Hello, Cut or Tap Readers! The World Championships is just a few days away as I am writing this, and to be honest, I have no clue what I should play. My testing this summer has been mostly dedicated to Dragapult Dusknoir, Grimmsnarl, Gardevoir, and Zoroark. Since all of these decks have been covered a ton on the platform, I figured I would go through some of my thoughts into Charizard, a deck that I think has a lot of potential, but I ultimately stopped testing a few weeks ago due to it feeling too fair. Interestingly, there has been a huge spike in Gholdengo’s popularity, and a drop in Grimmsnarl’s viability, making the deck much better positioned than I had anticipated. Gabriel Fernandez debuted the newest Charizard build at NAIC, with a heavy reliance on TM: Evo to set up under Budew, and a Munkidori and Max Belt package to do big damage quickly against threats like Dragapult or Grimmsnarl ex.
One of the key weaknesses I found with the deck immediately is that if Gardevoir could take two prizes early, they could often use Mew ex twice to copy Burning Darkness and close out the game, making the Gardy matchup poor. Luckily, Charizard has tech options for this matchup, and along with the Chi-Yu tech, boasts an incredibly strong Gholdengo matchup. Beyond this, the PultNoir and Grimmsnarl matchups can be a bit scary, however with extra consistency and principled play, both are fairly manageable.
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