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Written by Grand Master Scyther
October 20th, 2003
Hello again TCG trainers. Grand Master Scyther once again with a look at another powerful type of Pokemon: Fire Type Pokemon. Fire types may seem to have a bit of a disadvantage over other types, but one or two do seem to stand out among the others.
Anyone who's played the Pokemon TCG since day one (or maybe even later than that) remember the popularity of the Base Set Charizard. Back then it was considered the rarest non-promo card in the game, and why shouldn't it be? 120 HP, an attack that does 100 damage a shot, and a Pokemon Power that will turn all Energy attached to Charizard into Fire Energy. You could basically stick Charizard and its other forms into practically any deck (though no sensible trainer would actually do that).
Moltres from the Fossil expansion isn't all that bad either. It may have only 70 HP, but it also has the ability to send your opponent on his or her way to decking themselves. Just load Moltres up with Fire Energy, then open up with its Wildfire attack, which allows you to force your opponent to flip one card for each Fire Energy you remove from Moltres. Dive Bomb isn't too bad, but 4 Fire Energy for an 80 damage attack that only works half the time? Not my first choice.
As for the newer Pokemon, Houndoom isn't all that bad, but becarful, because its Burn Up attack has the potential to discard all Fire Energy cards attached to Houndoom if the coin flip comes up tails. On the other hand, 1 retreat cost and 80 HP kind of make up for that. If you're a fan of Houndoom, you could consider playing it. Otherwise, you might want to turn somewhere else.
Well, it seems that I've been playing the downside of Fire Pokemon throughout this article. Now I'm gonna change that with one of the top Fire Pokemon in the newer sets in my opinion, and that's Quilava from EX: Sandstorm. For 80 HP and a 2 Energy retreat cost, its Burning Claw attack not only does 40 damage, but gives you the option to burn the defending Pokemon for a mere cost of discarding one Fire Energy card. In my opinion, that's pretty nice.
Another good card is Dark Charizard from the Team Rocket expansion. It's Nail Flick may be weak (really weak), but its Continuous Fireball attack is very similar to Exeggutor's Big Explosion attack, with the only differences being it's 50x the number of heads and you must discard a Fire Energy card for each heads, but that's surpassable.
Well, that's about it for my article on Fire Type Pokemon. In my next article, I'll explain the wonder that is the Electric Pokemon (and yes, Pikachu will be in there somewhere I'm sure). Until next time, keep training.