Vending Set Review - Fire

Credit for the English-translated images goes to tcgone.net.

There are only a mere seven fire-type cards in the Vending series, compared to over 20 grass-types. The ones that are here mostly continue the tradition of fire-types requiring discards, though the type does add a few neat little tricks to its arsenal.

You'll notice that many evolution lines have one or two random members featured in this series instead of the whole line. That was a consequence of how the vending series was designed, since the idea was that these were 'mons you were finding along your journey through Kanto. (Represented by special sheets representing different areas in the games.)

Vending Charmander is a decent card and I'm upset that we didn't get it. It doesn't have the same Gather Fire ability as Rocket Charmander, but this card's Flame Tail attack is essentially a flat upgrade over Base Charmander's Ember.

All of the first three Charmander cards were solid, and it's genuinely a little hard to pick just one as the best. I guess you should just pick your favorite art?

Grade: 6/10

Vending Vulpix sadly maintains the biggest issue I had with Base Vulpix. As a basic, you pretty much need to be able to attack on the first turn to be a solid card. Foxfire's Gust effect is cute, but on your second turn you should be making big chunks of progress with your attacks, and this doesn't quite get there.

It's not irredeemable, since it at least has 50 HP, but it's definitely subpar when compared to the best basics of the era.

Grade: 3/10

Vending Growlithe can technically do something on the first turn, if you have a Double Colorless Energy. And, to be fair, that something is incredibly powerful. Being able to search your deck for any Trainer Card would be completely broken if it weren't for the coin flip.

The flip does kind of kill the mood, though, and it has lower HP than Base Growlithe. If you like running DCE in your Arcanine deck, then I guess you can run it by preference.

Grade: 4/10

Vending Ponyta is solid. While it only has 40 HP, it does have free retreat to make up for it nicely. It can technically still be splashed into any deck, thanks to the colorless Smash Kick, but if you want to do 20 damage you do need to have a fire energy and risk a discard.

I think it's better than Base Ponyta in a vacuum, but Base Ponyta is probably better in the donk decks that use it, just because they don't want to run fire energy if they can avoid it.

Grade: 5/10

Vending Rapidash is cute, but is probably worse than Jungle Rapidash if we're being honest. Flame Inferno is a very versatile attack though, functionally able to operate at three different power levels depending on how much energy you're willing to burn through. But even at it's strongest, this attack is a worse Flamethrower due to the discards.

Kick Away also isn't that compelling in a format where you can already run up to four copies of Gust of Wind.

Grade: 4/10

Vending Magmar isn't as embarrassing as Base Magmar, and there might actually be a use-case for one copy in dedicated fire decks. Take note that Burning Fire can grab its discards from any fire 'mon you have in play.

You could use this in the late game to do some really solid damage...once or twice. Magma Punch, meanwhile, is just a solid 40 damage. This card hates Energy Removal a little too much to be a serious metagame threat, though.

Grade: 6/10

Vending Moltres is an interesting concept. Dry Up allows Moltres to clear out water energies in order to support its fellow fire-types defensively, while also not being weak to water itself. It also has a low enough retreat cost that you could just swap out when you're done.

But you're not always guaranteed to be up against a water deck. Fire Wing is inefficient for the cost, and extremely vulnerable to Removal.

Grade: 3/10

The fire cards aren't exactly cohesive, but there is a notion forming that the vending series wanted to empower mono-decks a little bit. Between Magmar, Moltres, and the Metapod covered in my previous post, it really does seem like there was supposed to be a gentle push toward more dedicated strategies.

Sadly, I don't think any of the fire-type cards would have made a huge splash if they'd been available to us, but it would have been nice to have more options either way.