Welcome to the Card of the Day! Today I’ll be taking a look at Typhlosion Prime, a card released in Heart Gold Soul Silver, and one of the first six Primes to be released in America. To start off, Tyhplosion is a Stage 2 Fire Pokémon, which means that there is huge potential to 1HKO a loaded Dialga G LV.X. Typhlosion has 140 HP and a x2 Water Weakness which means when you’re playing against anything but Gyarados you will have a bit of survivability. Finally, Typhlosion has a higher-than-you-want-but-still-not-terrible Retreat Cost of two energy.
pokegym.net“Afterburner” states that, once during your turn, you can attach a R Energy card in your discard pile to one of your Pokémon. If you do, place a damage counter on that Pokémon as well. First and foremost, when you’re using this Poké-Power against any type of SP deck, you’ll have to be wary of Power Spray. While the damage counter is disappointing (it’ll add up after continual use), bypassing the 1 Energy Attachment Per Turn rule is worth it (Blastoise-EX placed a damage counter on the Pokémon and ended up being one of the most played cards in the format).
The cards that “Afterburner” combos best with are Ninetales and Charizard. The idea is to use “Roast Reveal” to draw three cards, “Afterburner” to attach an additional Energy to Charizard so use “Burning Tail” each turn to hit for huge damage. This combo is the core of many Charizard decks that are played today.
Let’s see if Typlosion’s attack is up to par with its Poké-Power. “Flare Destroy”, for RRC, does 70 damage and discards an Energy attached to both Typhlosion and the Defending Pokémon. Obviously, the idea behind the design of this card was that you keep using “Flare Destroy” to get rid of your opponent’s Energy while using “Afterburner” to keep getting them back onto Typhlosion.
Unfortunately that is not a very good idea as you will only be hitting for only 70 damage each turn, but you’ll also be putting a damage counter on Typhlosion each turn if you use Afterburner. Even if your opponent can’t muster up a powerful attacker, eventually your HP will be low enough that a few low-damage hits will be enough for the KO.
pokegym.netThe other card that Tyhplosion can see some play with is with Ursaring Prime. Not only can Typhlosion allow you to attach more than one Energy a turn to power up Ursaring’s high-cost attacks, but the damage counter placed on Ursaring when doing so would activate “Berserk”, drastically increasing its damage output.
Overall, Typhlosion is a pretty good card, but its Retreat Cost could be a liability at times, especially against decks that play “draggers”. Fortunately, the Poké-Power can help alleviate this disadvantage. However, you’ll probably want to make sure you’re running Unown Q/Warp Energy to make sure you can Retreat Typhlosion easier.
Note: “Draggers” are Pokémon such as Luxray GL LV.X, Froslass GL, Blaziken FB, Regigigas Promo, etc. that can drag up your benched Pokémon to the active slot (Regice doesn’t qualify as you don’t get to pick which Pokémon is brought active).
My Recommendation: While it isn’t the next Uxie, it is certainly a powerful card that has found its niche in the format (Charizard decks!)
My Rating: 3.75/5
My first loss in the battle roads of this season was to a straight 2/2 split deck running both this guy and the non-prime also from HS. Also, the energy draining attack is slightly better now, with rescue energy in the format, getting rid of your opponent’s recovery options is always nice.
Yeah! Go typhlosion and charizard!
Typhlosion’s usefulness will definitely stay good for a while. I just wish his water counterpart would get a companion as good as charizard and ninetails. Blastoise had fossil articuno. Where’s our overpowered basic water types now?