aroramage |
Well now we've got another M
Charizard-EX to work with here in the game. What a time
we live in, eh? And this time it's Mega Charizard X
getting treated to the Fire treatment! Nifty!
So what can Fire-type M
Charizard-EX do? Well for starters, his attack is
actually cheaper than the other M Charizard-EXs from
Flashfire, being 4 Energy instead of 5. For that 4
Energy, you get Heat Typhoon, which deals 100 damage and
lets you flip a coin for every Fire Energy attached to
him. And every time you get a heads? Add on an extra 50
damage.
So the immediate thought is, "Whoa,
he can hit for 300 damage!!" Which is true, if you're
lucky with your coin flips (50/50 every flip), you can
hit for 300 damage. It's not guaranteed like the other
two, but it's a little cheaper for a little more
viability. On average, you're probably aiming to hit 200
damage (2 Heads, 2 Tails), which is still hefty chunk
of most Pokemon's HP. In theory, this means M
Charizard-EX can beat out any Pokemon-EX and most any M
Pokemon-EX that's weak to Fire - rip M Sceptile-ex, am I
right?
But that's just on his own merits.
You do have room for Muscle Band on him, and combined
with the 200 damage (Average) he's dealing, that's
enough to KO the smaller M Pokemon-EX. But aside from
that, that's really about it. You could attach more Fire
Energies onto him to increase his output by that much
more, but there's one thing you're not gonna be able to
account for...well, two things: the actual results of a
coin flip, and the lack of a Spirit Link.
There is potential for you to hit
100 damage as much as 300 damage, for starters, and the
fact that M Charizard-EX continues to lack that Spirit
Link means he won't see much play if any. It's just not
going to be worth it! It's the same with M Blastoise-EX,
the original M Venusaur-EX, M Heracross-EX, M Kangaskhan-EX
- all these Megas without Spirit Links just don't see as
much play as these newer ones.
Spirit Links are great man.
Rating
Standard: 2.5/5 (that being said,
if you were to run M Charizard-EX, I'd run this one over
the other two)
Expanded: 2.5/5 (it's arguably the
most viable way to hit 300 damage)
Limited: 4/5 (I mean, who wants to
pay 5 Energy for that?)
Arora Notealus: Mega Charizard X
sure is getting a lot of representation. Two cards in
the TCG, Smash Bros, Pokken...it's like he's Nintendo's
favorite or something. Not to complain except on maybe
Mega Charizard Y's behalf, since that guy is just as
powerful, you know?
Next Time: An innocent ring of
flowers. What's the worst that can happen?
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Otaku |
Time to finish what we started. Yesterday
we looked at Charizard-EX. Officially it
was just Generations 11/83 but I did my usual
thing and ran through all of them. Today we look
at its set-mate and Mega Evolution M Charizard-EX
(XY: Generations 12/83) but once again I’ll also
be comparing it with the other versions. This time
though, I’ll be reverting back to my usual review style.
At the risk of sounding like an idiot by stating the
obvious, M Charizard-EX is a Mega Evolution.
I stress this because what it means can be easy to gloss
over or forget, especially when at a glance it is
impressive. Megas have all the drawbacks of being
a Pokémon-EX (extra Prize when KOed, target of certain
counters, inability to use certain card effects) plus
the baggage of Mega Evolution (extra card, turn to
Evolve, turn ends when you Mega Evolve, targeted by
certain specific counters). There is the slight
benefit of Mega Evolution support like Mega Turbo,
but that only does so much to offset the rest.
Then of course they have better attributes and effects
than they would otherwise, but many Mega Evolutions
aren’t competitive. There is no Charizard
Spirit Link. There is no Fire-Type version of
Archie’s Ace in the Hole or Maxie’s Hidden
Ball Trick. Doing everything the mundane way
means a turn to Bench Charizard-EX, a turn to
then Mega Evolve into M Charizard-EX which
ends your turn, and at last after a minimum of three
turns you have an M Charizard-EX (hope you
powered it up as you went). The only shortcut of
which I am aware is not worth it: Clefable (BW:
Plasma Storm 98/135) has an Ability called Moon
Guidance that searches your deck for a Pokémon that can
Evolve from one you already play, then Evolves one into
the other, but requires a coin flip to work (tails
fails). As Clefable is a Stage 1 you’ll
have to use Wally on it if Clefairy and
Charizard-EX hit the field on the same turn.
Preferably on a turn you cannot attack like your first
turn if you go first, as your turn will still end
without an attack.
So what do you get for such an investment? M
Charizard-EX is a Fire Type, so it hits nearly all
Grass Types and Metal Types for double damage via
Weakness. The Type has very little support that
explicitly works for them: Blacksmith and
Burning Energy with the former often being well
worth it but the latter not so much. Something
I’ve been forgetting lately is that there is actually a
lot of support not restricted to Fire Type Pokémon but
which works with Fire Type Energy. When I start
naming them you can understand why. Once per turn,
Chandelure (BW: Plasma Flare 16/116) can
attach an [R] Energy from your deck to one of your
Pokémon for the small price of placing a damage counter
on the recipient: I don’t recall it ever being used
successfully in competitive play. Emboar (Black
& White 20/114; BW: Black Star Promos BW21;
BW: Next Destinies 100/99; BW: Legendary
Treasures 27/113) was huge when it was new but has
never really reclaimed what it so quickly lost. Entei-EX
at one time was so strong it even had a quad-style deck
where players just ran four of it and used its Energy
attaching attack to take KOs while building up a
replacement. So most of these are has-beens or
never-weres. The chief exception is Scorched
Earth, a Stadium that allows you to discard [R] or
[F] Energy from hand in order to draw two cards and
works reasonably well with Blacksmith. At
least the anti-Fire Type cards aren’t so great; the only
one you’ll likely run into is Parallel City and
most run that to use the Bench shrinking side. If
your opponent wants to use it against M Charizard-EX,
it will just drop the damage it does by 20 but
that player will limit his or her own Bench to three.
M Charizard-EX
has 220 HP, enough to usually survive a hit. That
is about as good as it gets (so far no Mega Evolution
has had more than 240). Being higher would be
better but more for 2HKO purposes. Water Weakness
is what you expect on Fire Types and M Charizard-EX
is no exception. Water Weakness isn’t the worst
right now but it is dangerous. You’ve got
Seismitoad-EX decks enduring even though people keep
saying are going to die off in Standard. Greninja
BREAK is doing reasonably well. You’ve got
Keldeo-EX either as a main attacker when backed by
Blastoise (BW: Boundaries Crossed 31/149;
BW: Plasma Storm 137/135; BW: Plasma Blast
16/101) or splash in mostly for its Ability in other
decks. You have Suicune (BW: Plasma
Blast 20/101) and Regice to punish Pokémon-EX
in general and prove quite problematic for the Water
Weak ones by M Charizard-EX. No Resistance
is typical so onto the Retreat Cost of [CCC]; this is
high enough you’ll want to avoid paying it either at all
or at least at full price, or what you would need to
just endure M Charizard-EX being stuck up front.
As M Charizard-EX has no Ancient Trait, all that
is left is its attack called “Heat Typhoon”. For
[RCCC] it does 100 damage plus you get to flip a coin
for each [R] Energy attached to it; “tails” changes
nothing but each “heads” adds 50 damage. Really
not digging the flips but the attack should at least be
splitting between 100 and 150 damage as the attack cost
requires a minimum of one [R] be attached. For the
effort involved, you’ll want as many [R] Energy as
possible because you really need to be OHKOing at least
Basic Pokémon-EX reliably.
How many Energy does it take to reliably OHKO anything?
There will always be a chance of failure, so maybe we
better just look at how many possible outcomes match the
criteria up to a slightly above reasonable amount of [R]
Energy attached. As stated, if you stick to the
minimum lone [R] Energy with three of any other Type,
you aren’t breaking either goal. With [RR] and two
of any other Type attached, one in four possible
outcomes does 200 damage, with 250 or higher not being
possible. If you have to go from zero Energy to
enough to attack in a single turn, this is a reasonable
amount as a Double Colorless Energy and a
Blacksmith can do it. With [RRR] and one of
any other Energy Type attached, half of the eight
outcomes will score 200+ damage, while only one will
clock in at 250. If we attack using [RRRR] then we
get four total flips for 16 possible outcomes. 68.75%
will score 200+ damage, while 31.25% will manage 250+.
So even with nothing but [R] Energy fueling it, there is
still almost a one in three chance the attack won’t be
able to OHKO your typical Basic Pokémon-EX and just over
a two in three chance it won’t take down Mega Evolutions
or Wailord-EX in one shot.
Okay, so what about the other M Charizard-EX?
In terms of game relevant aspects, XY: Flashfire
13/106 (also available as XY: Flashfire 107/106)
has the same everything but Retreat Cost and attack.
Its Retreat Cost is just [C] which is a bit improvement
as lowering the Retreat Cost at all makes it free, and
paying a single Energy is usually easy. You’ll
still need an alternative to manually retreating in case
of things like Paralysis but it is a definite
improvement. The attack is “Crimson Dive” and
requires [RRCCC] to do 300 damage to the opponent’s
Active and 50 to M Charizard-EX itself.
This might be an improvement but it might not.
Five Energy is massive. You do get massive
damage, but it will rarely all be needed: even a
Wailord-EX with Fighting Fury Belt only has
290 HP. Doing just 250 and needing only four
Energy, getting rid of the 50 points of self damage, let
alone both, would have been more useful. That self
damage really is easy to underestimate; just one Crimson
Dive leaves this M Charizard-EX with an 170 HP
left, obliterating what you might call its “Mega
Evolution bonus” to HP and leaving it within range of an
effective OHKO for more decks. Sure you can use
Protection Cube to soak this but that means you
can’t use anything else that may have been useful on
more than just M Charizard-EX. Even with
Protection Cube, you still need to manage five total
Energy for enough to score OHKOs against most everything
plus overkill. This card was never reviewed by the
crew.
M Charizard-EX
(XY: Flashfire 69/106, 18/106) was reviewed by
the CotD reviewers of the time and you can see it
here.
Differences between it and today’s version are that it
is a Dragon-Type, sports 10 more HP, has Fairy Weakness,
and its attack is “Wild Blaze”. Wild Blaze costs
[RRDCC] and still hits for 300 damage with a big
drawback, discarding the top five cards of your deck.
Perhaps they thought the massive discard cost wouldn’t
matter because Lysandre’s Trump Card was already
in the pipeline, but even if that was plan that card is
banned now and losing five cards from the top of your
deck is a huge risk. The Energy cost is a bit
worse here as well as we suddenly see a [D] Energy slip
in there. It isn’t as painful now thanks to
Double Dragon Energy, but even with that and cards
like Reshiram (XY: Roaring Skies 63/108)
that isn’t going to be easy to setup. Don’t use
this one unless it is purely for the challenge of doing
so. That means by default… M Charizard-EX (XY:
Generations 12/83) is the best of the M
Charizard-EX options!
It is a hollow victory; whether Standard or Expanded you
shouldn’t waste time with M Charizard-EX.
If you insist, you’ll probably want Emboar or
something else backing it that can accelerate Energy but
you need [RRRR] so that Heat Typhoon has a decent chance
of taking out threats in one hit. We covered the
Charizard-EX yesterday and since I recommend
another source of Energy acceleration in the deck, just
use Charizard-EX (XY: Flashfire 12/106)
for its strong “Combustion Attack”. Even I am not
going to run through them all over again the next day…
this time. As we’ve said with Generations
cards before, their release nature makes a chance at
using them in the Limited Format unlikely, but if it
somehow happens then maybe include this should you pull
the Charizard-EX as well. Yeah, I’m not
sure if it adds enough to be worth the effort even here.
Ratings
Standard:
1.75/5
Expanded:
1.5/5
Limited:
3/5
Summary:
Another M Charizard-EX, another card you
shouldn’t be playing unless it is as a personal
challenge. It can hit hard but unreliably and for
a massive investment. At the same time, it is
still the best of the M Charizard-EX we have
received so far, because the first two were even worse.
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