Charizard ex (EX FireRed LeafGreen)

Today's Pokemon Card of the Day is Charizard ex from the EX FireRed LeafGreen set. If you're unsure of exactly what an ex card is click here. This is one of the cards that I've always wanted but could never get. I opened a ton of FireRed LeafGreen booster packs and never got one. And I would buy more today just to try and get one but the boxes are so expensive I don't want to spend that much. Besides it being an ex card and being the almighty Charizard, it actually isn't too great in my opinion for a Pokemon card, I actually prefer Blastoise ex and Venusaur ex over this card. Sorry for that bad news but lets get on with the card review. Charizard ex does have 160 hp, 10 more than the other two starters. What really can kill this card is that it has two weaknesses, both x2, the first being water which is also the most prevalent and the second being electric type, it doesn't have any resistance and a retreat cost of 2 colorless energy isn't very expensive except for the fact if you use Burn Down you won't have any energy left on Charizard to retreat. And if Charizard ex is knocked out your opponent gets two prize cards. Charizard's Poke-Body Energy Flame makes all energy attached to Charizard fire energy, this helps if you have this card in a split deck with two types of energy, and since Charizard needs a lot of energy to do its moves this Poke-Body can come in handy. Charizard's first move is Slash which does 50 hp damage for 3 colorless energy cards, this move is about average I've definitely seen better for three energy cards but it is a nice starter move for Charizard. Charizard's other move Burn Down does 200 hp damage for 5 fire energy cards and also isn't affected at all by weakness or resistance. But you also have to discard all 5 energy cards once you do this move. As far as strategy goes I would definitely wait as long as possible to make Charizard your active Pokemon because it takes way too long to get 5 energy cards on this thing. I would put it on your bench right away and start attaching energy cards to it, but I wouldn't move it out to play until you only have 1 more prize card to take or your opponent's Pokemon is too strong for all your other Pokemon cards. Because every Pokemon out there will be knocked out in one move with Burn Down. So I would stick to using Slash as much as possible so you don't have to discard energy so much and since Charizard has 160 hp, a 50 hp damage move every turn is good enough for me. I am just going to use Burn Down as a last resort or a finisher card. Also make sure you have some way of retrieving all those energy cards out of your discard pile from Burn Down so you don't lose the game by running out of cards in your deck. All in all I think this Charizard card can be very powerful but it will take a lot of patience to build up Burn Down if you want to use it a lot, I would try and find another powerful fire type Pokemon to build your deck around and use Charizard ex as a stopper card to your opponent's strongest Pokemon. So thanks for reading today's review and stay tuned for tomorrow's review of Dragonite ex from EX Dragon Frontiers.