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Pokemon is a fairly diverse game,
having several different strategies organized and spread
out throughout the various Types. Grass tends to use
Status a lot, Water likes to inflict Bench damage or
Paralyze (or really Freeze), Electric is cheap to use
and can retreat quickly, Fighting usually aims for raw
power - at least, that's what the early game was a lot
like. Nowadays, the strategies depend more on the
individual Pokemon than a generalized Type-centric idea
- every Type has Energy acceleration of some form or
another, every deck has access to damage-boosters and
damage-reducers, everything's kinda the same but kinda
different. It's a bit strange that way.
That being said, why does Burning
Energy exist?
As has been a recent trend in the
last few sets, each Type has been getting their own
Special Energy to help them out; some are thematically
on-par with what we'd think the Type is like, like
Strong Energy giving Fighting-Types more damage in their
attacks or Metal getting Shield Energy for damage
reduction, but then there's Psychic-Types getting
Mystery Energy to reduce their Retreat Cost? Isn't that
what Electric's Flash Energy should've been while
Psychic-Types got rid of their own Weakness? Still,
every Type is getting their own Special Energy, and
Fire's Burning Energy might be the example of something
a little bit...outdated.
See early on in the TCG, there were
a few Fire-types that loved discarding Energy - the
first one I can think of is actually Charmeleon's
Flamethrower (though Charizard himself had Fire Spin
which got rid of 2), and it sorta became apart of
Flamethrower's description for years - so much so that
even nowadays when a card gets printed with
Flamethrower, it'll have that effect of "discard 1
Energy card" to use the attack even when the damage has
fluctuated accordingly.
That being said, not every
Fire-type nowadays runs around on burning off their
Energy. In fact, one of the more recent additions that
have entered the competitive meta has been Entei (15)
from Ancient Origins, and he doesn't discard any Energy
at all! But for those Fire-types that do - a few of
which got printed in BREAKThrough - this card is a
godsend.
Can you imagine what it would've
been like if Burning Energy was around in Base Set days?
Charizard would've been amazingly useful! Being able to
hit for 100 damage every turn by simply discarding 2
Burning Energies that would just get immediately
reattached - in that day and age, Charizard would've
been as grand and powerful as we'd all have liked him to
be. Nowadays, we've got stuff like Typhlosion, M
Houndoom-EX, Camerupt-EX, a couple of Blazikens - even
Charizard-EX (11) from Flashfire doesn't look so bad
now!
...I mean, he's still not that
great, but still!
At first glance, Burning Energy
doesn't seem to be worth the time of day for a few
Fire-types - I know stuff like Ho-oh-EX, the old Entei-EX
from Dark Explorers, and Reshiram-EX never really needed
it, but when you can utilize this to essentially make an
attack that would normally be a hefty cost closer to
free? That's priceless.
I'm expecting a few older builds
with the basic Reshiram to spring up in Expanded and
maybe a couple Camerupt-EX builds to pop up in Standard,
but keep in mind...there's only so many Burning Energies
one can fit in a deck.
Rating
Standard: 3/5 (Burning Energy
breathes new life into Fire decks that center around an
attacker that discards Energies, but it is by no means
perfect)
Expanded: 3/5 (if the attacker is
KO'd, Burning Energy gets stuck in the discard pile, and
that can be very dangerous for decks relying on it)
Limited: 4/5 (still, it's got its
uses, and I think it makes several cards that would be
otherwise unplayable much more so)
Arora Notealus: Seriously though,
shouldn't Electric-types be getting the retreat cost
lowering effects of Mystery Energy? I'm just saying,
Psychic-types would definitely benefit from the No
Weakness clause...then again, there have been some
Psychic decks making use of Mystery. So what do I know
anyway, right?
Next Time: EVERYTHING'S ON FIRE
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