Best Charizard Pidgeot ex Pokémon Trading Card Game deck builds

Featuring one of the most iconic Pokémon starters of all time, the dynamic duo of Charizard and Pidgeot is an unstoppable force on the Pokémon TCG battlefield.

If you’re hoping to pick up a punchy decklist, we’ve got you covered. Here are the best Charizard ex and Pidgeot ex Pokémon Trading Card Game deck builds, including the standard card list and our own spin on the classic set-up.

Standard Charizard Pidgeot ex decklist

As with most popular Pokémon TCG decks, there’s a standard Charizard and Pidgeot ex deck available on Pokémon TCG Live for players to pick up for free. If you’re new to Charizard decks, it’s worth taking this list out for a spin once or twice.

Pokémon

The standard Charizard and Pidgeot deck list doesn’t feature too many individual Pokémon. Other than the Charmander and Pidgey lines, you only need to pick up Moltres, Radiant Charizard, and Manaphy to put this deck together.

It’s a simple but effective list. Cards like Manaphy offer bags of utility, protecting your benched ‘mons during battle, while Moltres and Radiant Charizard act as backup offensive Pokémon if you end up pulling them before Charizard is in position.

Charizard ex is, unsurprisingly, the star of the show here, so the general aim with the deck is to get it in position as fast as possible and start dealing huge chunks of damage. Pidgeot ex has the Quick Search ability, letting you pick up targeted cards easily once per turn.

Trainers

As is the case for most competitively viable Pokémon TCG decks right now, the vast majority of this standard list is made up of Trainers. There are 12 different card types to pick up here.

One of the strengths of a Charizard deck is that it can set up incredibly fast with the right tools, hence the hefty list of Supporters, Items, and Pokémon Tools.

Cards like Buddy-Buddy Poffin, Ultra Ball, and Nest Ball help you to grab Charmander and Pidgey quickly, while Technical Machine: Evolution and Rare Candy make evolving into Charizard ex and Pidgeot ex easy.

The addition of Boss’s Orders and Iono offers control over the opponent, letting you swap in weaker Pokemon for easy Knock Outs or disrupt a player who has just set up their hand. Charizard ex can be annoying to play against in theory, and these cards are a big part of that.

Energy

There are 10 Energy cards in this deck list. You can pick them up from any expansion set, so use whatever you have to hand for this.

It’s not an overly Energy-heavy deck list, mainly thanks to Charizard’s ability to move Energy around freely with its Infernal Reign ability. If the bulk of the Energy ends up discarded, it’s easy to scoop it back up into your deck with the Super Rod card.

How it works

The vast majority of Charizard Pokemon cards are powerful, but the Dark Tera-type Charizard ex from Obsidian Flames is on another level.

Infernal Rain allows for easy Energy movement, and Burning Darkness starts at 180 damage for two Energy, then scales.

The potential with Burning Darkness is huge, as it stacks an extra 30 damage each time your opponent takes a Prize Card, making it a game-changer if you can set it up properly and bait an initial Prize Card.

Charizard ex fills the role of the main attacker or damage output in this deck, while Pidgeot ex acts as the key to setting it up with its Quick Search ability. Being able to search for a card without any restrictions means you can, in theory, get Charizard ex active in a couple of turns or less.

The bulky Trainer list acts to support Charizard ex and deal as much damage as possible early on, while disrupting the opponent somewhat and threatening weaker Pokémon. It’s a fun and aggressive deck.

Best Charizard Pidgeot ex Pokemon TCG deck

The standard deck list for Charizard ex and Pidgeot ex plays well, but we’ve pulled together a revised deck list that performs more reliably and feels better to set up, too.

Pokémon

Charizard ex got a boost with the introduction of sets like Shrouded Fable, which is why so many SFA cards are in this list. Our Charizard-Pidgeot deck list has more variety in the Pokémon list, featuring both Sword & Shield and Scarlet & Violet cards.

Rotom V and Lumineon V act as draw engines and help to make setting up even easier, while Fezandipiti ex offers both draw power and a useful way to deal damage to benched ‘mons.

The Dusknoir line is the biggest addition here—with the ability Cursed Blast, this Pokémon can theoretically Knock Out another benched Pokémon without ever making it into the Active Spot.

Other than these additions, the Pokémon list is relatively the same. The quantities are different, relying heavily on Trainer cards, but both the Charmander and Pidgey lines are here. The exception is Pidgeotto, which is skipped with a Rare Candy.

Trainers

There are plenty of Trainer cards that you need to pick up if you want to run our variation of the Charizard ex and Pidgeot ex deck.

Cards like the Collapsed Stadium are in place to counter popular decks like Terapagos ex that rely heavily on having large benches.

The Unfair Stamp Ace Spec is here as a failsafe if you get into a tricky spot. Once Charizard ex is up and running, it’s hard to stop it, but if you do end up backed into a corner, pulling this card out and cutting your opponent’s deck can be incredibly effective.

The emphasis here is getting your hands on the necessary Pokémon to get Charizard ex in play, while leaving yourself room to retreat with tools like the Night Stretcher if needed. There’s lots of utility to enjoy here.

Energy

The amount of Energy in this deck is almost half of what’s in the standard Charizard-Pidgeot deck. With Infernal Reign and plenty of ways to recycle Energy if needed—or even Knock Out ‘mons without any Energy, like with Dusknoir—it’s not necessary to have too many Energy cards.

If you want to use the Psychic-type Energy attacks from the Duskull line, make sure to sub out a few Trainer cards and add some Psychic Energy in.

How it works

This is a much more versatile take on the standard Charizard ex and Pidgeot ex deck list, presenting multiple win conditions with the Dark Tera-type Charizard ex and Perish Song-esque Dusknoir.

The aim is still roughly the same, though—get the dragon in place as quickly as possible, use your Trainer cards to set yourself up for success and disrupt your opponents, and use the pigeon to get your hands on any extra cards when needed.

There aren’t too many decks that this Charizard ex list struggles with. In our testing, we found it was successful against most of the big Stellar Crown decks in rotation right now, like Terapagos ex, and it performed decently against other popular decks like most Ogerpon lists, too.

The only time where this list really struggles is against stall decks or Mimikyu lists. Decks that can slow down the speed of play and mitigate damage can be a nightmare for Charizard ex players, as this is the opposite of what makes this deck thrive.

If you enjoy fast-paced, heavy-hitting Pokémon TCG decks, make sure to try ours out. You can copy and paste the list directly into Pokémon TCG Live when building a deck to use our list.