Hello everyone! This is Elena from Gaia Storm TCG and welcome to another article here at CCG Castle. Today, I would like to cover a deck that has kind of always being around for the past two years and has now consolidated as one to most interesting picks for the metagame: Tempozard or Blacephalon. This deck can either be seen as (yet) another evolution of Unbroken Bonds’ Blacephalon variants over time or a whole new Fire toolbox deck that uses the Welder engine. Either way, what is clear is that the deck currently uses the very best Fire Pokémon in the game and that is enough to win against most strategies. How does that actually work?

Tempozard is a deck that mainly relies on the flexibility of different fire attackers to deal with all kind of situations of the game: Charizard and Reshiram Tag Team, Heatran GX, Blacephalon and Cramorant V. As you can see from this Pokémon line-up, each of them has unique traits that are useful depending on the moment. Regardless of what you are playing against, Tempozard often has a very specific but effective flow. Your main attacker during your first turn is none other than Reshiram Charizard Tag Team because for just one Welder and a manual fire attachment, you can easily get rid of most V or GX Pokémon in the game. Once Reshiram falls, it is turn for Blacephalon to shine. After being able to gather quite a good number of fire energies in your hand, Blacephalon just explodes (yes, that was a joke) and destroys virtually any Pokémon in the game, dealing x50 damage for each fire energy discarded that way.  As you can imagine, those numbers are more than enough to deal with even the bigger VMAX Pokémon like Eternatus VMAX or Urshifu VMAX. The game normally ends with Cramorant V taking the remaining two prices with its bench snipping attack that targets a poor Dedenne GX.

Even if Welder-based decks often lack some consistency, this version is actually surprisingly stable and is able to execute the above-mentioned strategy in most of the games as long as the player is able to sequence correctly. And how does Blacephalon actually perform against other top tier decks in the format? The answer is pretty well. It has a great advantage against everything that relies of VMAX or Tag Team Pokémon that can’t easily KO  your Reshiram in Turn 2 like Urshifu VMAX Rapid Strike. The only exception here might be Arceus Palkia Dialga, of course. The problem Blacephalon has against that deck is that Zacian V can KO Reshiram in just one hit and then seals the game by attacking over a one-prizer like Jirachi.  

If you are into Fire decks, I would highly recommend playing Blacephalon as I consider it one of the strongest decks to face the metage in the entire format. And also, it is not very expensive (apart from the support Pokémon like Dedenne GC and Crobat V) as most of the cards have been reprinted or have a low rarity. Thanks for reading!