Tuesday, May 2nd

I'd like to take a moment to compare the original Charizard to Dark
Charizard.
I've read a lot of articles declaring that Charizard is the worst pokémon in
the lot, and visa versa. It honestly depends on your deck.
Let's take a look:

CHARIZARD:
120 HP
Pokémon Power: Energy Burn- As often as you like during your turn (before
you attack), you may turn all Energy Cards attacked to Charizard into Fire
Energy for the rest of the turn. This power can't be used if Charizard is
asleep, confused or paralyzed.

FIRE SPIN: FFFF-Discard 2 Energy Cards attacked to Charizard in order to use
this attack. 100
Weakness-Water  Resistance: Fighting
Retreat Cost: 3C

DARK CHARIZARD:
80HP
NAIL FLICK: C-10
CONTINUOUS FIREBALL: FF - Flip a number of coins equal to the number of Fire
Energy Cards attached to Dark Charizard. This attack does 50 damage times
the number of heads. Discard a number of Fire Energy cards attached to Dark
Charizard equal to the number of heads.
Weakness: Water  Resistance: Fighting
Retreat Cost: 3C

OK, the obvious difference here is Hit Points. Dark Charizard is obviously
at a disadvantage here, having 40 less that the original. Ouch. If you take
the Dark Charizard against a water deck, you stand NO chance. (Believe me, I
know :)
It's hard enough keeping a regular Charizard alive long enough to use him,
much less his Dark version.
Another disadvantage is Dark Charizard lacks the cool pokemon power that
really helped the original Charizard, Energy Burn. I mean, Nail Flick is
just incrediably weak for a Stage 2 pokémon of ANY kind.

Dark Charizard has a nice little attack to compensate for his low HP and his
lack of a Pokémon Power. Continous fireball can do a LOT more damage than
Fire Spin. If you have 4 Fire Energy on Dark Charizard, and you land heads
all four times, that's 200 points of damage! Nothing can withstand that! The
down side however, is that there's no guarantee that you'll get heads every
flip. However, the odds are pretty good you'll at least do 50 if you have at
least 4 Fire Energy on him.

In my personal experience with Dark Charizard though, I'd rather do a split
deck than rely on Dark Charizard. The only good decks to play Dark Charizard
against are going to be fighting or grass type decks. Anything else, and you
risk total destruction.

A good card to pair Dark Charizard with is Chansey, (Most cards can benefit
from Chansey somehow) as getting Dark Charizard to survive to it's final
evolution is very tough without someone out there to take the damage for him
while you build him up.

In my opinion, you'd be better served playing with a regular Charizard than
with it's Dark counterpart, but it's all in good fun anyway, so play wiht
what you like. I've learned that most of the fun of the game is discovering
what works and what doesn't.

Well, that's my two bits! :) Please direct all mail to
rinoasrealm@hotmail.com , but please keep in mind that hate mail better be
polite, or I'll just delete it and not resond.

Thank you for your time.

DarkDemoness
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