Why Charizard Works, and Dragapult Fails

What’s up guys! It’s Charlie and I’m happy to be back with another article. Since my last article on the power of Noctowl, I’ve expanded my testing to include some of the Stage 2 decks, in particular Charizard ex and Dragapult ex. Both of these decks have seen a lot of hype recently, especially due to their ability to utilize Briar for an extra Prize and the addition of Sparkling Crystal for Dragapult ex. Both of these decks use the familiar Arven engine that was originally popularized last fall, aiming to set up Pidgeot ex for sustainable search and to help set up your main attacker.

After a whole year, this engine has proven itself to be formidable, as Charizard ex has been one of the best decks in the format for a while. As soon as Dragapult ex was released in Twilight Masquerade, people immediately began trying to fit the same engine into a Dragapult ex deck, attempting to use the extremely powerful Phantom Dive attack as a replacement for Burning Darkness. Furthermore, Dragapult ex has a great Stage 1 in Drakloak, offering you a bit of bonus consistency. This deck was immediately hyped up to be the next big thing and quickly saw success in Japan. however, at NAIC, Dragapult ex flopped pretty hard. The best finishing Dragapult ex was Jacob Eye’s Regidrago VSTAR deck, which showed that you didn’t even need to put Dragapult ex in play to abuse Phantom Dive. Besides that, the next highest was Tord Reklev’s Charizard ex concoction which included both attackers and saw no success after that.

Now, with the release of Stellar Crown, we’re seeing a huge resurgence in hype for Dragapult ex. The deck was played in high numbers at the most recent Champions League in Japan and is widely seen as one of the best decks there, and for good reason. The addition of Sparkling Crystal makes attacking on the second turn of the game significantly more likely since it’s searchable by Arven, which is oftentimes the difference between winning and losing. However, I still strongly believe this deck doesn’t have what it takes to be Tier 1 and I will use this article to explain why it fails at doing the things Charizard ex does best.

Why is Dragapult ex Strong?

Dragapult ex is an extremely strong card on paper. First off, it has 320 HP and no Weakness, which makes it one of the hardest Pokemon in the format to KO. This alone is better than what Charizard ex offers; Charizard has 330 HP but a relevant Grass Weakness. Teal Mask Ogerpon ex can easily OHKO a Charizard ex but does basically nothing to a Dragapult ex. Next up, we have Phantom Dive, which is an incredibly good attack. 200 damage might not be anything special, but getting to place six damage counters on your opponent’s Benched Pokemon in any way you like is an amazing side effect. This means it’s easy to prey on low HP Pokemon like Pidgey and Duskull, and with the help of Hawlucha or Radiant Alakazam, you can reach KOs on Ralts and Charmander too. Furthermore, only doing 200 damage can be a benefit at times, especially in a format dominated by Fezandipiti ex. Taking a KO is no longer always good because you don’t want to give your opponent an extra three cards, and Dragapult ex is better than any other attacker at setting up multi-KO turns. This combination of tankiness and crafty damage output makes Dragapult ex a formidable attacker.

Champions League List

I took this Dragapult ex list from the recent Champions League as I think it’s a good representation of how the deck works. Here’s the list:

List Breakdown

Dragapult ex is certainly a functional deck, so let’s talk about some of the card choices that make this list work:

This concludes the public portion of this article.

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