For today’s review, I’ll be reviewing another requested card, Charizard, from Arceus. Like usual, we’ll start with the basics. Charizard comes equipped with 140 HP, which is very good for a Stage 2, especially when compared to some such as Gengar SF. Like 99.99% of Fire Pokemon, it comes with a Water Weakness. However, it’s only +30 instead of x2, meaning that your biggest threat, Gyarados, will still need to dish out an additional 20 damage to OHKO you. The -20 Fighting Weakness is great, resisting Donphan, Promocroak as well as both Machamps. The Retreat Cost of CCC hurts. I always find it difficult to understand how a Pokemon that can fly can have such a high Retreat Cost.
Charizard is given a Poke-Body as well as two attacks. Its Poke-Body, “Fire Formation”, increases the damage of all its attacks by 10 for each Fire Pokemon on your bench. This is an amazing Poke-Body, being able to increase your attacks damage by up to 50 is very solid.
Charizard’s first attack, “Fire Wing”, for the low cost of R, does a vanilla 30 damage. First let me say that R for 30 isn’t bad value, but will never be good enough to make a card competitive. However, that’s where “Fire Formation” comes in, allowing you to hit for up to 80 damage for a single Energy is amazing value that surpasses even Donphan and Kingdra.
Its final attack, “Burning Tail”, for the high cost of RRC does an extremely low 80 damage or a staggering 130 damage, depending on your bench. However, despite your bench circumstances, you will be required to discard a Fire Energy attached to Charizard.
Well, without its Poke-Body, this would be yet another Charizard that would make us sigh every time we flip by it in our binders. However, with “Fire Formation”, you can be hitting for big damage for a relatively low cost when you consider you can be hitting for huge damage. Another factor that would usually be a problem for Charizard would be its x2 Water Weakness, but this one is only hindered with a +30 Weakness.
It seems to me that the card designers finally heard people’s complaints that Charizard, despite being one of the most popular Pokemon, has always been given bad card. I think this is their effort to change that and I for one am satisfied… for now.
One way that I have seen Charizard played is with a Spiritomb start, to neutralize your opponent’s Trainers and slow SP down along with Seeker, to keep your bench non-Fire Pokemon free. I have seen effective Charizard builds work very effectively, and I believe Charizard to be a very powerful deck that can show real results if the time is put into it.
My Recommendation: Try out Charizard, see how it works. I think Charizard is definitely a solid play for Cities. In addition, if you are a player on a budget that can’t afford the SP Engine, I strongly believe that this is by far the best deck for you to build and take to Cities. With the release of Seeker, Spiritomb/Seeker Charizard builds may see more play, so even if you don’t intend to play Charizard, at least learn how to beat it.
My Rating: 4/5 (A great card that deserves a chance)
Shameless Self Promotion
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