Crafting Your Deck

Because Charizard is central to our deck’s strategy and is our main attacker, it is critical that we include as many copies as we can, so we’ll start by including 4 copies. Whenever possible, it’s important to include as many copies of the most important cards in your deck. Having multiple copies of the same cards helps to ensure that these important cards can be found when we need them.

Now, although Charizard is a powerful Pokémon, Charizard TEU 14 is not a basic Pokémon. The Charizard we’re building around for our deck is a Stage 2 Pokémon. A Stage 2 Pokémon is a Pokémon that has evolved twice. Once, from its Basic Pokémon into a Stage 1 Pokémon—in this case, Charmander into Charmeleon, and again from its Stage 1 Pokémon into the Stage 2 Pokémon—in this case, Charmeleon into Charizard. In the Pokémon Trading Card Game, any Pokémon that must evolve from a prior evolution will show you a picture of that prior evolution on the card below its evolution stage text (“Stage 2”, for example) and will say “Evolves from” and the name of the Pokémon it evolves from next to that picture. As with the name of a Pokémon being important for the number of each Pokémon you can include in a deck, the name of the Pokémon that it evolves from is important. Our Charizard evolves from Charmeleon, but Charizard VMAX evolves from Charizard V, not from Charmeleon!

So, in order to use this Charizard in our deck, we’ll need to include both Charmander and Charmeleon so that we can evolve up into it. Further, as we make additional card choices for our deck, we’ll need to be aware of the fact that our Main Attacker needs a couple of turns to evolve into its Stage 2 form before it is ready to attack.

Since we now know that we need to include both Charmander and Charmeleon—we’ll start by looking at our options for Charmander. Using the Limitless TCG Card Database, we can see that there are four different Charmander available to us in the Standard format. Each of these possibilities is pictured below.

Charmander TEU 12’s biggest advantages are these:

• It has 70 HP, whereas Charmander DET 4 has only 60HP. This difference of 10 HP may seem insignificant, but it can often be the difference between a Charmander surviving for one more turn and being knocked out before it even has the chance to evolve into a Charizard.

• Its attack, Ember, does 30 damage for a single energy attachment. This damage may be important for helping to setup knockouts later in the game—or to knockout both Lillie’s Poké Doll and opponent’s Pokémon with 30HP.

Charmander DET 4’s advantages are these:

• Although not as strong as Charmander TEU 12’s Ember attack, Reckless Charge still hits for 20 damage, potentially setting up a knockout later in the game. The trade-offs here are (positive) that Reckless Charge does not discard the energy attached to it—so it can be used to retreat into another Pokémon, like Jirachi TEU 99, provided it does not get knocked out and (negative) that instead of discarding the energy, Charmander DET 14 does 10 damage to itself, making it and its eventual evolution Pokémon easier to knockout.

Charmander VIV 23’s biggest advantages are these:

• Like Charmander TEU 12, Charmander VIV 23 has 70 HP.

• This Charmander has the Collect ability. Although less ideal than attacking with our Charizard, an early-game Collect may be the difference between having a key card on a subsequent turn and continuing to dead draw.

• Like Charmander TEU 12, Charmander VIV 23 still has access to an attack with 30 damage—and altough a Charmander forced to use such an attack is likely to be knocked out anyway, Charmander VIV’s Flare is advantageous in that it doesn’t discard the energy. If it survives the turn, the energy would then still be available to use for when it evolves into Charizard.

Charmeleon TEU 13 has a two-energy cost attack that also can burn our opponent’s Active Pokémon, which would mean that Fire Fang would do at least 50 damage overall, but it has no better attack for us to use if we struggle to find Charizard to evolve it.

Charmeleon HIF 8 has higher HP than Charmeleon TEU 13 and has a decent, though not stellar, set of attacks.

This Charmeleon seems to be the best overall option, though it may be worth testing the other Charmelon as we work on polishing our deck list.

Volcanion UNB 25’s Flare Starter attack can be great in the early game if you go second as it allows you to get 3 Fire energies into play very quickly—piling them onto benched Charmander waiting to evolve into Charizard.

High-Heat Blast’s attack damage hits only up to 110, which may be beneficial to help wear down the high HP attackers popular in today’s Standard format. It’s also worth noting that Zacian V, a popular Metal-type attacker that is weak to Fire-type Pokémon’s attacks, can be knocked out in a single hit by High-Heat Blast.

To help ensure that we’re able to start with Volcanion to take advantage of its Flare Starter attack, we’ll include 4 copies.

Heatran-GX UNM 25’s Burning Road is a very powerful ability that makes it a fierce revenge attacker. With a simple Switch (or by simply retreating into it from your current Active Pokémon), Heatran-GX can pull any number of Fire energy attached to all of your other Pokémon onto itself, then use its devastating Hot Burn-GX attack to deal 50 damage for each energy attached to it.

Heatran-GX’s biggest disadvantages are that it is a multi-prize Pokémon and our deck is focused around single-prize Pokémon and that it has heavy retreat cost of 3, which our opponent can use to stall us out if they gust it into the Active Spot. Worse still, because it is a Basic Pokémon, it is possible to start with Heatran-GX. All the same Heatran-GX is a powerful option worth considering once we begin testing our deck, but we’ll pass on this one for now.

Victini V SSH 25’s Spreading Flames attack can be an energy recovery option—a means of getting a few Fire Energy back into play after they have been discarded. If enough energy were discarded on your first turn, Victini V can serve as an energy accelerator using this attack. Its second attack, Energy Burst, is powerful in a vaccum, but the relatively low attack costs of many Pokémon in the current format mean that its output is likely going to be fairly limited.

Like Heatran-GX, Victini V is also a multi-prize Pokémon in a deck built around a single-prize Pokémon. This doesn’t mean that multi-prize Pokémon have no place in a decks focused around single-prize Pokémon, but the value they bring to the deck needs to be quite significant to be worth including. As with Heatran-GX, we’ll keep Victini V in mind as we begin to test our deck, but we’ll pass on it for now.

Ninetales V RCL 26’s Flamethrower is where the eyes of many players immediately fixate—180 damage can be pretty significant. However, for the same 4 energy, the Charizard our deck is built around will do 230 damage. Ninetales V also offers its Nine-Tailed Shapeshifter, which can copy the attacks of our oppponent’s Active Pokémon, opening us up to possibilities like copying an active Zacian V’s own Brave Blade attack to knock it out.

The trade-offs here are that although Charizard is a single-prize Pokémon that can help power itself up, it is a Stage 2 Pokémon. Ninetales V, while a Basic Pokémon, is a multi-prize Pokémon that is reliant on manual attachments and on Welder to power its attacks.

Ninetales V is a strong option, but one we’ll hold off on for now.

Welder is the lifeblood of fire decks in the Standard format. Its energy attachment effect will be helpful in allowing us to get additional energies onto our Charizard so that we can:

• Avoid damaging Charizard with Roaring Resolve when possible

• Increase the number of energies attached to our Charizard to help us do additional damage, making it possible to knock out Pokémon with higher HP.

We’ll include 4 copies of Welder.

Erika’s Hospitality is great in that it can draw us up to six cards, depending on the number of Pokémon our opponent has in play. Its biggest limiter in our Charizard deck, is that we can only have up to four other cards in our hand or we can’t use it to draw. Its biggest benefit, however, is that we’d be able to hold onto any key cards in our hand and still draw quite a few cards.

Erika’s Hospitality is worth keeping in mind as we test our deck. Should we find ourselves in situations where we’d often be able to take advantage of Erika’s Hospitality, it would likely be worth testing.

Marnie’s disruption effect—causing your opponent to shuffle their hand and place it at the bottom of their deck—in addition to its own shuffle-draw effect can be helpful to help put energies from your hand back into the deck for Charizard’s Roaring Resolve ability.

Further, in conjunction with Oranguru, we can save cards to help ourselves find combinations to further our deck’s strategy—like placing a Rare Candy on top of the deck with Primate Wisdom that we can then draw directly back into with Marnie. The other four cards could then be other pieces, like a Charizard, and Evolution Incense, or even a Fire Crystal. Though Marnie can be especially helpful our deck, we need to be mindful of our opponent's hand when using it as it can be as much of a benefit for them as for us.

For now, we’ll add four copies of Marnie.

Professor’s Research, despite its exceptional draw power, may not be the best choice for our deck as its discard effect may simply be too much for our Charizard deck to handle. As a Stage 2 deck, we have many cards that are parts of our deck’s strategy and may not have the deck space to run enough recovery cards to get back what we need when we need it.

Professor’s Research is probably still worth testing, but for now, we’ll pass on it.

Pidgeotto TEU 123’s Air Mail ability can be very good for helping us to locate critical resources from our deck. Running multiple Pidgeotto may be a good option to consider as each Pidgeotto makes it possible to see two additional cards each turn.

However, Pidgeotto requires a basic Pokémon to evolve from—meaning we’d be forced to include a Pidgey, too.

Pidgeotto is truly a strong contender for inclusion in our deck. For now, however, we’ll hold off on it in favor of including another consistency booster.

Like Pidgeotto’s Air Mail, Salazzle UNB 31’s Roast Reveal is a great way to see additional cards each turn. Unlike Pidgeotto’s Air Mail, however, Roast Reveal comes at a cost—we have to discard one of our Fire energy to draw the 3 cards.

If we are able to run enough energy recovery, Salazzle may be a good option, though like Pidgeotto, Salazzle is an evolved Pokémon—meaning its inclusion would mean also including Salandit.

For now, we’ll pass on including it.

Dedenne-GX UNB 57 is one of the most popular utility Pokémon in the game—and for good reason. Its Dedechange ability is like an extra draw supporter for your turn—or, if you’re the player going first—a draw supporter for your first turn when you wouldn’t be able to play one otherwise.

Decks that run Dedenne-GX tend to run 1 or 2 copies, but some decks will run up to a full playset—4 copies. For now, we’ll include 1 copy.

Cinccino SSH 147’s Make Do is a sort of medium between Salazzle’s Roast Reveal and Pidgeotto’s Air Mail. With Make Do, we can discard any card from our hand to draw two cards. Like both Salazzle and Pidgeotto, however, Cinccino would require us to also include its Basic Pokémon, Minccino.

Like both Salazzle and Pidgeotto, Cinccino is certainly a card to keep in mind during our testing, but we’ll pass on it for now.

Oranguru SSH 148’s Primate Wisdom allows us to swap a card in our hand with the top card of our deck. Not only can this help us to see an additional card each turn, it can be used to preserve a card before using a disruptive draw supporter like Marnie or destructive draw supporter like Professor’s Research.

We’ll include one copy of Oranguru in our deck list.

Crobat V DAA 104, like Dedenne-GX, is a very popular utility Pokémon that is a common inclusion in decks. Its Night Asset ability is like an extra draw supporter for your turn—and like a second extra draw supporter when used in conjunction with Dedenne-GX’s Dedechange ability. This ability can be especially helpful if you’re the player going first or if you wouldn’t otherwise be able to play a supporter.

Decks that run Crobat V tend to run 1 copy. For now, we’ll pass on it, but it’s likely that including one may be worthwhile.

Quick Ball is critical for getting our Charmander, Volcanion, and Oranguru out and into play. Quick Ball helps us ensure that we have Charmander available to evolve into Charizard as soon as possible.

As merely relying on draw to help us find our Basic Pokémon is not a good idea, we’ll include 4 copies of Quick Ball.

Pokémon Communication is our most flexible Pokémon search option, but it is most effective when we have a fairly largely number of Pokémon in our deck.

Right now, the number of Pokémon in our deck looks pretty favorable for Pokémon Communication, so for now, we’ll include 4 copies.

Great Ball can be especially helpful in the early turns of a game to find additional Pokémon—especially Charmander, Oranguru, and Volcanion—so that we can get setup. Later on in the game, it could also help us to find our Charmeleon and even our Charizard. Great Ball can also be a boost to help ensure that Pokémon Communication is usable over the course of the game.

As it’s critical to be able to find our Charmander, Charizard, and Volcanion as quickly as we can manage, we’ll include 4 copies of Great Ball.

Evolution Incense is important for getting Charizard into our hand. Evolution Incense can also help us to find Charmeleon when we aren’t able to evolve directly into Charizard.

As it’s important to find our main attacker, we’ll include 2 copies of Evolution Incense for now. However, as Evolution Incense searches only for Evolution Pokémon, we may choose to revisit this number in the future or even reconsider Evolution Incense altogether.

Boss’s Orders is a power choice for gusting in any deck, including our Charizard deck. It is a gust in a single card and does not require that its target specifically be Pokémon-GX, nor does its usefulness hinge on the luck of a coin flip.

In any deck, Boss’s Orders should be the first option considered for gusting.

We’ll include two copies of Boss’s Orders.

Ninetales TEU 16’s Nine Temptations ability makes it a tempting gusting option in our Charizard deck. Ninetales gives us direct control over the Pokémon our opponent has in the Active Spot. However, as Ninetales is a Stage 1 Pokémon, it is likely to have a more negative impact on our deck’s consistency than Boss’s Orders would—it takes longer to set up than Boss’s Orders and it’s easier to prize a critical piece of the Ninetales line if we try to run a thin 1-1 line—just a single Vulpix and single Ninetales. Even still, Ninetales isn’t a bad option. Once set up, it can be a quick and reliable means of gusting—if it itself isn’t gusted up and knocked out.

For now, we’ll pass on Ninetales but keep it in mind for future testing.

Great Catcher is less flexible than Boss’s Orders in that, in the Standard format, it can only gust up Pokémon-GX. If our opponent’s strategy focuses around non-GX Pokémon—a deck built around single-prize Pokémon, for example—we may ultimately have no gusting option available to us whatsoever over the course of a game.

Although decks built around multi-prize attackers are likely to be using Dedenne-GX which is a target for Great Catcher, Boss’s Order’s flexibility makes it a better option for decks that are tight on space.

For now, we’ll pass on Great Catcher, but it may be worth trying out a single copy of the card during our testing.

Pokémon Catcher is largely inadequate as a gusting card. Although like Boss’s Orders it offers a means of gusting any target Pokémon from the opponent’s bench, it does so only if you flip heads. Instead of a having a guaranteed gust, you have a 50% chance to successfully gust. This means that the result of a coin flip can literally end up being the difference between winning and losing a game.

We’ll pass on Pokémon Catcher.

Welder is the lifeblood of fire decks in the Standard format because of its ability to accelerate Fire energy, in addition to drawing cards.

Welder enables us to attach up to two energies to one of our Pokémon, and by extension, greatly boosts the damage of our Charizard’s Continuous Blaze Ball attack.

We’ve already included 4 copies of Welder.

Giant Hearth is a Stadium Card that allows the player using it to search their deck for up to two Fire energy and to put those energy into their hand. This effect means that using Welder will be a possibility more often over the course of the game, making it easier both to draw cards and to attach extra Fire energy where they’re needed.

We’ll include two copies of Giant Hearth.

Energy Spinner is also an option for helping search for Fire energy cards. However, for most of the game, Energy Spinner will only get you access to a a single Fire energy, whereas Giant Hearth will consistently give you two.

What’s more, as an Item card, Energy Spinner doesn’t have the same ability to bump an opposing Stadium card to prevent an opponent from taking advantage of that Stadium card’s beneficial effects.

We’ll pass on including Energy Spinner.

Coalossal RCL 107 is an additional means of accelerating Fire energy in the Standard format and also offers us the option of accelerating Fighting energy if we choose.

However, neither Charizard’s Continuous Blaze Ball attack nor either attack of our secondary attacker, Volcanion, is able to make use of a Fighting energy as none of their attacks use either Fighting or Colorless energy.

What’s more, like Charizard, Coalossal is a Stage 2 Pokémon that would be competing with Charizard for the use of Rare Candy—potentially hindering our ability to stream attackers to knock out our opponent’s Pokémon.

With this in mind, we’ll pass on including Coalossal.

Jirachi TEU 99 has one of the best abilities in the Standard format. Stellar Wish helps us find Trainer cards in our deck that help us set up or to help us rebound from one of our Pokémon being knocked out. In conjunction with Scoop Up Net and Switch, Jirachi makes an excellent pivot Pokémon that can immediately take the Active Spot after one of our Pokémon is knocked out.

Jirachi can be a useful card to help us find our critical pieces—like a Pokémon Communication or an Evolution Incense. However, because Stellar Wish puts Jirachi to sleep, it becomes necessary to run a number of additional cards to make efficient use of its ability. As a deck focused on a Stage 2 Pokémon, it can be difficult to find the space for such additional cards. Further, Jirachi competes with Volcanion as a starting Pokémon.

With this in mind, we’ll pass on including Jirachi in our deck for now. However, during testing, it’s very likely that we’ll need to try a version of our deck that makes use of Jirachi to see how it fares.

Like Jirachi TEU 99, Bill’s Analysis would help us dig through the top of our deck to find key pieces and Bill’s Analysis doesn’t require bench space or additional switching cards to make full use of it. However, as Bill’s Analysis takes our Supporter card for the turn to use, it competes directly with Welder, Marnie, and Boss’s Orders—and each of these Supporter cards is likely more beneficial to the deck because of their effects beyond drawing cards (Energy Acceleration, Disruption, and Gusting).

We’ll keep Bill’s Analysis in the back of our minds during testing, but refrain from including it for now.

Pokégear 3.0, like Jirachi and Bill’s Analysis, makes it easier to find key cards in our deck, though Pokégear 3.0 is limited to finding only Supporter cards like Welder and Boss’s Orders.

For now, we’ll pass on including Pokégear 3.0, but it’s a card we should try out during testing if space can be found for it.

Rare Candy is a critical card in decks like ours. Stage 2 decks use Rare Candy to take a basic Pokémon—like our Charmander—and evolve it directly into its Stage 2 Pokémon—like our main attacker, Charizard. This allows the deck to set itself up faster, bringing out its attackers at a faster pace to help keep up with the opponent.

Rare Candy also allows us to drastically trim down the number of Charmeleon we have included in our deck. Many Stage 2 decks run only 1 or 2 copies of the Stage 1 Pokémon—and some run none at all. As we’re reliant on Charizard as an attacker and as Charmeleon can still do a bit of work to setup knockouts later in the game, we’ll keep just 2 Charmeleon in our deck and include 4 copies of Rare Candy.

Switch is a card simple in effect, but a card that can be immensely helpful all the same. In addition to making it possible to change your Active Pokémon with a fresh Benched Pokémon, Switch allows you to move a Pokémon to the bench so that it recovers from any Special Conditions.

This effectively means it’s possible to move a Pokémon that has been Paralyzed or is Asleep out of the Active Spot so that it (through the use of a pivot Pokémon and retreating) or another Pokémon can get out and start attacking.

Switch is a common card in many decks and will make it easier for us to use Volcanion on our first turn when going second. We’ll include 4 copies of the card.

Air Balloon is a tool that allows us to turn any one of our Pokémon with a retreat cost of two or less into a “free retreater” or pivot Pokémon. In a pinch, this can also act as a pseudo-Switch, helping us move a bulky Charizard or Oranguru from the Active Spot onto the bench so that another Pokémon can move into the Active Spot.

We’ll include two copies of Air Balloon

Scoop Up Net is a fantastic card as a general rule, but conflicts a bit with the strategy of our deck. In most cases, Scoop Up Net can be used as a pseudo-Switch, but relying on a Scoop Up Net to remove a Charizard from the Active Spot could be damaging to our deck’s ability to stream its attackers.

We may revisit the idea of including Scoop Up Net in our deck as the card works well with Oranguru and Volcanion, but for now, we’ll pass on including Scoop Up Net.

Bird Keeper, like Welder, is a Supporter card that draws us three cards and offers an additional effect. In the case of Bird Keeper, the additional effect is switching.

While the switching effect can certainly prove helpful, our deck already depends fairly heavily on a draw supporter with weak draw power and isn’t reliant-enough on switching to warrant include a Supporter card specifically for a switching effect. As such, we’ll pass on Bird Keeper.

Fire Crystal recovers basic Fire Energy from our discard pile and puts it directly into our hand, but also does more than that—it makes it easier for us to guarantee that Welder is a live card in our hand and by extension makes it easier for our Charizard to do more damage with its Continuous Blaze Ball attack.

As Continous Blaze Ball discards all of the energy attached to Charizard, it’s likely we’ll need to recover energy a couple of times over the course of a game anyway, so we’ll include two copies of Fire Crystal to our deck.

Brock’s Grit offers a means of recovering both Pokémon and basic Energy cards by shuffling them back into the deck. This can be helpful, but as Brock’s Grit is a Supporter card, it must provide a strong case for its inclusion because it would need to be played in the stead of a Welder, Marnie, or Boss’s Orders.

If deck space becomes especially tight, a Brock’s Grit may be a consideration. However, as there are Item cards that ultimately serve the same function as Brock’s Grit, we’ll pass on it.

Rosa is an excellent rebound card that can make it easy to locate critical pieces—like a Rare Candy, a Charizard, and a Fire Energy—from our deck and drop them directly into our hand. However, like Brock’s Grit, Rosa needs to compete with the other Supporters in our deck not just for deck space, but for use in a turn. Often, our deck will want to make use of Welder instead of Rosa.

It’s definitely worth keeping Rosa in mind as we begin testing our deck, but for now, we’ll pass on it.

Ordinary Rod is like a somewhat weaker Brock’s Grit, but is an Item card instead of a Supporter card, making it possible to use on the same turn as a card like Welder or Boss’s Orders. Ordinary Rod gives us the ability to shuffle our Fire energy back into the deck so that Roaring Resolve is always available to our Charizard—and also gives us the option to recycle Charizard, Charmander, and our other Pokémon.

For now, we’ll include 2 copies of Ordinary Rod, but as we test our deck, we may find that number shifts downward.

Pal Pad can be helpful to our deck if we find that we often need to recover our Supporters for later use. Welder and Boss’s Orders in particular can be helpful cards to recycle back into the deck.

Most decks don’t require the use of Pal Pad, so for now, we’ll keep it in mind for testing but pass on including it in our deck.

Eldegoss V RCL 19’s Happy Match ability means that any Supporter in our discard pile is just a Quick Ball away. Eldegoss V allows us to play cards like Dedenne-GX or Professor’s Research without worrying that we may discard key Supporters—like Boss’s Orders.

As a two-prize Pokémon, it’s important to weigh the benefit of including versus not including it. Eldegoss V is an easy gusting target for our opponent—meaning they likely won’t have to take six knockouts to win the game, but its Happy Match ability could be exceptionally helpful for a game-critical recovery of Boss’s Orders.

As we’re already running Dedenne-GX, also a two-prize Pokémon, in a deck that is primarily-centered around a single-prize Pokémon, we’ll hold off on including Eldegoss V for now, but during our testing, we’ll take notes helping us keep track of how often we find ourselves wanting one.

Reset Stamp can be a valuable tool to slow down our opponent—a means of giving our deck a chance to rebound after falling behind in the prize trade. Like Marnie, Reset Stamp can also be used as a tool to disrupt our opponent’s hand when we are certain that their hand contains the cards critical to their deck’s success.

Although once quite common as a 1- or 2-of inclusion, Reset Stamp’s popularity has waned with the introduction of Marnie. Decks that already struggle to find space for their core cards often exclude Reset Stamp altogether, as we’ll do for our own deck now.

We’ll keep Reset Stamp in mind as we begin testing our deck.

Marnie’s disruption effect—causing your opponent to shuffle their hand and place it at the bottom of their deck—in addition to its own shuffle-draw effect can be helpful to help put energies from your hand back into the deck for Charizard’s Roaring Resolve ability.

Further, in conjunction with Oranguru, we can save cards to help ourselves find combinations to further our deck’s strategy—like placing a Rare Candy on top of the deck with Primate Wisdom that we can then draw directly back into with Marnie. The other four cards could then be other pieces, like a Charizard, and Evolution Incense, or even a Fire Crystal. Though Marnie can be especially helpful our deck, we need to be mindful of our opponent's hand when using it as it can be as much of a benefit for them as for us.

We have already included four copies of Marnie.

Giant Bomb works as a means of getting extra damage on your opponent’s Active Pokémon. As a tool, it is a tool that makes attacking the Pokémon Giant Bomb is attached to a double-edged sword.

Your opponent can attack, likely taking the knockout, they refrain from attacking to avoid taking the damage from Giant Bomb and give you a turn in which your Pokémon doesn’t take damage in the process, they under-attack to avoid the damage, have a counter-card like Tool Scrapper, or they are forced to have a gusting card like Boss’s Orders to work around the Giant Bomb.

We won’t be adding Giant Bomb to our deck list, but we’ll keep it in mind during our testing.

Galarian Zigzagoon SSH 117 works well, especially in combination with Scoop Up Net, to put a little extra damage on our opponent’s Pokémon. By adding 10 damage—or by adding 10 damage a few times—it can be easier to find the necessary resources to knock out an opponent’s Pokémon or to knock out a Pokémon that an opponent has tried to save on their bench.

However, as we’re have chosen not to include Scoop Up Net in our deck and because an additional fire energy is enough to boost Charizard’s damage by 50, it’s better that we focus the limited deck spaces we have on ensuring our Charizard has the Fire energy it needs to deal as much damage as it can.

We’ll pass on including Galarian Zigzagoon for now, but will keep it in mind during our testing.

Vitality Band is a tool that helps give our attacker a bit of a boost to its damage. However, as an additional fire energy is enough to boost Charizard’s damage by 50, it’s likely better that we focus the limited deck spaces we have on ensuring our Charizard has the Fire energy it needs to deal as much damage as it can.

We’ll pass on including Vitality Band.

Burning Scarf is a tool that helps give our attacker a bit of a boost to its damage output by burning the opponent’s Pokémon—meaning, at the least, it will do an additional 20 damage to a Pokémon that attacks ours. However, as an additional fire energy is enough to boost Charizard’s damage by 50, it’s likely better that we focus the limited deck spaces we have on ensuring our Charizard has the Fire energy it needs to deal as much damage as it can.

We’ll pass on including Burning Scarf.