Charizard ex Lists are Changing

[Ian] Hello everyone! It is Ian Robb and today I wanted to talk about the winning list from São Paulo and why some of the unique card choices made sense. Going into the event Charizard EX Pidgeot EX was the deck to beat and everyone attending was either trying to figure out how to beat the deck, or gain an edge in the mirror match. Pedro Pertusi did this by building his deck in a way that had a significant edge in the mirror match, and to obliterate Chien-Pao EX. There are two cards that are strong against both. Technical Machine: Devolution and Eri. Both of those cards are strong against Chien-Pao EX because it allows you to run them out of Rare Candy and against the mirror match, they allow you to make your opponent play the game without Pidgeot EX. Now to get into why it is good. 

Why it was it Correct? 

A major weakness that the Charizard EX Pidgeot EX deck has is only having 4 ways to get out Pidgeot EX (4 Rare Candy). Having a way to run your opponent out of them and then use Roxanne or Iono is an edge that you can gain. One reason why it was correct for last weekend was the decklists that everyone was using. Usually what happens in a format is most players playing a deck will play very similar lists to what was winning at previous events. The most popular and winning version of Charizard EX Pidgeot EX did not run 1 card that nullifies Technical Machine: Devolution, Mist Energy. Mist Energy on a Pidgeot EX allows you to prevent Technical Machine: Devolution from working but most players were not running it at São Paulo and Pertusi was able to abuse that. Going forward, I am not a fan of running the Technical Machine: Devolution Eri package as I expect players to add Mist Energy back into Charizard EX Pidgeot EX but if the decklists ends up being similar to what was seen at Orlando or EUIC, it would make sense to re add. The other unique card was Hero’s Cape and it made sense for the event. It forces Chien-Pao EX to discard 8 Water Energy to knockout a Charizard EX and that is almost impossible. Along with that, it helps out against Ancient Box as it makes it difficult for them to keep up. 

Going forward I expect Pidgeot EX Control to increase in popularity so it does not make much sense to run the 2 Technical Machine: Devolution over other cards, but for São Paulo it made complete sense. Until next time, Ian out.

• Ian Robb