- ↓ 50.00
- ꩜ 86.93
- ↑ 250.00
{C} → Tail Smash : 40
Flip a coin. If tails, this attack does nothing.
{R}{R}{C} → Flamethrower : 60
Discard 1 {R} Energy card attached to Charizard.
illus. Atsuko Nishida
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MarxForever
Make it a Basic, take about 20 damage off of each attack, hastily throw on a Gold and Silver concept sketch, and you have yourself a Vs card.
DMNBT
Hey, that’s not fair!….Some of the illustrations were quite good (like Karen’s Pokemon ones)! As for everything else….uh…well…
MarxForever
Well, Like I told Feyblade, I didn’t mean the artwork itself. :)
I did think it was interesting the way they assigned each Gym Leader/Member of the Elite four their own artist, and some of them were quite good. Like Pryce’s and Karen’s (the Umbreon in particular). Even Lance’s “Where The Wild Things Are” style wasn’t completely without it’s charm. And Burno had Yuka Morii’s sculptures, which I’ve always had a special fundness for. The problem was if you didn’t care for a particular artist’s work, then that Leader’s entire roster were all kind of “meh” visually…
Probably would’ve been better if they had just let everyone do a little bit of everything, per usual.
feyblade
VS.’s art quality was really mixed, ranging from the mundane to the bizarre to the outright disturbing, in the case of everything Kimiya Masago touched. http://cdn.bulbagarden.net/upload/8/89/BlaineMagcargoVS71.jpg
DMNBT
Blaine’s Typhlosion art wasn’t that bad, but yeah, what the hell is going on with Magcargo? It looks either like it’s being roasted alive, or it wants to devour your soul…
HEZ
Hey Adam, can we get the VS sets on here sometime please? Kimiya Masago is amazing, I with they’d hired him more. Check out his Houndoom from Skyridge or Mewtwo from Expedition, bloody terrifying:
https://pkmncards.com/wp-content/uploads/mewtwo-expedition-ex-56-312×429.jpg
Adam Capriola
Maybe. I’m trying to limit things to English cards to keep organization easier on myself. I don’t want to end up uploading every non-English Japanese set.
Btw here’s a search for Kimiya Masago: https://pkmncards.com/?s=a%3Akimiya-masago&display=scan&sort=date
MarxForever
He’s like the South Park of TCG artists, either his stuff is amazing or just awful. There is no middle ground.
MarxForever
Heh, I just traded one of these away not too long ago.
Sure Masago has a very detailed, dynamic coloring style, but what is with his poses?
They’re only two things this Mewtwo could possibly being thinking at this moment.
1. HUUUGABOOGABOOGA!!!
2. It is time, my children, that I must die for your sins.
MarxForever
Oh, when I said hastily “thrown on concept sketch” I mostly referring to the card design itself.
In the original Gym sets, they had high qaulity original art for the leaders and even set them to cgi renderings of their badges. Vs was content with that coin thing.
The artwork of the Charizard itself is alright. Nothing great, but the tcg as given us far worse.
Blob Takeshi
https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/b70c56014d54ae96600ca02c2ce1c3b47c6729a66d0444672efb0aaaea444c26.jpg
You mean this?
MarxForever
Me and my friends affectionately refer to this one as “Where the Wild Things Are” Charizard.
Blob Takeshi
https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/b70c56014d54ae96600ca02c2ce1c3b47c6729a66d0444672efb0aaaea444c26.jpg
Blob Takeshi
Is it sniffing rocks?
Mister Wu
Not many people knew that at the time, but this is drawn by the designer of Charizard herself – it’s Atsuko Nishida who designed Charizard (and well, the rest of its evolutionary family too)!
Surprisingly, this is so far the only known drawing of Charizard from her for the TCG.
Nosredna
So I was reading on Pojo about this ‘Zard and the other one from Expedition. It seems like this one was considered the good one out of the two, and I know they were going off of the jank format WotC had going on with babies, ER, and all that other stuff. But If we were going by a hypothetical format with only E Series cards, the other one would be superior, right?
Otaku
Nope. Context is key. Neither Charizard was “good”. I actually ran the above (Tail Smash) version and thought it was, but I’m not exactly a good player now, let alone back then. What do you think that Charizard (Expdition 6/165, 40/165) has going for it that Charizard (Expedition 39/165) didn’t?
Maybe I’m missing something, especially as we’re talking about a hypothetical “E-series only” Format that never actually existed. I started to run through the ways in which the ‘Zards are equal or #39 is a little better… but that might help more than hurt until I know your reasoning. So let me know. :)
Nosredna
Well I thought in a hypothetical format where only E-series cards were allowed, you might be able to run Charizard (EX 6) with Venusaur from Expedition to help fuel its attack. But thinking about it now, it might be a little clunky. And while the other Charizard would be sure to get a lot more OHKOs than this one, it would also be a lot less consistent. While this Charizard would be getting 2HKOs instead. So maybe this one is the better of the two. And yeah, it is pretty hard to theorize about this in a format that doesn’t actually exist.
Otaku
That isn’t a bad idea, but remember Charizard #40’s attack. Scorching Wind discards all Energy attached to the attacking Charizard if you flip double-tails, and two Energy cards if you flip just one tails. While the E-card sets don’t have Energy Removal, they do have Energy Removal 2. Energy Removal 2 is just the OG Crushing Hammer!
In other words, you’re trying to ready three Stage 2 Pokémon ASAP. It has been a while since I used these cards, but I don’t recall a good Evolution shortcut among these cards. I really could have missed something, especially if it was a so-so Poké-Power or attack effect. ;) You can’t use Pokémon Breeder, though, as it wasn’t printed as part of these sets. It was around at the time, but because it had been reprinted in the Legendary Collection (not an E-series release).
Also, if your Poké-Powers go down, the whole combo falls apart. I’m not saying it couldn’t work, because I certainly never tested it, but you’re probably talking about a “big combo” deck. You know, the kind that are basically all about their setup. Plus, if it is just about being better than Charizard #39… maybe it still would be? Though Venusaur works for that Charizard as well. Plus almost all other Pokémon, really.
JP
fwiw Jason Klaczynski keeps an old-format blog and has covered E-reader only. One of his top decks for the format is… Charizard EX 6/40 and Venusaur EX! He uses Clefable EX, Porygon2 AQ, and Lapras SK as support Pokemon. In general it seems like that format is just a lot slower than anything that came before or after it…
Nosredna
I can’t believe I missed that, I’m an avid fan of his blog. PTCGRadio did a video on Expedition and brought up that combo and that’s what I was thinking of. I suppose Klaczynski knows what he’s doing, but I wonder if he has anything to say about the two Zards.