Fiery Flint – Dragon Majesty Pokemon Review

aroramage

Honestly, not much to say about this card. Fiery Flint’s an Item that nets you 4 Fire Energy for the cost of 2 cards from your hand. Overall it’s a +1, but it works best with cards that pull out a lot of Energy from your hand, which there are some in this set. Aside from that though, there’s not a whole lot of reasons to fill your hand up with so much Energy.

Rating

• Standard: 2.5/5 (feels designed to work with stuff in this set)
• Expanded: 2.5/5 (works best with Inferno Fandango)
• Limited: 2/5 (you really want that accelerator around first)

Arora Notealus: Fiery Flint…it sure is a card. I guess it’ll be useful for on the road when you need to set up that campfire-oh wait you never have to rest in Pokemon games outside of saving. Never mind then…hmmm, although what if they included a camping action?

Next Time: Throwback to the way back to the card that…actually would work well with this card, go figure.

Vince

I could be short on time, such that I’ll try to make this as concise as possible. Fiery Flint is an item card that makes you discard two cards from your hand in order to search you deck for 4 Basic Fire Energies from your deck and put it onto your hand. From there, you can use those energies to attach them to one of your Pokemon or to use them as discard/attach fodder from effects coming from Pokémon or Trainer cards. Perhaps decks that can use it to its fullest potential, at least in Expanded because I can’t think of any in Standard, could be Volcanion-EX (with or without the other Volcanion with Power Heater) whose Steam Up amplifies the damage output from Basic Fire Pokemon each time a Fire energy is discarded and Emboar with the Inferno Fandango ability that enables unlimited Fire energy attachments. Overall, it’s a pretty straightforward card, on top of a card that works in specific decks but useless on others, which may affect how I’ll score this card.

• Standard: 3/5
• Expanded: 4/5
• Limited: 4.5/5

21times
PokeDeck
Central

Fiery Flint (DRM 60) ignites the meta from the Dragon Majesty expansion set.  This Item card allows you to search your deck for FOUR Fire energy cards upon the condition that you first discard any two cards from your hand (and yes those two cards can be Fire energy cards).  Pair this with Lady (FLI 109) and Ribombee (BUS 96), and you can potentially put TEN Fire energy cards in your hand in a single turn.

And I’ve done that and been able to attach quite a few of those energy cards with Dragon’s Wish Dragonair (SUM 95).  I’m still struggling with the Turtonator DRM archtype, but I’ll tell you, Fiery Flint is an integral part of the Dragonair archetype.  And this might be the best build for Turtonator.  I’m 9 W 6 L with Turtonator decklists that carry Fiery Flint.  Overall, I’m 20 W 26 L with Turtonator as the feature Pokemon.

It can also pair with Zinnia, but I haven’t had as much luck with her.  And there are, of course, other Fire Pokemon out of DRM (Darmanitan and Reshiram GX) that accelerate from your hand as well, and if there’s ever a Pokemon that does damage based on the amount of Fire energy you discard from hand (like Alolan Dugtrio (UP 79), Fiery Flint will facilitate the success of that archetype as well.  Overall, this is an extremely valuable card for Fire attack Pokemon, and it helps make them extremely competitive.

Rating

Standard: 3.5 out of 5

Conclusion

I definitely feel like Fiery Flint is better than Beast Rings and Pheromosa which I tried initially.  Beast Rings can work well, but frequently I have trouble drawing into them, and sometimes I’ve already pulled all of the energy out of my deck.  I know I’ve also played this at least one time to clear cards out of my hand so I can draw new cards with Oranguru.  Fiery Flint is a good card that will help make Fire archetypes very relevant over the next three years.

Otaku

Fiery Flint (Dragon Majesty 60/70, 76/70) is our Wednesday subject, a Trainer-Item that requires you discard two cards from hand in order to use it and then allows you to search your deck for up to four [R] Energy cards and add them to your hand. Unless the powers-that-be reverse their current position on Special Energy cards, the only thing that counts as [R] Energy when not in play are basic Fire Energy cards. So… is that enough to be worth a two-card discard? Maybe. The last card like this we received was Clemont (Generations 59/83) BUT you’ll notice that he is a Trainer-Supporter that fetches four [L] Energy. While Energy Type does matter, right now we’re zeroing in on his Supporter status; instead of using your once-per-turn Supporter you just need to discard two cards from hand. While we no longer have Puzzle of Time and easy combos like using Exeggcute (BW – Plasma Freeze 4/116; BW – Plasma Blast 102/101) in Standard, we still have good recycling options for Pokémon and basic Energy cards; as long as your deck also contains those, the two card discard cost is usually easily met.

The real question is whether or not [R] Energy-focused decks have better options. If the deck runs basic Fire Energy cards plus another basic Energy Type, the only reason Professor’s Letter isn’t the obvious choice is that it isn’t Standard-legal. Expanded also has the option of Battle Compressor plus Superior Energy Retrieval. The two are useful separately as deck thinning and Energy reclamation, but put them together and they almost fake being a Fiery Flint that works for all basic Energy cards. I’d say the main issues for this card in Standard are a lack of strong Fire Energy fueled decks at the moment and the ones that do exist often shooting for that opening Kiawe. If a deck is successful with Kiawe, that is four less Fire Energy cards to fetch. Anything already in your hand or on the field from other means – including your manual Energy attachment for the turn – also subtract from this amount. If you run just one or two Fiery Flint to avoid this, you’ve got to also run search effects for Items or luck into them. If you run three or four to make drawing into them easier, you’d better have a use for discard fodder because you’ll only need one or two.

With those criticisms out of the way, this actually seems like a solid card. Why? At least some compatible decks will be running enough basic Fire Energy for it to be worthwhile, either when Kiawe misses his first turn appearance or because the deck just runs THAT many [R] Energy. In Standard it might work with Blaziken (Dragon Majesty 6/70).  Blaziken’s “Fire Starter” Ability attaches from the discard pile, and while you could Kiawe to whatever it is you’re attacking with on your first turn and then shift to Firestarter later, when you’re trying to set up multiple copies of a Stage 2 Pokémon, I’m inclined to believe you need to spend your Supporter on something else.  So, use Fiery Flint to get four Fire Energy into hand, discarding any already there, or play a second copy to discard two of the first.  You’ll probably have some Ultra Ball that will need discard fodder sooner or later; spare copies of Fiery Flint or extra Fire Energy will oblige.

I’m actually more interested in this for the Expanded Format, to see if this reignites some older [R] archetypes.  Emboar (Black & White 20/114; BW – Black Star Promos BW21; BW – Next Destinies 100/99; BW – Legendary Treasures 27/113) originally was strong due to its “Inferno Fandango” Ability, which lets you attach an [R] Energy from hand to one of your Pokémon as often as you like during your turn.  Its time at the top was shortlived, however.  It is a bit of a longshot, but being able to easily add several basic Fire Energy cards to hand with an Item might make a difference.  Even if not, I’m reasonably confident this can work well with Volcanion-EX decks; thanks to frequently opening with Volcanion (XY – Steam Siege 25/114; XY – Black Star Promos XY145) backed by multiple of the eponymous Volcanion-EX, itself desiring Fire Energy cards to discard for its “Steam Up” Ability.  Together, you can have a 130 HP single-Prize Basic swinging for up to 140 damage (before buffs other than Steam Up) at a cost of just [R] attached and one Fire Energy discarded per Steam Up.  Finally, if you are running a Fire Energy fueled deck in Limited, Fiery Flint is a no-brainer!

Ratings

Standard: 3/5

Expanded: 3.25/5

Limited: 3.4/5