- ↓ 133.55
- ꩜ 299.99
- ↑ 1,212.98
{C} → Eerie Howl
If your opponent’s Bench isn’t full, look at his or her hand. If your opponent has any Baby Pokémon or Basic Pokémon there, choose 1 of them and put it on his or her Bench. Then, switch it with the Defending Pokémon.
{R}{C} → Dark Fire : 30+
If there are any {D} Energy cards attached to Dark Houndoom, discard 1 of them and this attack does 30 damage plus 20 more damage (plus 10 more damage for the {D} Energy you discarded). If there aren’t any, this attack does 30 damage.
illus. Kagemaru Himeno · LV.32
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The flame it breathes is actually a volatile poison it produces internally that ignites when exposed to air.


Kristóf Muzsik
Would this deal 60 damage using a basic Darkness Energy due to the card’s wording?
reshikrom64
I’m guessing they only took Special Darkness energies into account here, so I’m guessing probably not.
Psykicked
I know this is old, but yes, since basic Darkness Energy has the same symbol as the old Special Dark, it would do 60 damage as opposed to 50.
Otaku
Psykicked, don’t be so certain. Go look up some official rulings from the older versions of the Rulings Compendium at http://compendium.pokegym.net/ to see how things were ruled in the past. Some have since been overturned but seeing those led me to look up the original Japanese version of this Dark Houndoom. I do NOT read Japanese, but there’s no “+10” in there. Put it all together, and I think WotC added “reminder” text for how the cards worked but did a poor job of it. The +10 for the Energy being discarded was because you were supposed to still get any bonus provided from the Special Energy version of the Darkness Energy card. Which is why past rulings clarified something like Rainbow Energy does NOT grant +10 BUT something like R Energy (which added +20) provides +20.
Ambassador
As Otaku has mentioned, there is no “+10” on the original card, but for reference here is the original text; 自分に「悪」エネルギーカードがついていれば、それを1枚トラッシュし、20ダメージを追加する。(自分に「悪」エネルギーカードがついていないとき、この効果はなくなる。)
For the Japanese print, the attack is doing 30+20 and the additional +10 is understood from the effect of Darkness Energy. The bracketed text is saying if there is no Darkness Energy attack, then the attack loses the additional effect and just does 30 damage.
Picking up on something, it’s really bizarre that WOTC decided to call things like this “reminder text” and frankly *unfortunate* that TPCi picked up that same language and apparently keeps running with it¹. It almost never is a reminder so much as clarifying some rule or mechanic that hadn’t previously been elucidated upon before – in which case, calling it “reminder text” comes across as passive-aggressive.
¹ A recent example would be the new Rule Box text – i.e. “Pokémon V, Pokémon-GX, etc. have Rule Boxes.” As it was a newly introduced rule/convention, it was not coherent to call it a ‘reminder’, and when doing so it comes across as being even more dickish than the vibes of a “per my last e-mail”-style message.
Blob Takeshi
First Fire Type Houndoom card!
Warnock 2022
“Eerie Howl” is such a cool move. It’s like Mawile-GX’s ability or the Poke-Puff item.
Charmaster
I loved how the early Houndoom cards encouraged you to run both Fire and Darkness Energy. You could even combine Houndoom of multiple types! Which is exactly what a certain Houndoom deck did in Neo-Skyridge, running three copies of Dark Houndoom and a copy of Houndoom from Neo Revelation. The deck also ran Rainbow Energy, Lightning Energy and a couple of Electabuzz, making it feel like a veritable toolbox. Even the Houndour selection was colorful, with three different versions included and both types represented!
https://ptcgarchive.com/wotc-decks/neo-skyridge/#houndoom-muk-electabuzz
Charmaster
https://play.limitlesstcg.com/tournament/688a352c8c0cf80c508d1c28/player/charmaster/decklist
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RkPjUgRx4dE Okay, so I’ve actually played a Dark Houndoom deck now… and I wasn’t terribly impressed. The format was a house variant of Hall of Fame, an official Japanese Base-Neo variant that limits broken cards by assigning them a point value (See the points list we used here: https://krillmeat.club/pkmn-card-manager/guides/point-list ), and while this format feels much tamer than unmodified Base-Neo, Rocket-Legendary Collection or Neo-Skyridge (With a lower power level, heavy restrictions on https://pkmncards.com/card/cleffa-neo-genesis-n1-20/ and a scarcity of energy denial, hand disruption and https://pkmncards.com/card/focus-band-neo-genesis-n1-86/ cheese, doing about 60 damage a turn just wasn’t enough once games were well under way.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RkPjUgRx4dE You can see me lose awkwardly on camera here. This was my first time playing against a Sneasel deck in Hall of Fame due to how heavily pointed it is (Justifiably so), but despite not being a top threat in Japanese Hall of Fame scenes (A bunch of shops play there play regularly and have their own house rules, which was what inspired our community), it definitely still seems to be playable.
(Also, both of us used https://pkmncards.com/card/porygon2-neo-revelation-n3-12/ instead of Rainbow Energy. Lol.)