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Pokemon TCG fans didn’t have to wait very long for Charizard to take center stage in the new Mega Evolution era. The new Phantasmal Flames expansion adds Mega Charizard X and several other powerful cards to the game in a small but powerful expansion. While the first Mega Evolutions set didn’t have many cards that could serve as the centerpieces of metagame-viable decks, Phantasmal Flames contains several cards that should have a major impact on one of the best card games in the coming years.
Phantasmal Flames is one of the smallest sets released for the Pokemon TCG in recent years. With only 90 standard cards (and about 40 alternate art cards), the set is the smallest since 2017’s Sun & Moon – Crimson Invasion. However, the set also keeps a standard started in the XY era, namely that Charizard has starred as the featured Pokemon in the second expansion of a new set. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the new Charizard card in this set – Mega Charizard X ex – is one of the strongest cards in the game and will likely start popping up in tournaments almost immediately.
Dark horse
One interesting wrinkle with this set is that it contains the building blocks for several new decks. Players can utilize the potent combo of Mega Charizard X ex – a potent attacker that can deal 90 damage per discarded Fire Energy attached to any of a player’s Pokemon – with the energy accelerator Oricorio ex. Oricorio ex’s Excited Turbo allows a player to attach as many Fire Energy cards to Benched Pokemon as they’d like, provided that a Fire-type Mega Evolution Pokemon is also on a player’s side. Mega Charizard X ex and Oricorio ex were made to work together, and they can easily be swapped into the already meta-relevant Charizard ex deck from Scarlet & Violet.
Another potent combo in the new set is Mega Sharpedo ex and Toxtricity. Mega Sharpedo ex is a straightforward card that deals 270 damage to opponents provided that it has damage counters on it. Meanwhile, Toxtricity has an ability that accelerates Darkness Energy onto a Pokemon, albeit at the cost of putting two damage counters on the Pokemon that had energy placed on it. This works to Mega Sharpedo ex’s advantage, as a player can quickly get the Pokemon prepped and ready for damage.
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Considering that the Pokemon TCG metagame has been dominated by a relatively static group of decks that have evolved with subsequent set releases, I like that there’s so many potent deck combos in Phantasmal Flames. While both of the aforementioned decks require cards from older sets to work, the core mechanic of both decks (and potentially several others) can be found solely in Phantasmal Flames.
My personal dark horse favorite card in Phantasmal Flames is Mega Gengar ex. Mega Gengar ex isn’t as potent of a Darkness-type attacker as Mega Sharpedo ex, but its Shadowy Concealment ability reduces the number of prizes an opponent takes when they knock out a Pokemon using a Pokemon ex card. Given how much the “prize trade” comes into effect in the Pokemon TCG, a card that reduces prize-taking can be an absolute bear to deal with. It may take some setup, but I think Mega Gengar ex could be a tournament-winning card with just a bit of ingenuity.
Looking to the future
Of course, for casual fans, the real draw of Phantasmal Flames is the fact that this set contains four different Charizard ex cards. With a full art card, an amazing Special Illustration Rare card, and a Gold Mega Ultra Rare card, there’s multiple opportunities to snag a perennial chase card. The pull rates for this set are equivalent to the previous Mega Evolution set, which is a good thing for collectors.
Because this set is smaller than most, the chase cards in this set are really limited to Mega Charizard X ex and a couple of other cards. The two rarest Mega Charizard X ex cards are going for the most money on the secondary market, selling for hundreds of dollars apiece. The other cards in the set are relatively affordable when it comes to chase cards, with only one card (Dawn, a popular protagonist from the Diamond and Pearl era) selling for more than $50. While resellers will make finding Phantasmal Flames product hard to come by, those looking on the secondary market should have some luck.
All in all, Phantasmal Flames is a solid second set for the Pokemon TCG’s Mega Evolution era. It introduces several potent new decks, brings some new chase cards, and sets up a lot of options for the future. For what’s one of the smallest sets of all time, Phantasmal Flames definitely packs an oversized punch, which is great considering it’s the last Pokemon TCG set of 2025.
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