. Even with taking into account discarding two (R) Energy, and the four Energy up front cost, 200 damage is good. Very good. Maybe even great. The highest printed HP score in the Pokémon TCG Pocket currently belongs to Venusaur ex (A1 004, 251), and that score is 190 HP. Yeah, 10 less than Crimson Storm does, though even another 20 HP wouldn’t have saved Venusaur ex, due to its (R) Weakness. There are Pokémon that can survive Crimson Storm, but the only ones not relying on combos are relying on coin flips.
Okay, now let’s look at what we have to use in order to get Charizard ex into play, as well as “baby” Charizard. Charmander (A1 033, 230; P-A 032), Charmeleon (A1 034), and Charizard (A1 035) are all (R) Type non-Pokémon ex with (W) Weakness and one attack. Charmander is a Basic Pokémon with 60 HP, a (C) Retreat Cost, and can use “Ember” to do 30 damage, the attack also discards a (R) Energy from itself. Charmeleon is a Stage 1 with 90 HP, a (C)(C) Retreat Cost, and can use the attack “Fire Claws” for (R)(C)(C) to do 60 damage. Charmander, on occasion, can take some cheeky OHKOs, but the two are mostly filler.
As for Charizard – not ex – it is a Stage 2 Pokémon with 150 HP, a (C)(C) Retreat Cost, and can use “Fire Spin” for (R)(R)(C)(C) to do 150 damage, but Fire Spin also makes it discard (R)(R) from itself. Which means Charizard ex is just a baby Charizard with Charmeleon’s attack, +30 HP, +50 damage, and Charmeleon’s attack as an added bonus.3
Charizard ex decks are not top tier, but they are competitive. At the time of writing, Pokémon Zone classifies it as a high tier deck, with three variants: Classic, Arcanine ex (A1 041, 254), and Volcarona (A1a 014; P-A 028). All three are fairly similar, using Moltres ex to aid in prepping Charizard ex. There’s less room for Trainers in the Arcanine ex and Volcarona builds, but you get an alternate Stage 1attack that doesn’t discard its Energy, or a non-ex Stage 1 attacker that does discard its Energy but can hit the Bench.
There are other variants, but as usual, there aren’t enough results to substantiate them. As per usual, I’m using LimitlessTCG for listings of tournament results. I’m not seeing anything current for the Charizard ex/Volcarona variant, and almost no Volcarona decks at all. The Arcanine ex variant isn’t doing all that well either. Fortunately, the “classic” build is hanging in there. In fact, it’s the third most used decks in terms of meta share. In terms of wins, it ranks lower, but exactly how much gets messy due to some of the lesser used decks technically having good Win % scores.
Rating: 3.5/5
Charizard ex is a competitive deck. For as often as there are Charizard-based cards in the full TCG, it’s a treat when one’s actually good. If all you have are hazy memories of playing as kid, or you know how high the monetary value of cards like Charizard (Base Set 4/102)… yeah, Charizard cards are usually not so good. The legendary one from Base Set was actually pretty bad. Nor was it especially rare compared to the other holographic rares; Charizard hype just caused demand to far outstrip supply.
Back to today’s Charizard-ex. I could be jaded, and the powers-that-be won’t release anything that serious surpasses or counters it anytime soon. Considering how close we’ve already gotten, though, if you’ve got Charizard ex, I recommend enjoying it while you can. I mean, Palkia ex (A2 049, 182, 204, 206) is just 10 damage shy of OHKOing an uninjured Charizard ex. Yeah, it needs to use a costly attack, but (W) has three forms of Energy acceleration and that same attack does Bench damage. With Cyrus also making the Bench less safe than it’s ever been.
1Both Piloswine (A2 032) and Mamoswine (A2 033, 160) have the “Thick Fat” Ability, which reduces the damage they take by 20 and 30 (respectively) from attacks made by (R) and (W) Pokémon.
2Before protective effects.
3Not literally; I only wish Charizard ex had gotten an Ability that let it use the attack from its Stage 1 form, instead of just having Fire Claws renamed to Slash.
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