1st Place Charizard ex Deck (Post 2024 Rotation) — Joseph Writer Anderson (2024)

By now, Obsidian Flames (you could also call it the Charizard ex Set) has been out for a while. It’s strongest archetype, the Charizard ex deck, has had ample time to dominate the Pokemon TCG meta. It’s easily one of the best Pokemon decks.

In this guide, we’re going to be taking a look at Charizard ex post 2024 rotation, using a deck that won an early oline tournament with nearly 300 players as an example.

Updated April 1, 2024 to the latest Charizard ex deck to rock the Pokemon TCG world.

Charizard ex Deck List

Card Type

Charizard ex Deck is Deadly – Here’s How to Play It

Although Charizard ex used to be pretty straightforward to play, more experienced players will take a look at the Charizard ex deck list below and see that it is anything but simple.

Never you fear – we have a few steps you can take to play this deck to perfection.

Bench Charmander and Pidgey early and often

To start, you will want to get Charmander and Pidgey benched. This is vital as you will need to evolve them ASAP in order to get your deck up and running. To help you achieve this more quickly, you have access to Buddy-Buddy Poffin from Temporal Forces. Buddy-Buddy Poffin will let you place two Pokemon with under 70 hp onto your bench. Unlike Battle VIP Pass (which has rotated out), you can use Buddy-Buddy Poffin at any time, quickly building up your bench to where it needs to be to win games. This deck runs four of these handy item cards.

Recharge your hand with Rotom V and Lumineon V

Who said Pokemon V were out-of-style? This deck runs two powerful Pokemon V support Pokemon: Rotom V and Lumineon V. Early in the game, Rotom V can be a great card to have benched as it will enable you to draw additional cards. Lumineon V can also be a great card to use to help get a supporter card that is just out of reach. This deck runs four copies of Ultra Ball, meaning it should be relatively easy to get a Lumineon V into your hand.

The best part of having two Pokemon V in your deck means that you can also take advantage of the still-powerful Forest Seal Stone. Using this VSTAR ability, you can search your deck for any single card you want. You usually need two Pokemon V in your deck to make adding a Forest Seal Stone viable, making it idea for this deck.

Use Arven to search out key cards

Speaking of searching your deck, there’s a reason this deck runs four copies of Arven. Whether you happen to top deck Arven, or search him out with one of your many powerful card search options (namely Lumineon V and/or Pidgeot ex).

Arven is critical for helping you get the Rare Candy you need when you need it. It can also be helpful in pulling one of the nifty tools this deck includes, like Forest Seal Stone or Maximum Belt.

Ready Charizard ex for the attack

With your bench set up and your hand full of Rare Candies thanks to Arven, it’s time to get Charizard ex ready to attack. One of the best things about Charizard ex (and part of the reason why its such a strong deck) is that once you evolve it, it will accelerate its own energies and an additional energy, making it quite the versatile card.

As the game goes on, it only gets stronger, making it possible to take out weaker Pokemon early game, and tougher Pokemon later game. To help amplify the damage your Charizard ex can do, and to reach those KOs that are just out of reach, this deck runs several damage modifying Pokemon Tool cards, including Choice Belt and Maximum Belt.

Having both of these tools at your disposal makes Charizard ex able to to take OHKOs at every level of the game –a feat that was not possible before Temporal Forces. While Choice Belt isn’t new (brining Charizard ex’s attack up to an impressive 210 against Pokemon V without any prize cards taken), Maximum Belt is the Pokemon Tool to highlight here. As the Pokemon TCG meta gets increasingly dominated by powerful Pokemon ex, Maximum Belt is going to be a decisive differentiator. With it, Charizard ex is able to take OHKOs from the get-go, covering one of the few drawbacks this deck faced pre-rotation.

Pidgeot ex is your main card search engine

Last but not least, Pidgeot ex is vital to this deck’s success. Most players prioritize getting Pidgeot ex evolved almost as highly as evolving Charizard ex, as you’ll need it to consistently keep your hand stocked with powerful cards. Also, having a card with a powerful ability like Quick Search in play makes it much more possible for you to get one-off cards like Maximum Belt, Devolution (for mirror matches) and Mist Energy. Pidgeot is a huge differentiator in the Charizard ex deck that most other decks can’t mimic due to needing a Rare Candy engine to get it off reliably.

Charizard ex Deck Weaknesses

One of the reasons Charizard ex is one of the best Pokemon decks right now is because it doesn’t actually have a huge weakness. Overall, Charizard ex is a very solid deck, and rotation plus the new cards in Temporal Forces have only made it significantly stronger.

Many cards that used to be a huge threat to this deck are simply no longer playable, or made up for with powerful counters. Take, for advantage Path to the Peak. With that no longer in play, Charizard ex gets a huge bonus. There’s no single card that can shut off all of your abilities. And while some decks can run Flutter Mane which blocks your active Pokemon’s abilities, you can handle this by just making sure you have your Charmander on the bench when you evolve it into Charizard ex.

Charizard ex’s early game damage output

One weakness that Charizard faced early in the game before Temporal Forces was that it simply could not take big KOs until later in the game. While faster decks can take OHKOs as early as turn two, Charizard needs to wait a little bit. While this can still be an issue, Maximum Belt largely evens the playing field here, making it possible for Charizard to take OHKOs against many Pokemon even turn two.

Faster Decks Could Overwhelm It

It’s important to note the fact that Charizard ex is a stage 2 Pokemon. For that reason, it can be a little bit tricker to setup than other decks in the format that only need to evolve at most once.

If your opponent is able to get out the door really quickly and you stall, you could have a lot of trouble making up ground.

Charizard ex is weak to Iron Leaves ex

Of course, one way to deal with a hyper-powerful Pokemon like Charizard ex is to simply attack it with the Pokemon type it is weak against. While that hasn’t been a hugely plausible thing to achieve given the lack of Grass-type Pokemon in the meta for some time, with the powerful new Iron Leaves ex, many decks are able to take advantage Iron Leaves ex “Rapid Vernier” switching ability and grass-typing to counter Charizard ex.

As a Charizard ex player, there’s not a lot you can do against this powerful new tech other than hope your opponent either isn’t running the card or can’t manage to meet its relatively restrictive energy requirements.

Watch out for Devolution!

Lastly, Devolution – the gnarly TM revealed in Paradox Rift – is an absolute killer against Charizard ex. If your opponent manages to get one of these attacks off, you will be forced to discard the evolved forms of all of your Pokemon. That means all the hard work you put into searching for Rare Candies and evolution Pokemon is gone. If you’ve already used up your Rare Candies in the process of setting up your board, this can almost be a certain death sentence.

There’s not a lot you can do to defend agains this other than hope you can get up and running quickly after it happens (or just hope your opponent isn’t running one of these TMs in their deck).