Neo Destiny Review - Fire

The Fire-types of Neo Destiny continue to experiment with the typical discard gimmick of the Fire-type. This set combines discarding non-fire Energy Cards, different iterations on coin flips, and even tests the waters for discarding energy from all over the bench instead of just the active.

It's actually pretty impressive how many ways they found to combine "do damage" and "discard energy" to create new and interesting effects. It seems like such a limited design space on the surface, but they were clearly determined to get a lot of mileage out of it.

Shining Charizard isn't usable. For 5 energy of 2 different types, you get an attack that has both a discard cost and potential recoil damage. It was the only Basic Charizard at the time, if that matters to you.

But keep in mind that the biggest selling point of Base Charizard was that you could focus the deck around Charmeleon and only pull out Charizard when it was time to one-shot something. This is just a bad card.

Grade: 3/10

Vulpix has almost every quality of Base Charmander, but it can't attack on the first turn. This means it's stuck relying on Ember, which has a discard cost. You never, ever want to be locked into this card.

It's arguably the worst Vulpix card in franchise history, although doing 30 damage on turn 2 is at least worth something. While 50 HP is respectable for a Basic, there are just better options.

Grade: 3/10

Light Ninetales can search your deck for any Basic or Baby, but you could also just use Pokémon Trader. Hell, I'd rather flip a coin on Poké Ball than build up a lackluster Stage 1. Its other attack is ultimately just a renamed Flamethrower in terms of damage output and effect.

Also, does anyone else find it strange that we've never had a Dark Ninetales? Literally based on a demon fox. But no Dark version. Weird.

Grade: 3/10

This Growlithe can technically do 20 damage on turn 1, if you can draw Double Colorless Energy. That's perfectly respectable. It would've been nice to have an alternate attack costing just one Basic Energy, but this is a lot more consistent than Base Growlithe.

Sadly, the best Arcanine in any Neo format is going to be Blaine's Arcanine, helped along by how great Blaine's Growlithe is. So this guy doesn't see much play.

Grade: 4/10

Light Arcanine is a mediocre card pretending to be a great card. If you only read Drive Off while squinting, you might think you're getting a Gust effect. Nope, it's just a Whirlwind effect. And since Light Arcanine can only do it from the active spot, it locks you into an unreliable attacker.

The biggest issue is that it can only stand toe-to-toe against evolved Pokémon. If the opponent is a Baby or Basic, the awkward downside of Gentle Flames will screw you over.

Grade: 6/10

Light Flareon is a solid but inconsistent attacker. Burning Flames averages out to functioning like Flamethrower (50 damage and 1 discard), but the exact effect is always an unknown due to how it functions.

Warm Up is uniquely suited to this card though, in that it lets you accelerate your bench if you get an unlucky roll with your discard costs. This is actually a pretty respectable card, especially among the Light Pokémon cards.

Grade: 7/10

Cyndaquil is a good example of a card that's just here to do its job as a Basic. It spams Smokescreen to hopefully survive long enough to become a Quilava or Typhlosion. That's all it needed to do.

For this reason alone, it's actually pretty solid. I'll never praise 40 HP, but being a defensive Basic that evolves into a meta-relevant threat will always be just barely good enough.

Grade: 5/10

Dark Quilava wants to do massive damage with Rushing Magma, but you'd have to overload your deck with Fire Energy cards in order to get the most out of it. It is possible to spam Nightly Garbage Run after deep drawing through your deck, in order to raise the consistency, but that's some risky setup.

Still, I can't ignore the potential to do up to 100 damage on turn 2. This card definitely has potential.

Grade: 7/10

Dark Typhlosion can potentially do massive damage with enough luck and energy, but it has several issues. Obviously, 80 HP is low for a Stage 2. The crazy discard cost makes it hard to reuse the attack consistently. And your Cyndaquil would rather become the Typhlosion from Neo Genesis, since it was one of the most dominant cards of the era.

On top of all of that, Dark Quilava was likely to do more damage, just by virtue of how much easier it is to set it up.

Grade: 4/10

Slugma feels awkward to play with. High energy cost and high retreat cost make it difficult to actually get anything done. By the time this little guy is fully charged, most other Basics would have already dealt damage or inflicted a status ailment of some kind.

It would be better to stick to the one from Neo Revelation in almost every conceivable situation. But at least this card does decent damage if it does get charged up.

Grade: 2/10

Dark Magcargo is pretty underwhelming as an attacker and its power is symmetrical, making it awkward to play around. You could maybe make a case for it in some janky build, but keep in mind that your opponent will have already played most of their Basics and Babies by the time you get an Evolution in play.

It's this last issue that's the most baffling. This effect would be crazy good on a Stadium, but on a Stage 1? Meh.

Grade: 5/10

Dark Houndoom is (ironically) the only non-Darkness-type Houndoom in the Base-Neo format. It can do up to 60 damage on turn 2, which is by far the biggest selling point of the card.

But naturally your opponent is likely to have a Baby in play on turn 2, so that undercuts the value a bit. It will also be running on fumes in the late-game, since it's discarding Special Energy cards to attack, which you have a limited supply of.

Grade: 6/10

While the Fire-types of Neo Destiny did very little in the competitive scene, they did push the design of Fire-types forward a little. We're starting to see more takes on the energy-cycling playstyle bit by bit, and some of the effects here would get touched on again in later generations.

Honestly, the biggest issue is that the type already had extremely compelling cards for almost every Fire-type species at this point. There wasn't much wiggle room for potential upgrades.