Crash and Flashfire

First thing's first. If Harley tells you anything, don't listen to him. He's a damn dirty liar.

Not really. At least there was no way he could've really known what I would get in my boosters for the Flashfire pre release. Six boosters, and not one really nice card. The picture on the right is indicative of my face both before and after opening my boosters.

Anywho, let's keep going. As far as a set goes, Flashfire isn't a bad one. In my personal opinion there aren't a whole lot of really good cards in it, but then again I'm not seeing any that will do much for my own decks so I'm a little biased. If you want my picks for it, they would have to be M Charizard-EX (Y Version), Protection Cube, Trick Shovel and Lysandre.

Mega Evolution pokemon come with great power, but also have a few tough downsides to bring them into line. First off, once you evolve one of your Pokemon-EX into an M Pokemon-EX, your turn is finished. Second, they generally come with a high cost attack or require a great deal of specific energy to use these powerful attacks.

M Charizard-EX can circumvent most of these relatively easily. To combat its high energy cost, one of its base Pokemon-EX versions comes with a one cost attack that, on flipping a successful heads, will attach three energy from the deck to itself. Combined with cards like Blacksmith which attach energy from your discard to a fire pokemon on your field, and getting this powerhouse swinging is relatively simple.

Now, for something that hits so hard you'd think having it deal 50 damage to itself with each swing is a serious drawback. But...

Protection Cube is a thing. It's a pokemon tool so it can be attached to M Charizard-EX, and simply by being there your powerful pokemon will no longer take damage from its own attacks. So now you have a fully charged pokemon dealing 300 damage with each hit with no downside. That's all well and good for the person playing it, but what about if you have to try and take it down?

The first thing to do would be to try using water pokemon to take it down. As long as your water pokemon can deal a minimum of 110 damage, M Charizard-EX's weakness to water will finish it off for you. Even better would be if you can bring out Suicune from Plasma Blast. While it won't be able to one hit KO Charizard, it's Safeguard ability will prevent it from taking any damage from Charizard at all. Alternatively you could try for moves that paralyse or put it to sleep, or even a combination of conditions that would keep it from attacking while sapping its strength. Or, if you only have one prize card left...

I'm sure more than a few people miss the old Pokemon Catcher and how it didn't require a coin flip to work. As I've mentioned before in a previous blog post, the makers decided to meet you half way with Lysandre. Lysandre functions as the original Pokemon Catcher does in that it switches out your opponent's active pokemon for one of your choice on their bench, and doesn't require a coin flip (also I don't want to talk about coin flips as those things hate me). So if you only have to take a single prize card and you're staring down a M Charizard-EX that's raring to go, why not do the minimum amount of work for the maximum pass? Switch out something weaker and give it a beating it won't forget!

The final card I'm going to talk about today is Trick Shovel. This handy item card will allow you to look at the top card on either player's deck, and then decide whether to return it to its original position or discard it. I'm sure that I don't have to go to any great lengths to tell you how useful that card is, given that you can potentially deny your opponent a good draw or avoid a dead draw yourself. The only question is which deck do you use it on when?

Well, that's all I really have to talk about as far as Flashfire went. Despite my terrible luck in opening boosters, flipping coins and drawing useful cards I really should have just stayed home in bed it was a fun day out with a good crowd of people. I'm feeling cautiously optimistic about the Primal Origin pre release for Yu-Gi-Oh! on this coming Saturday, but by that day I will have some money and fully plan on buying myself at least one booster box if Kev is selling them on the day. If you're after anything from the set scram you vultures you'd be welcome to ask me about it, but be aware that I'm looking pretty much only for things in the set itself and I'll have a list with me. There's a decently high chance that if you don't have anything on that list then you won't have anything I want, but as long as you leave me some space to breathe there won't be any issues.

I'd offer Don Thousand my soul for the cards I want, but chances are he'd probably give me several copies of Don Thousand's Throne and be done with it. I guess that's what you get if you want to deal with a god wielding the power of chaos.

The Pokemon Professor (maybe this is why Gary Oak quit being a trainer), Troy