If any card existed to show how good Blaziken was, it was Camerupt. It was basically a Stage 1 version of Base Set Charizard, and that card didn’t really get anything done at all. Camerupt was slightly easier to get out, but the real reason Camerupt was viable was because Fire Energy was just so easy to get out of the discard pile. It’s amazing how one Pokemon can turn a game on its head, but Camerupt surely didn’t mind Blaziken’s dominance.
90 HP is quite solid on a Stage 1. Sure, it was by no means invincible against something like Rayquaza ex, but many decks weren’t taking it out in one hit. Team Magma’s Groudon couldn’t even KO Camerupt after it had taken 10 damage, which was quite good for a Stage 1. The Water Weakness wasn’t great to have thanks to Suicune ex and Walrein, but it wasn’t completely awful since Water decks were mostly used for Fire-types in the first place. The Retreat Cost, however, really was terrible. 3 Energy was too much, even with Blaziken support, so Switch and Warp Point were very good things to pair with Camerupt.
Lava Burn wasn’t that great. For 2 Energy it just did 20 damage plus 10 to an opponent’s Benched Pokemon. Bench damage was cool, but not this little for this price. Camerupt had better things to do anyway.
Fire Spin was amazing due to the format it was in. It cost 4 Energy, and 2 had to be Fire, but did a massive 100 damage. There were some solid Pokemon-ex that went down to that, such as Mewtwo ex and Rayquaza ex. Needless to say, manage normal Pokemon crumbled as well. Too bad it required discarding two Basic Energy, but Blaziken mitigated that with smart switching around.
To be fair, there were still better choices that came later on, such as Blaziken ex from Team Magma vs Team Aqua, but Camerupt was still very solid and didn’t give up an extra Prize. While other choices that have been discussed in yesterday’s Blaziken review were typically better, Camerupt still had a bit of a niche and was not something to be underestimated.
It sometimes only takes a Poke-Power or the like to make a card good, and Delcatty was one of the best examples of that. The basic stats weren’t great, the attack usually wasn’t better than anything else a deck had, but Energy Draw… That was so good and paired so well with Blaziken that the card became a staple in almost every Fire-type deck that relied on Firestarter. It was the first of a long line of bad in-game Pokemon that ended up getting a chance in the TCG as a supporting Pokemon, and Delcatty was certainly good enough at that.
The stats actually weren’t too good, though they didn’t matter all that much. 70 HP was definitely below average on a Stage 1, and the Fighting Weakness didn’t help things. That Weakness meant that Team Magma’s Groudon and the occasional Rhydon could take Delcatty down even more easily than they already did, and most decks, especially in the E-On format, could use Delcatty as a free Prize. The Retreat Cost was at least reasonable at 1, but barring Pokemon Reversal Delcatty was never in the Active position in the first place, and if it was, it wasn’t usually surviving to Retreat in the first place.
Delcatty’s Poke-Power, Energy Draw, was just amazing. Once during your turn, it allowed you to discard an Energy card from your hand and then draw up to 3 cards. This could make set-up much quicker, and while losing Energy was bad for several decks, it worked well with Blaziken and could get those big attacks going that much more quickly. Other decks sometimes used this too: While losing an Energy hurt those a bit more, decks that ran a high amount of Energy, such as some variations of Swampert and Gardevoir decks, could get some good use out of this card.
Max Energy Source wasn’t really worth it. It did 10 damage for each Energy attached to all of your Active Pokemon. Unless you were playing some Doubles format (Nintendo tried that for a bit then kind of gave up on it when very few people actually played it), this was a very weak attack for the price, and even there it wasn’t that impressive without a huge Energy hog as the other Pokemon. Delcatty was clearly not meant to attack.
While even more impressive support options such as Pidgeot left Delcatty with a smaller niche in the RS-On format, Delcatty was good through its entire time as a legal card. It shined most in the E-On format where many decks had relatively high Energy counts or thrived on having Energy in the discard pile. It was a card most players needed a couple of copies of, as it raised the number of good decks that could be run by a good margin. That’s how good extra draw power was when not in Supporter form.
Dustox was pretty decent. It had some issues with Gardevoir ex, which was quite the problem, but Protective Dust gave it some use against decks that relied on Special Conditions. This especially helped against Nidoqueen in the RS-on format, and gave it an interesting niche; Impressive for a card based off such a weak Pokemon.
90 HP was slightly below normal for a Stage 2 but was still salvageable. Losing 10 HP mattered against Rayquaza ex, but decks running Rayquaza ex already had ways to beat Dustox anyway so it was no huge loss. The Psychic Weakness was actually quite painful in the E-on format, as Gardevoir decks just stomped all over it despite Gardevoir ex’s Grass Weakness, though the Weakness mattered less in the somewhat more varied RS-on. The Retreat Cost of 0 was absolutely amazing, and was one of Dustox’s selling points.
Dustox’s Poke-Body, Protective Dust, was simple but effective. It prevented all effects of attacks, except damage, done to Dustox by the Attacking Pokemon. This was most important against Nidoqueen from FireRed and LeafGreen, which was a dominant threat but relied quite a bit on Toxic.
Speaking of Toxic, Dustox had a much weaker version of that too. It cost 2 Energy and did 0 damage, but did 20 damage between turns instead of 10. It wasn’t really good enough for the cost, but could add up early in the game.
Gust was the attack Dustox used the most. It did a standard 50 damage for 3 Energy. It was a pretty average attack but was also the best choice here, and Dustox wouldn’t have been great without its other qualities.
Dustox had use in Nidoqueen-heavy environments, though it was only slightly above average otherwise. It was easily better in the RS-on format compared to E-on, and was worth a look for having some uncommon qualities for a Pokemon in its time.
While Blaziken was clearly the most common deck of the E-On format, Gardevoir was probably the #2. It also dealt with Energy acceleration, but instead of dealing with the Discard Pile, it dealt directly with the deck. It could also attach Energy to the Active Pokemon, but no matter where the Pokemon receiving the Energy was, that Pokemon took 20 damage. It had its ups and downs compared to the similar Blaziken, and while it wasn’t quite as good overall, Gardevoir still had a lot to offer and some good choices to pair with.
100 HP was solid on a Stage 2. At this point it was really the standard and took most hits at least once, even in such a powerful format. The Weakness to Psychic was quite annoying, mainly because it wasn’t hard at all to run into another Gardevoir deck. Those mirror matches could end up with some crazy damage numbers by the end. Gardevoir’s Retreat Cost was 2, which was a little higher than ideal, but Gardevoir wasn’t commonly Active. Outside of Pokemon Reversal, it really wasn’t too likely to have to Retreat in the first place.
Psy Shadow was the reason Gardevoir was great. Once during the turn, you could search your deck for a Psychic Energy card and attach it to one of your Pokemon. Then that Pokemon took 20 damage. The extra Energy from a Gardevoir in a turn could get things set up really quickly, but also made things a lot more frail. It actually really hurt the match-up with Team Magma’s Groudon since it would be doing 70 pretty much all the time. That being said, it was almost always still worth the extra Energy to charge up a big attack, and the fact that Gardevoir had the likes of Mewtwo ex and Gardevoir ex to play around with helped it immensely.
Energy Burst did 10 damage for each Energy attached to both Gardevoir and the Defending Pokemon for a single Psychic Energy. No, this wasn’t something you actually wanted to use. Leave Gardevoir on the Bench for supporting bigger attackers, don’t bother with this.
Gardevoir had some minor flaws, but the total package was absolutely amazing. The fact that it naturally went with Gardevoir ex was also quite helpful, and those decks were some of the most feared of their time. Psychic decks, in their peak, could reach some crazy damage numbers, and anyone not prepared to face them was likely to lose badly.
Here’s a card you’ve probably heard of before. Yes, it’s finally time to review the Blaziken card that was mentioned over and over again. Needless to say, Blaziken was a metagame-defining force, and made almost every Fire-type at least playable. That was thanks to an incredibly strong Poke-Power that, with even decent set-up, gave a stream of Fire Energy to be used for many good attackers. This was clearly one of the most important supporting Pokemon of its time, and absolutely had plenty of options to go alongside it.
The stats were decent on their own, though Blaziken was normally sitting on the Bench. 100 HP was solid on a Stage 2. It wasn’t invincible, as an opposing Blaziken ex could pick it off of the Bench, but other than that it was pretty sturdy. The Water Weakness was a bit of an issue, but mainly because people used Water decks to try to counter Blaziken. Suicune ex and Walrein both were seen quite a bit, the latter almost exclusively to stop Blaziken late in the E-On format. The Retreat Cost, 2, was slightly higher than what would be liked, but Blaziken was almost always just staying on the Bench anyway so it didn’t matter nearly as much as with most Pokemon.
Firestarter was Blaziken’s Poke-Power, and it literally shaped the game around it for a while. There was no coin flip involved here: You could simply attached one Fire Energy card from the discard pile to a Benched Pokemon each turn. This didn’t count as the turn’s Energy attachment, and if there was more than one Blaziken in play, the Power could be used once for each of them. That could quickly become a powerful Energy mill to the point that the only downside of it was that the Pokemon getting the Energy had to be on the Bench. Honestly, that was probably the only thing preventing it from being completely broken.
Fire Stream was a decent attack. For 3 Energy it did 50 damage. If a Fire Energy was then discarded, it did 10 damage to each of the opponent’s Benched Pokemon too. I’m sure this attack was made to combo with Firestarter, but Blaziken was almost never using this attack in practice. Instead, decks with Blaziken found other ways to dump cards into the discard pile.
Juggler was common in the E-On era, and was easily the most common way to get Fire Energy into that discard pile early on. This could get powerful attackers set up by turn 2 in many cases, faster than many could react. Another common choice, one that worked in RS-On as well, was Delcatty from the same Ruby/Sapphire set. It worked similarly in that it discarded an Energy from the hand to draw cards, which made set-up much quicker. The loss of Juggler in RS-on made Blaziken slightly less amazing, but it was still a very good choice there.
Very early on, Blaziken was commonly paired with Ninetales, and it worked well to dish out huge amounts of damage from a card that would otherwise discard too much to be great. Exeggutor also got some use, as did the occasional Camerupt. The Dragon set brought an even better choice: Rayquaza ex, as it could discard Fire Energy easily for crazy amounts of Colorless damage. The deck needed a few Lightning Energy to work, though that opened up the door for Team Aqua’s Manectric to help support when it came out one set later. That set also brought Blaziken ex, which went well with Blaziken and did even more obscene amounts of damage.
While the deck dominated play outside of Japan, it didn’t actually win the championships in either year it was around. Team Magma decks just destroyed the tournament in 2004, and decks based around cards such as Nidoqueen and Medicham ex outdid it in 2005. Despite that, Blaziken always had to be prepared for, as it was a very dangerous force when combined with strong attackers. Any deck left weak to this was likely to fare poorly in serious competitions.
