For a time, Charizard ex was by far the most dominate deck in the Pokemon TCG meta. It’s time back at the top seems nigh given powerful new support for Tera Pokemon released in Stellar Crown.

In this guide, we’re going to be taking a look at the latest way to play this powerful deck when combined with powerhouse cards like the almost unfair Dusknoir line from Shrouded Fable and the game clinching Briar supporter from Stellar Crown.

Charizard ex Deck List 2024

Pokémon: 20
3 Charmander MEW 4
1 Charmeleon PAF 8
3 Charizard ex OBF 125
2 Pidgey OBF 162
2 Pidgeot ex OBF 164
2 Duskull SFA 18
1 Dusclops SFA 19
2 Dusknoir SFA 20
1 Fezandipiti ex SFA 38
1 Rotom V LOR 58
1 Lumineon V BRS 40
1 Radiant Charizard CRZ 20
Trainer: 34
3 Iono PAL 185
3 Arven OBF 186
2 Boss's Orders PAL 172
1 Thorton LOR 167
1 Briar SCR 132
1 Professor Turo's Scenario PAR 171
4 Buddy-Buddy Poffin TEF 144
4 Rare Candy SVI 191
4 Ultra Ball SVI 196
3 Nest Ball SVI 181
2 Super Rod PAL 188
2 Counter Catcher PAR 160
1 Unfair Stamp TWM 165
1 Forest Seal Stone SIT 156
1 Defiance Band SVI 169
1 Collapsed Stadium BRS 137
Energy: 6
6 Fire Energy SVE 2

Card Type

Charizard ex deck – what’s changed?

Players quickly jumped aboard the Dusknoir line and its unparalleled cursed blast ability when it came out in Shrouded Fable. However, the overwhelming dominance of Regidrago VSTAR at the time made the playing field a bit unfriendly for decks like Charizard ex that rely on small benched Pokemon.

With Regidrago VSTAR not nearly as dominant as it once was, Charizard ex is once again Burning Darkness its way to the top of the meta, and that is partly thanks to how well it pairs with Dusknoir.

We’ll get into how Cursed Blast factors into things in a moment, but the other card worth mentioning as a significant change to this deck strategy is Briar. Briar is a huge boon to any Tera deck, and makes Charizard scary deadly. It also has synergy with Dusknoir, and the three together create a terrifying trifecta of game-winning madness.

Let’s look into how Dusknoir, Briar, and Charizard ex work together to win games in even the worst possible matchups.

Charizard ex, Cursed Blast, and Briar combo

The Charizard ex, Cursed Blast, and Briar interraction is a relatively advanced play that can give you a leg-up on the competition. If you’re new to Charizard ex and just want to understand the basics, move onto the following section. If you already have experience playing Charizard, however, it’s key that you know how this new mechanic works as it can win you a lot of games.

Cursed Blast – a broken ability?

First of all, I should say that I think Cursed Blast in general is a bit of a broken ability, and I have a feeling Pokemon didn’t realize the extent to which it could be mistreated in the meta. There’s a few reasons I think this ability is broken, but let’s look at a different but similar strategy to understand Cursed Blast more thoroughly.

First of all, there’s a very important nuance in the Pokemon TCG that you need to understand if you want to play competitively at any level. And while it may seem like a pretty basic distinction, understanding this distinction helps paint a clearer picture of why Cursed Blast is being so widely used today. In reality, Pokemon may need to print a card that helps defend against the ability as it has the potential to break the game. Arguably, the ability used in conjunction with Briar has already broken the game

Placing damage counters versus doing damage

Anyways, the distinction is that placing damage counters is different than doing damage. Placing damage counters has long been a huge loophole in the game, giving players carte blanche to take knockouts against the bench with impunity.

This workaround is one of the reasons why decks like Lost Zone Box have been so dominant for years. That being said, Pokemon seems to have realized this slightly lopsided capability in the game and has released several cards to defend against it. Cards like Jirachi defend against placing damage counters, as do cards like the more recently released Rabsca.

However, there’s a final loophole that gets introduced with Dusknoir, and I fear this loophole could break the game if not answered via some sort of a counter.

That loophole is the ability of Pokemon to place damage via an ability and not via an attack. Cards like Rabsca only defend against Pokemon placing damage counters via an attack, and not via an ability. Cursed Blast is an ability, so once again players have carte blanche to dish out damage at will. This is a glaring loophole in the game and if left unchecked will mean the majority of top tier decks will simply run Dusknoir to gain advantages they otherwise wouldn’t have access to. Indeed, many already are doing so.

Cursed Blast explained

With that tangent out of the way, Cursed Blast is a relatively straightforward ability to use. You knock out your Dusknoir or Dusclops and then you get to place five or twelve damage counters on one of your opponent’s Pokemon. The price you pay is your opponent gets a free knockout. The reward? Utter board dominance.

So why is this a good thing, exactly, for Charizard ex?

Charizard ex wants to lose the prize race…at first

Charizard ex has long desired to lose prizes right out the gate, making it very unique in the Pokemon TCG meta where most decks are racing to get prizes ahead of the competition. Its attack gets far stronger by having less prizes than your opponent, and it also gets added buffs from Defiance Band and Counter Catcher this way.

In this deck strategy, offering a free prize isn’t really a negative, and that’s worse when you factor in Briar.

Briar makes Charizard ex ridiculous

After playing my way to the Arceus League over the first weekend of Stellar Crown on Pokemon TCG Live, I saw enough Charizard ex to learn first hand how silly Briar is in Charizard ex, especially thank to Dusknoir.

While Briar is powerful enough on its own, making it relatively easy for Charizard to take three prizes in a turn, when you factor in Dusknoir, you can easily take a four prize card turn out of nowhere.

And it’s not like this move is very easy to defend against. It means paying close attention to the cards you have on your board, and avoiding the situation at all costs – something which just simply isn’t always possible especially against a deck that has access to incredible card search via Pidgeot ex.

Assuming your opponent has two prize cards remaining (a condition easy enough to achieve with the Dusknoir line), you simply play Briar, use a Cursed Blast, then attack and knock out a two prize Pokemon with Charizard ex and voila! You’ve take four prizes in a single turn.

Charizard ex Deck is Deadly – here’s how to play it

So now that we’ve taken a look at the advanced new plays in this deck, let’s start from the beginning and look over the basics of how Charizard ex works.

One helpful way to think of the Charizard ex deck is as a control deck: not control in the way Pokemon TCG players typically mean that term in regards to stalling your opponent into decking them out, but rather in the typical TCG sense – you are playing for the long game, getting stronger and more dominant as the game progresses.

For this reason, there’s a very specific early game setup that you are looking for in order to prepare Charizard ex for the attack down the line. One thing that is the most counterintuitive to this deck (as it operates differently than just about any other top Pokemon TCG meta deck) is that you actually want to lose the early prize trade as it will power up your Charizard in order to take bigger damage.

Early game board set up

If you can get your board completely set up at first then it’s pretty hard for your opponent to stop you. However, it's challenging to get this ideal board set up right away.

Ideally, you’ll want to prioritize Charmander as Charizard ex is your attacker and energy accelerator rolled into one. This means getting two Charmander onto the bench, just in case your opponent manages to take out one of them you have a spare to evolve the next turn and get the ball rolling.

That being said, getting as many of your Pokemon into play as possible will ensure your liklihood of success: two Charmander, two Pidgey and a Dusclops is a very scary board to face off against!

To help you make this happen more often and reliably, this deck runs four copies of Buddy-Buddy Poffin – the strongest option in the game for these low HP basic Pokemon.

Clefa is your turn one attacker

Charizard ex is not an aggressive deck (clearly). So you won’t be looking to take a turn one KO or attack the way other decks like to. However, this deck does give you a strong attacker on your opening turn (assuming you go second which most Charizard ex decks like to do) in the form of Cleffa.

Cleffa has a pretty insane attack that can be used without the cost of an energy, and when used it will grant you the chance to fully replenish your hand. While this attack is good, ideally you would only use it during your opening turn and start taking KOs the following turn. It may be a very low HP Pokemon but that doesn’t really matter: you want it to be knocked out easily so you can start powering up your Charizard’s attack.

Sometimes it might be more advantageous to get an Evolution TM attack off instead. This means getting your board more quickly set up to start taking KOs. However, getting that card turn one can be challenging, whereas Clefa is relatively easy to get into play.

Pidgeot ex unlocks unparalleled card search

Pidgeot is one of the big reasons this deck is so strong: letting you always find that card you need regardless of how much your opponent tries to mess with your hand or slow you down.

The strength of Pidgeot ex’s card search ability is one of the main reasons that I will actually focus taking out Pidgey early on if my opponent only benches one of them (we’ll get into how to counter Charizard ex a bit more later).

Should you go first or second?

Most Charizard ex players choose to go second for this exact reason: it allows them to get their board set up while also forcing their opponent to take the first KO. This powers up Charizard ex so it can start its relentless barrage.

Use Forest Seal Stone with Lumineon V

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 a 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 more than one Pokemon V in your deck to make adding a Forest Seal Stone viable. Given the powerful card search in this deck, however, you can get away with just one.

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 Defiance Band.

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.

Charizard ex Obsidian Flames — Charizard ex

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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, you can pair it with Defiance Band. Given you are going to want to go second, typically you will be behind in Prizes when you get your Burning Darkness attack off, meaning you can get an extra 30 damage against any Pokemon you are facing off against.

By the time you catch up in prizes, Burning Darkness will be dishing out so much damage that it won’t matter you were behind.

What ACE SPEC card should you use with Charizard ex?

Charizard ex is somewhat unique in that there’s not any one single ACE SPEC card that pairs with it. Instead, there are several that have the potential to be a good fit. However, this particular deck runs the Unfair Stamp card from Twilight Masquerade, and it’s pretty effective. Being able to disrupt your opponent’s hand so badly at anytime by just playing an item is a particularly powerful move – one that could feasibly win you the game just by your opponent failing to draw their way out of it.

How to counter Charizard ex

Charizard ex is one of the hardest decks to play against partly because of its unorthodox playstyle, using your own early game success against you to totally dominate you later in the game. For this reason, we’re going to go through some strategies to use if you are looking to counter this particular powerhouse. If you are instead looking to pilot this deck to victory, what you are going to want to do instead with this section is to reverse engineer these ideas and watch out from them in the matchups you face.

Get rid of Charizard’s card search

Although not foolproof by any means, one of the best ways to deal with Charizard ex’s power is to cut off its supply. Although Charizard can accelerate energies on its own and take KOs, it doesn’t have any draw support or card search built into it, and as such that is its biggest weakness. If you can get rid of your opponent’s Pidgey or Bidoof (depending on what they are running) you stand a much better chance of winning.

This is part of the reason Dragapult ex is such a strong archetype against Charizard ex – it can make minced meat of the weaker HP Pokemon and cut off Charizard ex’s chance to get set up. If you force your opponent to lean on Charizard ex as an attacker alone and the draw support/card search from trainers, Charizard ex is significantly less effective.

Avoid swinging into Charizard ex multiple times

Charizard ex is truly a beast of a Pokemon card – and that’s partly due to its HP. It’s HP stat is insane in the current format, making it really hard to OHKO it. However, you really, really want to avoid swinging into this Pokemon multiple times. Not only does that make it hard to keep up in the prize race, it’s also a liability as Charizard ex players can simply use Professor Turo’s Scenario to pull their wounded Charizard back into the hand. This deck may only run two of these powerful cards but if they have their card search set up that’s not very hard to manage getting it into the hand.

Professor Turo's Scenario — Professor Turo’s Scenario

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Take advantage of Charizard ex’s early game damage output

Charizard ex doesn’t hit very hard out the gate. Even after you take one prize card, it still is not hitting hard enough to take out most basic Pokemon EX. While Defiance Band can level the playing field a bit, its possible to take a hit from Charizard and survive.

A really good way to deal with this is to simply run a copy of Penny or Turo’s Scenario as well. Removing damaged Pokemon from play after absorbing a hit from Charizard ex is a strong way to keep up in the prize race with this dominant deck.

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.

Devolution is a powerful tech against Charizard ex

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

Charizard ex deck matchup guide

Now that we’ve taken a look at everything you need to know about playing Charizard ex and even how to counter it, lets look at some of its best and worst matchups against other top Pokemon meta decks.

Dragapult ex – Disadvantage

Dragapult ex is a deck that’s very much on the rise after Stellar Crown, now complete with many of the tools it needed to soar. This is your worst matchup – it’s very hard for you to deal with a Phantom Dive early on in the game. Your best bet here is to just hope you can avoid taking too many hits too early before you can start overwhelming Dragapult with your superior attack.

Chien-Pao ex – Disadvantage

Chien-Pao ex is a pretty difficult matchup for Charizard ex simply because it nullifies one of Charizard’s biggest advantages: it’s HP. Chie-Pao can pretty easily scale its attack to reach Charizard ex’s HP stat. It takes extra work to do this, but it’s not a huge deal.

Lugia VSTAR – Nuetral

Lugia’s main advantage here is getting a favorable prize trade with Legacy energy or taking you out with Cinccino and forcing you to attack into it. While some suggest taking out Archeops, I avoid swinging into anything that’s a single Prize as much as possible (unless you are doing so with a Radiant Charizard). The best thing you can do is conserve your Boss’s Orders to make sure you are always able to take a two prize attack and not waste energy on one prize Pokemon or those with a Legacy Energy attached. Although, keep in mind, Legacy Energy only works against damage from attacks so your Dusknoir will work around this (again, a crazy loophole).

The only time you would do otherwise is in the case that your opponent is forced to bench only one Archeops (it does happen). In that case it is a no brainer to take it out.

A really strong play against Lugia VSTAR is your Unfair Stamp ACE SPEC. Lugia VSTAR doesn’t have any draw support in the form of Pokemon, meaning you could do some significant damage if they haven’t gotten their Archeops engine set up yet.

Raging Bolt ex – Neutral

In some ways, Raging Bolt ex is a scary matchup simply because Ogerpon ex can OHKO your beefy Charizard. Apart from that, however, don’t be overly scared. This is still a two-prize trade scenario. Radiant Charizard can help as well, capable of taking an OHKO against anything this deck can throw at you.

When I have the choice between what I attack against Raging Bolt ex, I usually aim for the Ogerpon ex as that’s the main draw engine and energy acceleration of this deck. Raging Bolt ex is really just a blunt instrument without it.

Giratina VSTAR – Advantage

Giratina VSTAR is not helpless against Charizard ex, but I would give the edge to Charizard in the matchup. After all, Giratina VSTAR can’t OHKO your Charizard turn after turn, forcing it to use Star Requiem or to gust out your Pidgeot ex or Lumineon V. Giratina VSTAR is going to look to avoid swinging into your Charizard ex with Lost Impact. However, even if it does, it can still Sabeleye Lost Mine the following turn for a knockout, so be on the lookout for that.

Gardevoir ex – Disadvantage

Gardevoir ex is a difficult matchup despite the fact that you have a type advantage against Gardevoir ex. While KOing that Pokemon is cinch, dealing with the wide range of basic Pokemon Gardevoir likes to field in order to dish out damage is tough.

Likely your best play here is to use Charizard ex to take out Gardevoir ex whenever possible. This should be fairly easy to pull off given the way Gardevoir loves to accelerate energies – and damage – onto Pokemon.

Lost Zone Box – Advantage

The matchup here is in favor of Charizard ex. Lost Zone has almost nothing it can do against your powerful Charizard ex. That being said, you will need to field Manaphy ASAP in this matchup to protect your setup and also avoid Cleffa as its an easy fodder for Sableye in the late game.

However you choose to build this deck, it’s undeniable that Charizard ex is a force to be reckoned with in the Pokemon TCG, and the right player can certainly pilot this deck to wins and glory!

Best Charizard ex Deck List and Guide (2024)