“Ruler of the Black Flame” to Feature Dark-Type Charizard, Plus Upcoming Release Dates!

By: Water Pokémon Master · Posted Posted onMar 8, 2023 at 9:17 AM · 33 Comments

The Japanese set Ruler of the Black Flame will star a Darkness-type Charizard! This should be the first Tera ex card of a different type. The information was revealed by the set’s official sell sheet, which can’t be shared publicly.

The set will release on July 28th. It will see the release of card sleeves and a deck box featuring Dark-type Charizard. It will also see the release of a “Ruler of the Black Flame Deck Build Box” featuring a 60-card deck, coin, damage counters, markers, and a 1-card promo pack.

Charizard can’t be natively found in Pokemon Scarlet and Violet, but it appeared at black Tera Raid crystals in December. Its Tera Type was Dragon. (Hence having to use a screenshot of it with the Dragon-type hat. :x)

As stated over the last few months, the first sets of a block usually start “simple” in terms of power and mechanics. This is because the appeal is the new Pokemon. After their cards are introduced, the sets start to spice up the mechanics to keep fans interested. So we eventually expected to see Tera cards of different types. So far, the three Tera Pokemon introduced to the TCG just use their normal types and aren’t particularly powerful.

We’ve also learned the release dates for several upcoming sets.

We previously discovered trademarks for Snow Hazard and Clay Burst, which we think may feature Chien-Pao and Ting-Lu. They are confirmed to release on April 14th.

Raging Surf will release on May 19th. It could feature either Tatsugiri and Dondozo or Gholdengo.

Pokemon Card 151 is confirmed to release on June 16th. It’s expected to feature the first 151 Pokemon, including Kadabra.

New “ex Starter Decks” will release on July 7th featuring eight different Pokemon ex, such as Clefable ex and Victini ex.

Ruler of the Black Flame releases on July 28th. It could also feature Chi-Yu.

Ancient Roar and Future Flash don’t have release dates yet, but should release around August or September. They’re expected to feature Paradox Pokemon.

Shiny Treasure will likely be the annual “High Class Pack Set” that usually releases in November or December. It should feature shiny Pokemon.

View thread (33 replies)
Personally I don't think the logic behind avoiding introducing new types into terrastals holds up; new players will be joining the tcg all the time, and older tcg players will either already be aware of the new mechanic in the game or simply won't care about seeing new types on Pokemon (actually, they'd be quite excited).

If the worry is that introducing new Pokemon with different types than they normally should have would be confusing, then they could just stick with older Pokemon for the first few sets, which they did anyway.

I genuinely think it's MORE confusing to see a fire Arcanine and then a dark Charizard. They should've made terrastals always a different type from the get-go.
 
These are cool and all, but not as good as they are in the game. In the game, you can just switch your pokemon to an entirely different type mid-battle, but in the TCG you just have a dark-type Charizard, so unless they allow you to change to dark-type mid-game, these will probably just be cool but not especially good.
 
They really messed up terra pokemon in the tcg, huh. Like it could've been something like you could attach a Terra item card or something once per game to change your pokemon's type or something like that, but no, they essentially did delta species pokemon but worse. It really sucks since I think being able to change type like that would be really healthy for the tcg, it was loved by the vgc community, and it would make games so much more interesting and less predictable
 
Louiepikmin3 said:
They really messed up terra pokemon in the tcg, huh. Like it could've been something like you could attach a Terra item card or something once per game to change your pokemon's type or something like that, but no, they essentially did delta species pokemon but worse. It really sucks since I think being able to change type like that would be really healthy for the tcg, it was loved by the vgc community, and it would make games so much more interesting and less predictable
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Imagine a format with tool cards that read " if your opponent is X type your attacks do 2x damage" it would be an incredibly sacky 1HKO format where pokemon with over 300HP are easily 1 shotted, in your scenario, everyone basically has a once per game Drapion for any deck. VGC has to have open team sheets to deal with Tera Pokemon and not have games just come down to guesswork.
 
This is their chance to shake up the terra effect, by making it so that all Pokemon who kept their type have the bench barrier, but those who have a new type have an effect based on that new type (e.g. ones who became Dark aren't affected by your opponent's supporter cards).
 
Yeah, yeah, I get it, Chairlizard is popular so it's going to get cards often. I'm not saying to never print it, just print LESS of it. It's not like there aren't a ton of other popular Pokemon they could use instead.
 
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