Ethan's Typhlosion

Intro + Notable Placings

• 47th at World Championships 2025, Junior Division (Charizard ex build)

• 31st at Regional Pittsburgh (Drakloak build)

Ethan's Typhlosion is a deck that's more popular in online tournaments than in-person ones. Three Masters played it at the 2025 World Championships, and all failed to make Day 2, including one player who lost TWO matches against Gholdengo ex, which should have been a bye.

Like Conkeldurr, Ethan's Typhlosion is a 1-Prize attacker deck. Its matchups are similar, being favored against aggro (especially Gholdengo ex), heavily favored against Crustle, and unfavored against Stage 2s.

Game Plan

Use Buddy-Buddy Poffin or Artazon to get Ethan's Cyndaquils out, and Technical Machine: Evolution to evolve them into Ethan's Quilava. Ethan's Adventure can get Cyndaquil or Quilava, depending on what you need. Once you have an Ethan's Quilava in play, its Ability can search for Ethan's Adventure to continue building your board.

Your side goal is to get copies of Ethan's Adventure into your discard pile to power up Ethan's Typhlosion's Buddy Blast. Playing them is the most obvious way, but if you need to dump them quick, you have Trainers that discard other cards from your hand (Secret Box, Professor's Research, and especially Ultra Ball, which you play 4 copies of). If some copies of Ethan's Adventure are Prized, Redeemable Ticket can get them out.

If you haven't discarded all 4 copies of Ethan's Adventure yet, it's a good idea to leave an Ethan's Quilava on your board so it can search out a copy when needed. In particular, after a KO, you can use Super Rod to shuffle in Ethan's Typhlosion, then Bonded by the Journey for Ethan's Adventure for Ethan's Typhlosion + Energy to rebuild your attacker.

Attackers

Ethan's Typhlosion is your attacker. It's a 1-Prizer, and only needs 1 Energy to attack, but requires significant setup to reach 1HKO damage numbers. Keep in mind the pieces that you'll need in order to hit damage thresholds:

• To hit 100 damage (which KOs evolving Basics/Stage 1s), you need 1 Ethan's Adventure in your discard pile.

• To hit 220 damage (which KOs support Pokémon ex like Fezandipiti ex), you need 3 Ethan's Adventure in your discard pile.

• To hit 250 damage (which KOs Basic ex attackers like Raging Bolt ex), you need 3 Ethan's Adventure in your discard pile + Brave Bangle attached.

• To hit 280 damage (which KOs Stage 1 ex attackers like N's Zoroark ex or Eeveelutions, as well as Pidgeot ex), you need 4 Ethan's Adventure in your discard pile.

• To hit 310 damage (which KOs Gardevoir ex), you need 4 Ethan's Adventure in your discard pile + Brave Bangle OR Gravity Mountain. Having Victini Benched increases this to 320 damage, 1HKOing Dragapult ex. Brave Bangle + Gravity Mountain hits 340 damage, 1HKOing Charizard ex.

Due to Weakness, 2 Ethan's Adventure or 1 Ethan's Adventure + Brave Bangle is enough to 1HKO Gholdengo ex. This deck has an incredibly good matchup against Gholdengo ex as a result — the amount of setup you need is lower, and you're attacking with 1-Prizers into their 2-Prizers.

First or Second?

This deck wants to go second, as it's an Arven → Buddy-Buddy Poffin + Technical Machine: Evolution deck.

ACE SPEC

Secret Box. It's a discard outlet for Ethan's Adventure. Early-game it helps you set up by getting Buddy-Buddy Poffin, Technical Machine: Evolution, and Artazon; late-game it grabs damage boosts like Brave Bangle, Gravity Mountain, Buddy-Buddy Poffin for Victini, and Kieran/Black Belt's Training if you play them.

Maximum Belt is another, rarer option.

Other Options

• 2-1-2 Pidgeot ex: Search engine. It searches for 1 card every turn, and if you need multiple card types (e.g. Boss's Orders + Brave Bangle + Gravity Mountain to take out a big Stage 2 ex on the Bench), it can grab Secret Box for all of them.

• 2-2 Drakloak: Draw engine. Not as strong as Pidgeot ex, but it's a 1-Prizer. You can also add Dragapult ex and a few Luminous Energy to have a second attacker.

• Tatsugiri + Air Balloon: The most compact, but also the weakest card advantage engine. Early-game, Tatsugiri can use its Ability and attack with Technical Machine: Evolution in the same turn for maximum value. Later on, you can put an Air Balloon on it to have a free retreat pivot that you can bring up each time your Active gets KOed, Attracting Customers for value before retreating into your next attacker.

• Charizard ex: A second attacker. It comes out swinging faster than Ethan's Typhlosion, as it does not need the setup of getting Ethan's Adventure into your discard pile before it can hit for decent damage. However, if your opponent is still on 6 Prizes, it fails to KO most ex's, and unlike its own deck, you don't have Dusclops/Dusknoir to seize the initiative.

• Kieran, Black Belt's Training: Additional damage boosts. You can't stack multiple Brave Bangles or Gravity Mountains (one Tool per Pokémon, one Stadium in play at all times), so these are options to add more damage. Black Belt's Training reduces the number of pieces you need for the 1HKO on Dragapult ex; normally you'd need 2/3 of Victini, Brave Bangle, Gravity Mountain, but Black Belt's Training gets the job done all on its own.

• Energy Search, Earthern Vessel: Energy searchers. If you have Buddy-Buddy Poffin and Arven in hand but are missing Energy, these can convert the Item search from Arven into Energy so you can go BBP, Arven for Energy Search + TM: Evo, and use Evolution. Earthen Vessel can act as a discard outlet for Ethan's Adventure.

• Sacred Ash: Replaces the 2nd Super Rod. It can potentially recycle more Pokémon than Super Rod, but that's the only thing it can recycle; it can't shuffle Energy back in.

• Lana's Aid: Alternative recovery card. It gets 3 (non-ex) Pokémon/Energy back to hand, but is a Supporter. It lets you discard all copies of Ethan's Adventure and still have a way to recover Energy and the Typhlosion line after a KO; without Lana's Aid, you'd have to save a copy of Ethan's Adventure in your hand/deck and combine it with Super Rod or Sacred Ash to get all the pieces back to hand.

Tips

• Like Dragapult ex, if you're evolving into Ethan's Typhlosion this turn, be sure to use Ethan's Quilava's Ability for value first.

• If all four copies of Ethan's Adventure are in your discard pile, you cannot use Bonded by the Journey (which you might want to, in order to check the contents of your deck, or to shuffle cards that were bottom-decked by Iono), because it's known that it will have no effect. (This is similar to Colress Machine or Elesa's Sparkle from older formats.)

• All Pokémon in the Ethan's Typhlosion line have 1-Energy attacks that can KO Babies and Joltik.