#charizard-ex

Charizard has always been given plenty of cards, and even Charizard-EX had plenty of competition. Flashfire alone had 2 of them, 1 of which was reprinted in Evolutions, meaning that this Charizard-EX would always have to fight for potential deck space with it. There were also 3 M Charizard-EX, 2 of which were always available, and those required building around. The other Charizard-EX actually saw a bit of play early on, though it had fallen off by this point in the game, so this one would need to be pretty good to keep up.

180 HP was fine, and could take a hit in most cases as expected from a Pokemon-EX. There was a Water Weakness here, which could be an issue against Greninja decks, as well as some occasional other things like Volcanion-EX, various Water toolbox Pokemon in XY-On, Gyarados, and Alolan Ninetales-GX. The Retreat Cost was quite average at 2, and whether Float Stone was usable depended on if you were going for M Charizard-EX or not. You’d probably want something to help in any case.

Flame Cloak was pretty weak. 30 damage for a Fire and a Colorless Energy wasn’t close to enough. You did get to attach a Fire Energy card from your discard pile to Charizard-EX, which helped it power up for later. While nice, you’d probably take a solid hit by doing so, and that’s not really what you wanted to see out of your Pokemon-EX.

Burning Breath was all about luck. The base damage, for 2 Fire and 2 Colorless Energy, was just 80. There were 2 coin flips, and each heads did 40 more. The average ended up at 120, which was strong enough to take things out in 2 hits but not much better than some top attackers that could do this for less Energy. The attack was quite good 25% of the time but awful another 25%, making this a bit inconsistent.