Flareon ex · Prismatic Evolutions (PRE) #146

↓ 171.04
꩜ 225.26
↑ 1,595.10

Pokémon (Flareon) › Stage 1 : Evolves from Eevee · is: ex, Tera

{R}{C} → Burning Charge : 130
Search your deck for up to 2 Basic Energy cards and attach them to 1 of your Pokémon. Then, shuffle your deck.

{R}{W}{L} → Carnelian : 280
During your next turn, this Pokémon can’t attack.

weak: {W}×2 | resist: n/a | retreat: 2

· Pokémon ex rule: When your Pokémon ex is Knocked Out, your opponent takes 2 Prize cards.

· Tera Pokémon ex rule: As long as this Pokémon is on your Bench, prevent all damage done to this Pokémon by attacks (both yours and your opponent’s).

illus. Nurikabe

Scarlet & Violet › Prismatic Evolutions (PRE, sv8-5) › #146/131 : Special Illustration Rare · ↘ Jan 17, 2025

Mark: H · Formats: Standard: F–on, G–on, H–on · Expanded: Current

External: Pokemon.com ↗, Bulba ↗ · #ad / Affiliate Links: TCGplayer ↗, cardmarket ↗, Amazon ↗, eBay ↗

SquidSystem

(1 year ago)

You know, listen, hear me out, and this is going to be a comically long post, so i’m sorry in advance:
this card is kind of just the upcoming Mega Lucario ex, but arguably better?

-Eevee PRE essentially fulfills the same role as Salvatore in the Mega Lucario deck, allowing a turn 1 attack; while Lucario can technically attack for 1 energy, Flareon being a Tera Pokémon/evolving from a colorless Pokémon means that it can use several different ways to cheat out the second attack, (i.e. Glass Trumpet, Sparkling Crystal, Crispin), while Lucario would only have 1 route to get to the turn 1 attack, only with Salvatore.
-Aura Jab is less helpful acceleration than Burning Charge. In order to accelerate Energy with Lucario, you need to get Fighting Energy into the discard pile, 3 if you want to use the full effect of Aura Jab. Meanwhile, Flareon accelerates directly from the deck, and can accelerate any type of energy with no setup beyond getting the attack up. Also, Flareon can power up anything, but Lucario can only power things up that use Fighting Energy, and I doubt there would be something worth powering up more than just another Lucario, which makes it feel pretty linear.

-A point I do have to concede to Lucario is that its damage output does scale up higher (theoretically) than Flareon. The Fighting Electropower it’s releasing with gives it a “easy” way of scaling both of its attacks into taking quick, easy knockouts on ex Pokémon early, and being able to use them to scale up an attack to KO beyond its pay grade, even theoretically up to blasting other Megas away…but I don’t know how consistent that would be, realistically. Keep in mind, if you want Lucario to be swinging turn 1, you have to play Salvatore, and ideally, you would also be trying to get Fighting Energy into your discard that turn too. Given all that, it seems pretty hard to actually get enough power boosts to swing that hard that fast. And if you’re waiting until turn 2, I feel like the benefit of Lucario kind of disappears, you can be just as aggressive or turbo with any other card. Flareon doesn’t even have the option to reach as high as Lucario, which, you know, does suck, but it does lead into honestly, the biggest thing:

-Flareon does most of what Lucario can do as a 2 prizer. Lucario has to risk giving up half the game if it gets knocked out, and when you consider that, it becomes a lot less exciting to consider how hard it can hit when you have to reach up to kill things that can uptrade against you, like Dragapult ex or Charizard ex, and ignoring the fact you can easily get 1 shot via weakness with Lillie’s Clefairy ex or Mew ex, which really makes it seem less and less worth it.

I know this was a really long discussion about something kind of nothing, but I’ve been thinking about this a lot, and I think there’s a pretty big challenge facing the new Mega mechanic–if you can play a deck that doesn’t need to use 3 prize Pokémon, why would you play one? If you can get roughly same value from something less risky, why would you choose the thing that gives up the most potential losses over the less risky option? Obviously, I do expect we’ll see a lot stronger megas over time, and they might justify themselves a lot more than Lucario and Gardevoir do right now, but as of right now, I actually think the Megas might be of relatively lower value than a lot of players i’ve seen claim they will.

4 comments

SquidSystem

(1 year ago)

You know, listen, hear me out, and this is going to be a comically long post, so i’m sorry in advance:
this card is kind of just the upcoming Mega Lucario ex, but arguably better?

-Eevee PRE essentially fulfills the same role as Salvatore in the Mega Lucario deck, allowing a turn 1 attack; while Lucario can technically attack for 1 energy, Flareon being a Tera Pokémon/evolving from a colorless Pokémon means that it can use several different ways to cheat out the second attack, (i.e. Glass Trumpet, Sparkling Crystal, Crispin), while Lucario would only have 1 route to get to the turn 1 attack, only with Salvatore.
-Aura Jab is less helpful acceleration than Burning Charge. In order to accelerate Energy with Lucario, you need to get Fighting Energy into the discard pile, 3 if you want to use the full effect of Aura Jab. Meanwhile, Flareon accelerates directly from the deck, and can accelerate any type of energy with no setup beyond getting the attack up. Also, Flareon can power up anything, but Lucario can only power things up that use Fighting Energy, and I doubt there would be something worth powering up more than just another Lucario, which makes it feel pretty linear.

-A point I do have to concede to Lucario is that its damage output does scale up higher (theoretically) than Flareon. The Fighting Electropower it’s releasing with gives it a “easy” way of scaling both of its attacks into taking quick, easy knockouts on ex Pokémon early, and being able to use them to scale up an attack to KO beyond its pay grade, even theoretically up to blasting other Megas away…but I don’t know how consistent that would be, realistically. Keep in mind, if you want Lucario to be swinging turn 1, you have to play Salvatore, and ideally, you would also be trying to get Fighting Energy into your discard that turn too. Given all that, it seems pretty hard to actually get enough power boosts to swing that hard that fast. And if you’re waiting until turn 2, I feel like the benefit of Lucario kind of disappears, you can be just as aggressive or turbo with any other card. Flareon doesn’t even have the option to reach as high as Lucario, which, you know, does suck, but it does lead into honestly, the biggest thing:

-Flareon does most of what Lucario can do as a 2 prizer. Lucario has to risk giving up half the game if it gets knocked out, and when you consider that, it becomes a lot less exciting to consider how hard it can hit when you have to reach up to kill things that can uptrade against you, like Dragapult ex or Charizard ex, and ignoring the fact you can easily get 1 shot via weakness with Lillie’s Clefairy ex or Mew ex, which really makes it seem less and less worth it.

I know this was a really long discussion about something kind of nothing, but I’ve been thinking about this a lot, and I think there’s a pretty big challenge facing the new Mega mechanic–if you can play a deck that doesn’t need to use 3 prize Pokémon, why would you play one? If you can get roughly same value from something less risky, why would you choose the thing that gives up the most potential losses over the less risky option? Obviously, I do expect we’ll see a lot stronger megas over time, and they might justify themselves a lot more than Lucario and Gardevoir do right now, but as of right now, I actually think the Megas might be of relatively lower value than a lot of players i’ve seen claim they will.

burma

(1 year ago)

It makes me so happy that Flareon finally has a good card

- Grayburma
  
  (1 year ago)
  
  Id argue flareon is the best eevee evolution in the tcg. Plasma flareon, flareon AOR, flareon ex UF, flareon SKR. Even flareon GX had some niche expanded use cases.
  
  - CharmasterGray
    
    (12 months ago)
    
    There were a few other Flareon with niche potential. Jason featured https://pkmncards.com/card/flareon-jungle-ju-3/ in a Rocket-Legendary Collection Eeveelutions box to deal with https://pkmncards.com/card/steelix-neo-genesis-n1-15/ (Though I imagine it’s one of the lower tier decks he made for the format) (https://jklaczpokemon.com/rocket-lc-decks/#eeveelutions); https://pkmncards.com/card/dark-flareon-team-rocket-ro-35/ has been used in a funny turn 1 donk in the Japanese Hall of Fame format (I’ll write about it under that card at some point), https://pkmncards.com/card/flareon-delta-species-ds-5/ was paired with https://pkmncards.com/card/delcatty-power-keepers-pk-8/ and a variety of ex’s to place top 8 in Florida Regionals in 2007 (https://retro-library.com/2007-decks/); and I’m pretty sure I’ve seen a https://pkmncards.com/card/flareon-ex-generations-gen-rc6/ teched into a https://pkmncards.com/card/garbodor-guardians-rising-gri-51/ deck in PRC-GRI (Or perhaps BLW-BUS?) as a counter to https://pkmncards.com/card/decidueye-gx-sun-moon-sum-12/ .
    
    These are all more niche than the Flareon you mentioned, but I just wanted to be comprehensive.

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