Welcome to the Card of the Day! Today I’ll be taking a look at Typhlosion Prime, a card released in Heart Gold Soul Silver, and one of the first six Primes to be released in America. To start off, Tyhplosion is a Stage 2 Fire Pokemon, which means that there is huge potential to OHKO a loaded Dialga G LV.X. Typhlosion has 140 HP and a x2 Water Weakness which means when you’re playing against anything but Gyarados you will have a bit of survivability. Finally, Typhlosion has a higher-than-you-want-but-still-not-terrible Retreat Cost of two energy.
“Afterburner” states that, once during your turn, you can attach a Fire Energy card in your Discard Pile to one of your Pokemon. If you do, place a damage counter on that Pokemon as well. First and foremost, when you’re using this Poke-Power against any type of SP deck, you’ll have to be wary of Power Spray. While the damage counter is disappointing (it’ll add up after continual use), bypassing the 1 Energy Attachment Per Turn rule is worth it (Blastoise EX placed a damage counter on the Pokemon and ended up being one of the most played cards in the format).
The cards that “Afterburner” combos best with are Ninetales and Charizard. The idea is to use “Roast Reveal” to draw three cards, “Afterburner” to attach an additional Energy to Charizard so use “Burning Tail” each turn to hit for huge damage. This combo is the core of many Charizard decks that are played today.
Let’s see if Typlosion’s attack is up to par with its Poke-Power. “Flare Destroy”, for RRC, does 70 damage and discards an Energy attached to both Typhlosion and the Defending Pokemon. Obviously, the idea behind the design of this card was that you keep using “Flare Destroy” to get rid of your opponent’s Energy while using “Afterburner” to keep getting them back onto Typhlosion.
Unfortunately that is not a very good idea as you will only be hitting for only 70 damage each turn, but you’ll also be putting a damage counter on Typhlosion each turn if you use Afterburner. Even if your opponent can’t muster up a powerful attacker, eventually your HP will be low enough that a few low-damage hits will be enough for the KO.
The other card that Tyhplosion can see some play with is with Ursaring Prime. Not only can Typhlosion allow you to attach more than one Energy a turn to power up Ursaring’s high-cost attacks, but the damage counter placed on Ursaring when doing so would activate “Berserk”, drastically increasing its damage output.
Overall, Typhlosion is a pretty good card, but its Retreat Cost could be a liability at times, especially against decks that play “draggers”. Fortunately, the Poke-Power can help alleviate this disadvantage. However, you’ll probably want to make sure you’re running Unown Q/Warp Energy to make sure you can Retreat Typhlosion easier.
Note: “Draggers” are Pokemon such as Luxray GL LV.X, Froslass GL, Blaziken FB, Regigigas Promo, etc. that can drag up your benched Pokemon to the active slot (Regice doesn’t qualify as you don’t get to pick which Pokemon is brought active).
My Recommendation: While it isn’t the next Uxie, it is certainly a powerful card that has found its niche in the format (Charizard decks!)
My Rating: 3.75/5
