Hey, what’s up, Cut or Tap readers! SmartTCG here, and I am stoked to bring another article for you all! I hope you have been having a wonderful 2024, and I hope to have another content-filled year to share with everyone. 

Today, I have a different style of article that has been widely requested. I have been paying attention to feedback on articles, and know this is something that people have been missing from our content in some articles. I will be presenting a masterclass for one of the best decks in the format: Charizard ex. I will be going over my preferred Charizard list heading into Charlotte Regionals, and how to approach all of the important matchups! Charlotte Regionals is expected to be the biggest Pokemon Regional Championships ever held, and I am stoked to compete. I hope this article gets any of you Charizard fans as prepared as you possibly can be. 

First off, let’s take a look at my list.

Charizard ex is one of the most powerful decks in the current Standard format. With 330 HP, it is one of the most difficult Pokemon to knock out in one hit. On top of this, unlike many decks, this deck gets stronger as the game goes on. Many current decks are fragile in the late game, whereas Charizard is the opposite.  Today, we will dive into early game set ups, and goals to set for each important matchup. 

Charizard versus Miraidon ex

Miraidon is another one of the most powerful decks in the current Standard format. Most recently winning the Latin American International Championships, it will be a deck that you have a good chance of playing against in an event. 

One of Miraidon’s best ways to beat you is buying time with cards like Bravery Charm and Path to the Peak. Keeping around your two Lost Vacuum and your stadiums, until you either use them to remove a Path or a Charm, is essential. It may be tempting to play down a stadium early game to potentially get use out of it, but if you don’t absolutely need to, then I would advise staying away from it. 

Typically my early game board state will consist of 2-3 Charmanders, two Pidgey, and a Mew. You might be wondering why you would want to use Pidgeot in this matchup, as it gets knocked out easily by a Lightning-type Attacker. The reason as to why using Pidgeot ex, along with your other two-prize Pokemon like Rotom V and Lumineon V is ok, is because if they do not damage or knock out your Charizard, they are usually going to run out of steam if they attempt to Boss around your Charizard strat. If they are not hitting your Zard, that is a good thing, as they aren’t dealing with the true threat! Sometimes taking prize cards just to take them is not always the correct decision. Key notes are to make sure to save your Stadium outs and Tool removal cards. Another note is that if you see Raichu V, target that down with a Boss’s Orders or Counter Catcher; that is their only thing that is capable of one-shotting a Charizard ex.  

I think this matchup is favored for you, as long as you are able to get out of Path-lock and the early blitz from Miraidon. 

Charizard versus Roaring Moon

Roaring Moon is actually one of Charizard’s better matchups. Here, Roaring Moon ex does have the capabilities to OHKO a Charizard, and it actually is important to play into their strategy a little bit. 

In the early game, you typically want to have on your board two Charmander, two Pidgey, one Mew, and one Manaphy. Manaphy is important, as Roaring Moon decks often play Water energy now to combo with Professor Sada’s Vitality, and Energy Switch, to take surprise knockouts with Greninja’s Moonlight Shuriken attack. I actually would be very careful with benching Rotom or Lumineon on Turn 1, as they can be Cross Switchered or Boss’s Orders-KO’ed on your opponent’s first turn when going second.  

You want to establish a Charizard ex early (evolving your 70 HP Charmanders first), which will then make them use Frenzied Gouging to take a knockout on the Charizard. Roaring Moon’s attack has a major drawback though, dealing 200 damage back onto the Roaring Moon. It is a strong attack but it comes with a price. Once they deal 200 to themself, they are left with 30 HP remaining. This is where Heat Tackle Charmander with 60 HP shines, allowing you to knock out their Roaring Moon with a one-prizer for just one energy! Charmander and Charmeleon are the MVP attackers in this matchup.

Charizard versus Mew VMAX

This is one of your best matchups. Your Charizard hits Mew VMAX for weakness with its Burning Darkness attack. In this matchup, focus on getting Charizard ex set up over Pidgeot. Both are good to set up, but I would value Charizard before anything else. 

Save your Stadiums and Lost Vacuums, because the only way Mew can beat you is using Path to the Peak. Path paired up with Judge can be pretty scary, so make sure to save those Stadiums! I would recommend keeping Mew on the bench, so when they Judge-Path-KO the active, you can promote the Mew. It gets much scarier if they can Judge-Path-KO the Mew, meaning you cannot use Mysterious Tail.  

If you are able to set up properly, it should be smooth sailing! 

Charizard versus Lugia VSTAR 

Lugia is not the most powerful deck anymore, but there is a chance you may run into one. In this matchup, focus on getting one Charizard and one Pidgeot ex set up as quickly as possible, because you will want to use Boss’s Orders on both of their Archeops. Archeops is the lifeline of Lugia VSTAR. It needs this card to function and continually power up Pokemon. Once you take out both Archeops, you will be able to attack with Charizard over and over again to run them out of attackers. 

You may be thinking, “If I spend two turns knocking out Archeops, then they may take down a Charizard with Lugia and take the prize lead”. Don’t worry about falling behind, because once you take out their engine, their lead will shrink quickly as they won’t be able to establish other attackers. It’s ok to fall a little behind in the early game – you will make up ground! 

Charizard versus Gardevoir

Although you have type advantage against this matchup, this is actually an incredibly tight matchup that can go either way. Gardevoir has incredibly dangerous attackers, like Shining Arcana Gardevoir and Zacian V, that cause a lot of issues for you in the later portions of games. 

Try and establish multiple Charmander on the field, along with two Pidgey as quickly as possible. You will want to make sure you have two Pidgey on the field, as oftentimes a Gardevoir player will spend a turn using Counter Catcher, to knockout a Pidgeot ex, so it’s important to have another Pidgey that can become another Pidgeot if need be. 

It is important to use your Lost City to Lost-Zone Gardevoir pieces like Refinement Kirlia, and Shining Arcana Gardevoir. This will make it much more difficult for them to be able to hit the pieces they need off Iono in the late game. 

Another important thing is that if you have the opportunity to Boss-KO the Gardevoir ex, do so! This is the lifeline of the deck, and taking it out will force them to find another one, which you then knock that out as well. 

One play that may come up is using your 60 HP Charmander with Heat Tackle to knock out a heavily-damaged Shining Arcana Gardevoir. Due to Charizard’s massive HP, some of Gardevoir’s attackers become heavily damaged by the Psychic Embrace Ability, meaning you can knock them out with a one-prize attacker like Charmander or Charmeleon. This is really important, as paired up with a Lost City (ideally), you trade evenly (1 for 1 prize card) and also remove their attacker from the game forever with Lost City. 

Charizard versus Lost Zone Giratina 

This is one of Charizard’s closest matchups as well. Path to the Peak, Roxanne, and Giratina VSTAR’s Star Requiem attack all cause separate issues for Charizard, so it is important to navigate this matchup properly. To start, just like playing against Mew, saving your Stadiums and Lost Vacuum for when they play Path to the Peak is critical. 

This is a matchup where Jirachi is amazing! After they use their Star Requiem VSTAR attack, they actually do not have any other way to knock out your active Pokemon in one hit, meaning they need to use alternative ways to do this. One route they will try is using Sableye’s “Lost Mine” to sprinkle damage onto multiple Charizard, to set up multiple Giratina VSTAR “Lost Impact” attacks for 280, which paired up with “Lost Mine” is enough. Jirachi’s ability prevents this, and makes it much harder for them! 

In this matchup, I will go out of my way to damage both Giratina V before they can knock me out. For example I will use Burning Darkness for 180 on Tina V, and then the next turn I will use Boss’s Orders to damage the other Giratina V. You need to do this because when they begin being able to take big knockouts, you have to respond KO or they can run you over quickly. If they do take a early game knockout with Cramorant, this is great for you because you can force them down to three prizes and use Vitality Band to deal 280 damage, giving you two guaranteed prizes.

Charizard vs Charizard. (No Devo) 

Next up we have the mirror match, in which there actually are some things you can do to outplay the opponent. In the mirror, it’s important to understand the damage thresholds that Zard is able to reach. 180-210-240-270-300-330 are the amounts of damage that it can do. This means you never want to allow them to deal 330 damage, which they can do if you take five prize cards. This means you want to stay on even prize cards most of the game. When you have two prize cards remaining, that means they can only deal 300 damage, which is not enough to knock out a Charizard ex in one hit. 

When going first, you want to be the first one to take a knockout. Taking a knockout on a one-prizer as your first knockout is ok, but you need to focus on going to even prize cards as soon as possible. Dont go from 5-3-1 prizes because that will allow their Zard to OHKO you at the very end. So when you take the first knockout on a one-prize Pokemon, you want to then follow it up the next turn with a Boss’s Orders to knock out another one-prizer, putting you back down to four prizes, which is the target even number. 

Pidgeot ex is a Pokemon you can attempt to knock out as your final two prizes, as that is typically a pretty easy Pokemon to deal with in one hit during the late game. If they ever bench Lumineon V, Rotom V or Pidgeot V, those are easy Boss Targets as well, so go after those if you can. 

(With Devo) 

If you do decide to play the Technical Machine: Devolution, you want to approach this matchup by going second and getting damage onto three evolution Pokemon, before using Devolution to devolve the entire board. This can become a mess, because if they also do this, it becomes really weird and often based on whether or not you find Candy on the turn they devo. Always try to get Charmeleon down, because it makes it harder for them to have an effective Devolution turn.

Charizard versus Stall

This is one of Charizard’s hardest matchups. If you want to beat Stall more consistently, play Minior; it allows you to deal weakness-damage to Snorlaxes for one energy, and its Ability goes around Block-Snorlax by forcing it into the active when you attach an energy to it from your hand. If you have this card, the matchup becomes much better, and if Stall is seeing success then it may be a card to include. 

Charmeleon is a solid attacker against their Mimikyu, as Mimikyu blocks all Pokemon V and ex from doing damage to it, which prevents your main attacker Charizard from dealing any damage. 

Try not to bench unnecessary Pokemon down in this matchup, like Rotom V, Manaphy, Jirachi, or Lumineon, because it makes it easier for them to use Counter Catcher or Boss’s Orders to try and repeatedly stall a non-attacker in the active spot.

Charizard versus Entei Iron Valiant

This is the Iron Valiant variant I would expect to see the most of. Entei/Valient’s goal is to use Iron Valiant to deal lots of board damage with its Ability, and then use cards like Medicham V to take a knockout, and then skip a turn with its Yoga Loop effect. 

This is a matchup where Jirachi is king! Jirachi prevents Yoga Loop on all benched Pokemon, meaning that they cannot take knockouts as easily, and need to rely on just Entei V a little bit more. 

You want to emphasize using your 70 HP Charmanders, as those take one more Tachyon Bits Ability to knock out. As long as you set up one or two Charizard, it should be more than enough to take them down. Radiant Charizard also is a great attacker in this matchup, as for one energy at the end of the game, it’s able to OHKO Entei V or Iron Valiant!

Conclusion

Charizard is one of the best decks in the format, and if you play the deck correctly, you can go far! The deck has a shot versus most decks in the format, and I like where the list is at. Let me know in the comments if you have any questions! Charlotte is expected to be the biggest Regional of all time, and I look forward to seeing what finishes on top. 

Thank you for reading my most recent article, and I hope to speak with you again soon! Cheers!