Pokemon TCG's New Charizard Card Is Making a Splash

A new Charizard card is making some noise in the competitive Pokemon Trading Card Game scene. When Obsidian Flames first came out last month, many Pokemon TCG players dismissed the set as containing mostly filler. However, the set features two powerful Pokemon ex cards that are being combined to great effect in a new deck that's starting to appear in the Top 8 charts of several local League Cup events. The deck primarily involves utilizing Pidgeot ex's Quick Search ability to pull out the cards needed to get Charizard ex, a card that grows more powerful as a player loses prizes, onto the field and wiping up Pokemon with one hit. 

The Charizard ex/Pidgeot ex deck has a few big advantages, such as Charizard ex (with its Darkness typing) being strong against Gardevoir ex and Mew VSTAR, which are the two dominant decks in the current metagame. However, the deck can be shut down by a Path to the Peak stadium card, which means that players will need to have some counters ready as many competitive decks currently use Path to the Peak and its ability to negate the ability of any card with a rulebox (which includes both Charizard ex and Pidgeot ex). The deck also relies heavily on Stage 2 Pokemon, which means that it requires more set up than many other dominant decks out there, although this will change as Pokemon V, Pokemon VMAX, and Pokemon VSTAR cards are all cycled out of the rotation over the next couple of years.

There's a few other variations of the Charizard ex deck out there and it'll be exciting to see how they stack up in a wider tournament setting when Regionals start next weekend. 

What's Next for the Pokemon TCG?

For non-Japanese players, there are two more sets coming out this year. The first is the long-awaited Scarlet & Violet – 151 set, which will includes all 151 original Pokemon, including the first Kadabra card in nearly 20 years. After that is the release of Paradox Rift, a new set that contains Pokemon with the Ancient and Future labels and will likely mark the beginning of a new trend of decks focused around both cards. The last labels (introduced in Battle Styles) are still the foundation of the most dominant deck in the meta right now, so players are expecting Paradox Rift to be the start of a major shakeup in the metagame.