Journey into the Inferno — My Charizard ex Deck from Louisville

Hello PokeBeach readers! Isaiah here and I am happy to be writing another article for you!

Last time, I discussed Galvantula ex, a deck that I expected to be good, but unfortunately I completely missed the mark. The deck feels so close to being a top-level meta threat, but it falls just short in so many situations and does not really have a meaningful way of making up for its shortcomings. It has been a while since I last gave my thoughts on the format as a whole, so I think it is best for me to start by doing that.

Catching Up on Stellar Crown

There have been quite a few majors around the world in this format already, and this has caused the format to develop in a pretty interesting way that I did not really expect. One of the highlights of the format has, of course, been Terapagos ex. As the main new archetype from Stellar Crown, I think that a lot of people had really high expectations for the deck, but I am not sure it met the expectations that most people had for it.

I pretty distinctly remember a lot of content online saying that the deck was going to be unfathomably broken and game ruining, but it has really failed to come anywhere close to that. The deck pretty reliably does well at tournaments, but it has only won one, and the event that it won was by far the smallest event of the year so far, and, while I do not want to dismiss that win, it is a point worth making that the deck has not really won any large events.

Personally, I do not think highly of Terapagos ex at all. It definitely has a few good matchups, but as I have started playing the deck more, the less and less I like it. While the deck has the potential for some absurd ceilings with Dusknoir, these are often unrealistic at stages of the game that are early enough to matter. If you fail to put together a massive turn like this, or more appropriately, if the opponent is able to deny you that opportunity, which is something most Standard decks can do, it is basically impossible for Terapagos ex to win the game. For lack of a better way of putting it, I think Terapagos ex, at least in its current form, is a terrible deck.

Beyond the introduction of Terapagos ex, there are effectively no new archetypes in the expansion, so the rest of the format is just updates to decks that were relevant for the World Championships and Baltimore Regional Championships. Of these decks, the most improved deck is by far Dragapult ex. I am not a huge fan of this deck for a multitude of reasons that are not particularly relevant, but I do think that the deck is fairly decent. The deck is consistent and powerful, which is about all that a deck could want in the current format. Access to Dusknoir is always extremely valuable, and Dragapult ex is a deck that is particularly good at doing so. However, Dragapult ex’s inherent flaw is that it is a Stage 2 deck, which are by definition a bit slower. While this does not stop a deck like Charizard ex, which I will discuss later, the existence of a better Stage 2 deck while there also being another deck that does Dragapult ex’s job better, I do not think Dragapult ex is that strong of a deck.

That deck that does Dragapult ex’s job better is, of course, Regidrago VSTAR. As one of the most powerful decks in recent memory, Regidrago VSTAR is, for reasons that I do not fully understand, a bit weaker right now than it was in the World Championships format. However, being able to abuse Phantom Dive to destroy the opponent’s board even faster than Dragapult ex is normally capable of, especially when paired with Kyurem as well, Regidrago VSTAR is one of the most formidable and powerful decks in the game currently. This deck would, of course, be nothing if it was not for the help of Teal Mask Ogerpon ex, a card that I consider to be one of the most powerful cards in the game currently.

Regidrago VSTAR is not the only deck that uses this card, though. The other is, of course, Raging Bolt ex . Personally, I have the opinion that Raging Bolt ex is the best deck in the Standard format, which is an opinion that many of my friends do not share. I have this opinion for one simple reason, which is that there is no deck that I value beating at any tournament more than I value beating Raging Bolt ex.

The deck is the most played deck in the format, constantly exceeding a 15% playrate in the first day of every single tournament. Not just this, but Raging Bolt is also one of the only decks in the game that is truly capable of beating anything. It is consistent and has an unreal amount of raw power. With easy access to Pokémon Catcher, it is easy for the deck to Knock Out exactly what it wants to on every single turn of the game, and with a pretty low risk too thanks to the format defining power of Fezandipiti ex.

One particularly powerful deck that does do fairly well against Raging Bolt ex, though, is Lugia VSTAR. Somehow, this deck has ascended to a status similar to its debut power way back in November 2022, consistently appearing in top cuts of every single event, often in the hands of Rahul Reddy, Yerco Valencia, and fellow writer Ciaran Farah. I do think that this deck has achieved a power level similar to the infamous “Silver Tempest Lugia VSTAR” that people talk so highly of (for a good reason) and that the only thing stopping it from being perceived the same way as one of the greatest decks of all time is the lesser consistency.

I truly believe that if current format Lugia VSTAR was as consistent as original Lugia VSTAR, the deck would be just as good if not better than the original deck. This strength is largely thanks to Legacy Energy, one of the most individually powerful Pokemon cards ever printed. Lugia VSTAR is formidable, reasonably consistent, incredibly powerful, and really only loses when the deck is unable to setup. If I were going to anymore tournaments in the current format, I think that Lugia VSTAR would be one of my front runners, that is, assuming that one other deck did not exist: Charizard ex.

Ever since it came out in Obsidian Flames, I have loved Charizard ex. I grew up loving Stage 2 decks like Blastoise and that has transitioned into my adult life, so when Charizard ex came around as a powerful force that used Stage 2 Pokemon, I naturally had to give it a try. As of now, I have played Charizard ex to three Regional Championships, and I have put up a decent result at every single one. My first was a Top 16 at the Knoxville Regional Championships in February and then I finished in the Top 128 at the Indianapolis Regional Championships.

With two solid finishes under my belt, I was itching for another good finish with Charizard ex, and in this current format I think it is one of the best decks in the format, so I decided to lock it in for the Louisville Regional Championships. With a bit of an atypical deck list and not a lot of practice before the event, I did not have particularly high expectations for the event, especially after an 0-1 start, but I won my next three, lost to another Lost Zone, and then I proceeded to win seven matches in a row. This brought me to a 10-2 record and another Top 16 finish.

While I was extremely annoyed that 10-2 was not enough for a Top Cut finish, especially when it has been at every other event this season, I was still happy to come out of the weekend with a Top 16 finish, especially with how low my expectations were for the weekend. It did sting a bit though because I felt that Charizard ex was in a position where it could win the event, and I really wanted to be the one to make it happen with a deck that it seemed like nobody else believed in anymore. Before we get into the deck list, I need to explain why I thought so highly of Charizard ex.

This concludes the public portion of this article.

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