Incineroar ex – Celestial Guardians
Date Reviewed: May 23, 2025
Ratings Summary:
Ratings are based on a 1 to 5 scale. 1 is horrible. 3 is average. 5 is great.
Reviews Below:
Otaku
The third best card of Celestial Guardians is Incineroar ex (A3 033, 182, 200)! It’s a Fire-Type, Stage 2 Pokémon ex that evolves from Torracat. Incineroar ex has 180 HP, (W) Weakness, (C)(C) Retreat Cost, and two attacks. For (R), it can use “Fire Fang” to do 30 damage to the opponent’s Active, while also inflicting Burn. “Scar-Charged Smash” is priced at (R)(R)(C). This lets Incineroar ex do 80 damage to the opponent’s Active, plus another 80 (160 total) if Incineroar ex has any damage counters on itself. Incineroar ex has three different artworks, one available at the ♦♦♦♦ rarity, and two at the ★★ rarity.
The (R) Type has only one piece of true support: Moltres ex (A1 047, 255, 274; P-A 025). It’s first attack requires (R) to use, and has you flip three coins. For each “heads”, you attach a (R) Energy to one of your Benched Pokémon. This Energy can be attached to a single target, or divided between up to three. Arguably Turtonator (A3 031, 161) counts as well; it’s just a decent, Basic (R) attacker, but it can use Kiawe to attach two (R) Energy to itself1, but at the cost of ending your turn after. Relevant because it seems to be the best Basic, non-ex attacker available to (R) Types.
Incineroar ex does benefit from exploiting (R) Weakness with both of its attacks. When facing small to medium targets, it helps with Fire Fang and Scar-Charged Smash when you have no damage on the attacking Incineroar ex. When you are enjoying the 160 damage from Scar-Charged Smash, the +20 from Weakness means only Venusaur ex (A1 004, 251; A3 230) is outside of OHKO range (before other card effects). There are two cards2 with anti-Fire effects, but they don’t see competitive play.
Lest we forget, Pokémon ex are worth an extra point when KO’d. This and dealing with several anti-ex effects are the trade-off for enjoying the better stats and/or effects found on Pokémon ex. Meowscarada, Sudowoodo (A2a 036, 079), and Tauros (A1a 060) each have a different attack that does significantly more damage to Pokémon ex than non-Pokémon ex. Red (A2b 071, 090) is a Supporter that lets any attack do +20 damage when used against an Active Pokémon ex…
…but I explained yesterday how much Oricorio (A3 066, 165) has affected the metagame. It’s “Safeguard” Ability protects it from both the damage and effects done by attacks from your opponent’s Pokémon ex. This makes it an almost perfect wall, and between my own experience and looking at actual Incineroar decklists, you cannot – or at least should not – rely on Incineroar ex’s lower Stages to deal with this threat.
Until recently, being a Stage 2 was the worst. Even now, it is still not as good as being a Basic, which requires the least amount of resources and turns to hit the field, but Rare Candy (A3 144) has made for a world of difference. Run alongside the normal Stage 1 for the line, it provides more reliability in setting up, with the chance of also speeding up your Stage 2 hitting the field by a turn. Many stats and effects hitting just one turn earlier see their efficacy increased significantly.
You can also risk just running Rare Candy, but there’s no way to search it from your deck, and you have to have the needed Stage 2 in hand alongside the Rare Candy to actually use it. Unlike with the Stage 1, which can show up a turn (or more) early, but still be put into play to evolve the appropriate Basic. While nowhere near as important as Rare Candy, Lillie (A3 155, 197, 209) has still proven significant. Stage 2 Pokémon usually have good HP scores; Lillie helps you stretch things out by healing 60 damage from your choice of one of your Stage 2s that are in play.
Which brings us back to Incineroar ex, as it has a fantastic 180 HP. This is second only to the aforementioned Venusaur ex, though optimal Incineroar ex usage usually means it has only 170 HP; you need at least 10 damage on Incineroar ex for its Scar-Charged Smash to receive its bonus damage. (W) Weakness is dangerous, and does make possible multiple OHKOs and 2HKOs that would otherwise fall short. The (C)(C) Retreat Cost is good. It’s not as good as having a Retreat Cost lower than both attack costs, but at least it’s less than one of them.
Fire Fang is a super affordable attack, with good damage for the Energy. It might seem underwhelming as this is a Stage 2 Pokémon ex, but not only is this only one of two attacks, Fire Fang always Burns the opponent’s Active… well, before other card effects that can prevent or immediately cure Burn. Fire Fan lets Incineroar ex go on the offensive as early as Turn 3! It still only OHKOs smaller Pokémon, but it softens up everything else.
Scar-Charged Smash would be underpowered if it was the only attack on Incineroar ex, and if it didn’t have it’s effect. As long as you are enjoying a lead-in with Fire Fang, the damage bonus from Scar-Charged Smash’s own effect, and especially with both, you can rip through even an opponent’s Stage 2 Pokémon ex. Unless, of course, they’re healing too much, but that option is even available to Incineroar ex thanks to Lillie, so fair is fair.
How do you get 10 damage safely onto Incineroar ex, to trigger Scar-Charged Smash’s effect? Enter Litten (A3 30) and/or Torracat (A3 32). Both have Heat Tackle” for (R), letting them do 10 damage to themselves when attacking. Litten’s Heat Tackle does 30 damage, while Torracat’s does 40 damage. You could also use Litten (A3 31), and count on Torracat or an opponent’s own attacks to do some damage to Litten; it’s pretty rare your opponent does not need to damage something of yours.
Torracat and both Littens are all Fire-Type Pokémon with (W) Weakness and a (C) Retreat Cost. Both Littens are Basic Pokémon with 60 HP. Litten (A3 31) can use “Scratch” for (R) to do 20 damage to the opponent’s Active, and as you sometimes cannot afford that 10 points of self-damage before evolving, you may want to run this Litten for that reason. Torracat is a Stage 1 with 80 HP; I recommend running at least one copy of it alongside two Rare Candy.
How is Incineroar ex used? The most commonly run deck containing Incineroar ex (4.95% Share) actually uses it alongside Charizard ex (A2b 010, 080, 108). Yes, a Stage 2 deck can be challenging, but either Stage 2 has a single Energy attack that can get the ball rolling. The lists I checked opted to not run Torracat at all, and only ran a single Litten and Incineroar ex; the main focus of the deck is the Charizard ex. The deck’s Win Rate is 50.2%, with a solid 600 Count so it’s decently established.
The next most common deck is pure Incineroar ex. It only has 114 Count, a little low this long into the Celestial Guardians metagame, but still good for a 0.94% Share. The strategy is to just run the Incineroar ex line, loaded up with a bunch of Trainers as well. It only has a 48.47% Win Rate. Besides the usual issues that would plague a deck built around just a Stage 2 line, with no other Pokémon, like I said; Litten and Torracat are not enough to deal with Oricorio’s Safeguard.
With almost the same Win Rate (48.36%) but a much lower Count (56) and thus Share (0.46%), we have Incineroar ex/Turtonator. As stated earlier, Turtonator gives the deck a solid answer to Oricorio. The three main problems with it are Incineroar ex cannot make use of Kiawe, but Turtonator needs it, so you have a potentially dead Supporter than can also show up late to make your life miserable.
Due to its super low Count of 26, Incineroar ex/Infernape (A2 029, 181, 197) is largely unproven, but it’s tiny 0.21 Share comes with a 55.09% Win Rate. I haven’t tried this one out myself, nor have I encountered it more than once or twice. It could legitimately be a good deck people just aren’t using often enough. However, I strongly suspect that it’s Win Rate would go down significantly if it were used more. I’m not seeing a real answer to Safeguard in the few lists I read… but I could be wrong.
Here’s the last Incineroar ex variant we’re covering, Incineroar ex/Toucannon (A3 135). It only has a 13 Count, which is just a 0.11% Share and the Win Rate? It’s a sad 33.33%. So why am I showing it to you? This one I have played, and while I’m not convinced it’s great, it’s actually pretty good. Toucannon’s (L) Weakness can make facing Oricorio a little scary, but Toucannon’s “Drill Peck” does 70 damage for (C). Without help, Toucannon can one-shot two Oricorio ex, one turn after the other. Since Toucannon only needs one Energy to attack, it lets you build Incineroar ex on your Bench.
Rating: 3.5/5
Incineroar ex is a good Pokémon. A very good Pokémon. Not a great Pokémon, though, which means I’m regretting slotting it in as my third place pick. In my defense, it was slaughtering me when I was making my list, and I seem to recall it doing better in the standings as well. If you cannot take out an Incineroar ex after it’s used a souped up Scar-Charged Smash, there’s a good chance it can OHKO whatever you attacked with the turn before.
1Kiawe can also target cards named Alolan Marowak. Unfortunately, I do not believe Alolan Marowak (A3 027,160) is worth the effort of running. Then again, I thought the same of Turtonator and was proven wrong about it.
2Piloswine (A2 032) and Mamoswine (A2 033, 160).
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