Charizard ex — An Infernal Reign of Terror
Hello everyone, it’s me again! The Paradox Rift metagame is in full swing and the Latin American International Championships recently concluded. Congratulations to Juho Kallama for winning with Miraidon ex! The metagame that was present at LAIC was pretty shocking, with Gardevoir ex being the most played deck during day one and converting into a 25% meta share in day two, however, Gardevoir ex itself struggled to convert into the Top 8, with Ciaran Farah making it the furthest at third place. This all happened through the hype that Iron Hands ex had leading up to LAIC, with Chien-Pao ex struggling to convert into the Top 8. Gardevoir ex has historically struggled to win major events in the past, despite being the best deck in the format. The finals of LAIC were Iron Valiant ex and Entei V up against Miraidon ex, two decks that were played to counter Gardevoir ex, however, another deck caught my mind while looking at the standings of LAIC; Charizard ex.
Charizard ex’s Place in the Meta
Charizard ex has been a strong deck in the 151 format but always struggled to convert into solid results after its initial dominance at Curitiba Regionals. The deck hinges on Arven to find Forest Seal Stone and Rare Candy to evolve into Pidgeot ex whose Quick Search Ability finds you all the cards you need throughout the game. During the Regionals in the 151 format, Charizard ex was always a heavily played deck that never had the strongest results, only managing to convert into the Top 8 at Toronto Regionals. The success of Charizard ex at Toronto was mostly determined by discovering that it was correct to opt to go second into a blind matchup, because of how important it is to play Arven on your first turn to find Battle VIP Pass
Right before LAIC a new version of Charizard ex was developed at the Japanese Elite Four tournament by Ryota Ishiyama which played Technical Machine: Evolution and Bibarel instead of the standard Pidgeot ex engine. This one gained a ton of hype right before LAIC thanks to its better matchup against decks using Path to the Peak, since you could Industrious Incisors to draw out of it. Ryota’s deck list also played a 1-1 line of Toedscruel, to prevent Chien-Pao ex and Gholdengo ex from using Superior Energy Retrieval to recover Energy and blocking PokéStop from finding more cards. This version of Charizard ex was also popular at LAIC, but struggled to go far. All of the Charizard ex decks that were in the Top 16 of LAIC were using Pidgeot ex, with the highest placing version with Technical Machine: Evolution being at 26th place.
While I was preparing for LAIC, I realized that the version of Charizard ex that plays Pidgeot ex was significantly better against Gardevoir ex than the Technical Machine: Evolution version was. This was because Gardevoir ex could easily use Counter Catcher on Bibarel to trap it Active to buy time, or KO Bibarel with Scream Tail‘s Roaring Scream attack to prevent the Charizard ex deck from using Industrious Incisors from drawing extra cards. The Bibarel version was also much weaker against Avery which has become a standard inclusion in Gardevoir ex decks. After coming home from São Paulo, I have been playing some more Pokemon to prepare for some upcoming tournaments and have put together this Charizard ex deck list!
This concludes the public portion of this article.
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