blog The stage 2 resistance: Charizard wants to battle!

The stage 2 resistance: Charizard wants to battle!

Hello everyone! This is Elena from Gaia Storm TCG and welcome to another article at CCG Castle. Today, we are going to be looking at one of the most interesting rogue decks from Vivid Voltage that features no other than the iconic Charizard. It is true that in the past months (and even years) we have been getting a lot of powerful Charizard cards with multiple effects and attacks that saw different degrees of success in the game. This last one in particular features a very interesting dynamic that focusses on the bond between Charizard and Leon, its trainer in the Sword and Shield videogames. Let’s review the combo and how it can be played in Standard.

We will first start with Leon, a new supporter Pokemon that provides an additional 30 damage during the turn it’s played. It kind of reminds us to Sun and Moon’s Professor Kukui, which had a similar effect, but with more focus on the damage output. Being able to attack for more is crucial in every format and it acquires even more relevance in the current standard considering that cards that increase the damage are very rare. As such, Leon becomes an immediate generic card that can be played in multiple decks to, like for instance ADP Zacian, and reach numbers.

On the other hand we have Charizard, a mighty stage 2 fire Pokemon with a very powerful attack and very good supporting cards. For just 2 fire energies (which means it can be powered up with Welder), it deals 100 damage plus 50 per each copy of Leon on your discard pile. That means that with 4 of them it is able to kill even some Tag team Pokémon in just one hit. Now… the question is: How do we actually get Leon onto the discard pile? Unfortunately for us, Battle compressor has already rotated and it’s probably never coming back but the deck has some cards under the sleeves. Charizard can activate its ability -Battle sense- to look at the top 3 cards in the deck, add one to the hand and discard the rest. Other versions of the deck also run some copies of Misty’s favor to search the Leons early in the game and then discard them with a Professor Magnolia.

Another reason why I really like Charizard is because it is a very affordable strategy whose core can be built with a couple of theme decks. Being a Stage 2 Pokémon, it is true that Charizard takes some turns to set up so the best way to build the deck it is with cards that can find the rare candies early on. As such, the typical builds run TEU Jirachi and/or Snorlax from Vivid Voltage as well as Oricorio GX to get some consistency in the mid and late game. All of them are cards relatively cheap or easy to find.

So, in conclusion, Charizard is one of the Stage 2 decks with the most potential for the format: its aggression and power can take down even the biggest VMAX Pokémon with the right combination of cards. I believe that the competitive scene will still be dominated by Tag Team Pokémon for a while (ADP, PikachuZekrom and Mewtwo) but Charizard is a fresh alternative especially for new comers and fire-type fans. Thanks for reading!