Charizard dominates first day of TCG at Pokémon EUIC

To the surprise of no one.

Alternative art of Charizard ex with Darkness from Pokémon Scarlet & Violet Obsidian Flames
Image via The Pokémon Company

To the surprise of no one attending Pokémon European Championships today in London, April 5, Charizard ex has reigned supreme, with over 20 percent of attendees running a form of it at the tournament.

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Chien-Pao ex takes second place with 12 percent of the decks, while some cards from the recent Temporal Forces expansion set debut, with Iron Hands ex and Iron Crown ex Future decks making a solid 6 percent of the total crowd.

EUIC is the first event to use the new 2024 Pokémon TCG Standard Format, which eliminated many powerful cards like Battle VIP Pass and Mew Vmax, nearly enough to decimate the Lost Zone format that had dominated over the past year. With the new format, many players have chosen to play it safe with tried-and-true decks like Charizard.

After talking to a few people using the deck today at EUIC, it seems like many of the Charizard ex users weren’t in it to win it and were instead using something safe to try to secure as many Championship Points as possible to potentially lock in their slot at this year’s World Championship in August.

Of course, with day one out of the way and heading into day two, it’ll be interesting to see if that strategy worked well for anyone and how many Charizard ex decks we will see in the final few days. Will playing it safe pay off? Or will it be a big blunder that could cost players everything?

We’ll see on day two of the event, where TCG players will compete for a spot in the top eight.

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Adam Newell
Assigning Editor. In 2015, Adam graduated from the University of Aberystwyth with a bachelor's in Media and Communications. Working in the industry for over ten years. If it has anything to do with Nintendo and Pokémon chances are you will see me talking about it, covering, and likely not sleeping while playing it.