Flareon ex

Intro + Notable Placings

• 57th at World Championships 2025

• 7th at World Championships 2025, Senior Division

• 2nd at Regional Frankfurt, Senior Division

• 1st at Regional Pittsburgh, Senior Division

Despite the cutesy appearance of the Eeveelutions, Flareon ex is probably the hardest deck to play optimally, due to the huge number of options available in your attackers, the Trainers you find off Noctowl, and the Energy you attach with Burning Charge or Crispin. Several of these options are 1-ofs, so if you weren't paying attention while Prize checking during an earlier deck search, it can come back to bite you later. Paradoxically, the deck did better in lower age divisions.

Game Plan

Get Fan Rotom down and use Fan Call to search for Eevees, Hoothoots, and/or Noctowls, maybe also Pidgey if you play it and didn't Prize Rare Candy and Pidgeot ex. Evolve an Eevee into Flareon ex and use Burning Charge for some damage, and to set up Energy on your subsequent attackers.

You have many routes to get a Flareon ex Active and attacking by turn 2. Assume you have an Eevee [ex], Hoothoot, and a Tera in play, and Noctowl in hand:

• The simplest one (albeit only available to the Pidgeot ex build) that requires the fewest pieces is to Noctowl for Sparkling Crystal + Hilda → Flareon ex + Jet Energy.

• If you have Pidgey in play and at least 1/3 of Rare Candy + Sparkling Crystal + Cyrano/Jacq/Hilda, you can Noctowl for the other two pieces, Cyrano/Jacq for Flareon ex + Pidgeot ex, Rare Candy into Pidgeot ex, Quick Search for Jet Energy, and finally attach Sparkling Crystal and Jet Energy to Flareon ex. With Hilda, you search for Pidgeot ex + Jet Energy instead, then Quick Search for Flareon ex.

• If you have a way to get your starting Pokémon out of the Active Spot (Latias ex, Switch, Air Balloon, attached an Energy to it on T1), you can Noctowl for Crispin + Tera Orb/Ultra Ball → Flareon ex.

• If you attached an Energy to Eevee [ex] on turn 1, you can Noctowl for Sparkling Crystal + Cyrano → Flareon ex + Latias ex.

Don't worry too much if your first Flareon ex has a non-Water/Lightning Energy attached to it to pay for Burning Charge; you can always get the right Energy with Burning Charge attaching to itself, or a later Crispin, or you might end up retreating Flareon ex and discarding the Energy anyway.

The Noctowl engine keeps your deck running smoothly while you attack. Other decks might play high counts of Iono and Professor's Research to refresh their hand after playing everything they can onto the board, but in this deck, the Supporter for the turn is usually reserved for something else that isn't hugely plus in card advantage, so it has to rely on Noctowl to find the pieces it needs to keep going, like a one-shot double Quick Search. If you play Pidgeot ex, you'll have actual Quick Search, or if you play Mew ex, that can draw a few cards.

Attackers

Flareon ex is your first attacker. It serves to power up your other attackers with Burning Charge, maybe also take a 1-Prize KO (or 2 Prizes against Gholdengo ex). If they don't KO Flareon ex on their turn, you can then attach a third Energy and use Carnelian. Against Gardevoir ex, Gravity Mountain assists with the one-shot by reducing its maximum HP to 280, exactly what Carnelian does.

Leafeon ex is the best attacker for the Marnie's Grimmsnarl ex matchup. Moss Agate 1HKOs Marnie's Grimmsnarl ex, and heals all the damage that they spread to your board through Freezing Shroud, Adrena-Brain, and Shadow Bullet. Verdant Storm can take KOs if your opponent's deck needs a lot of Energy on the board to function (like Gardevoir ex), or if they're weak to Grass.

Wellspring Mask Ogerpon ex is the first of the non-Eeveelution attackers. It's mainly used for Torrential Pump, sniping Basics/Stage 1s on the Bench before they can evolve. Sob can be used to stall.

Terapagos ex can't hit very high damage numbers, but 240 damage for 2 Energy is a decent rate (Bloodmoon Ursaluna ex does 240 for 0/1 Energy late-game, for comparison). The hoop you have to jump through for its attack is having a huge Bench, meaning you need Area Zero Underdepths, Buddy-Buddy Poffin, and Cyrano, all of which can be found with Noctowl. Crown Opal is also a realistic proposition (you do play all the types of Energy it demands), and it walls most of Raging Bolt ex and Joltik Box.

In the Psychic build, Sylveon ex is a potential attacker. It's a controlling one; what it wants to do is Angelite two Benched Pokémon with strong attacks or supporting Abilities into their deck (using Boss/Catcher to push their Active to the Bench so it can be targeted if necessary), then Magical Charm next turn as they struggle to piece together an offense. Angelite gets rid of Pokémon in a manner that doesn't turn on Fezandipiti ex, and is very strong against Stage 2s, as those will either take multiple turns to get back into play (letting you Angelite their Basic/Stage 1 forms again when it comes off cooldown), or Rare Candy which they'll have a limited number of copies of.

Fan Rotom can attack, but is rare. In situations where it's possible to KO something with Assault Landing, you'd probably prefer getting the KO with Flareon ex's Burning Charge instead.

First or Second?

This deck wants to go first, as it's a Noctowl deck.

If it goes second, it can get a T1 Burning Charge off by evolving from the Boosted Evolution Eevee and using Crispin or Sparkling Crystal to accelerate, but you'd need a pretty good draw for that to happen.

ACE SPEC

Sparkling Crystal. It acts as color fixing and acceleration, and stays on Wellspring Mask Ogerpon ex after Torrential Pump, so you only need to attach 2 more Energy for the next Pump instead of 3.

Variants

There are two flavors of this deck: one uses a suite of Psychic-type Pokémon, the other uses Pidgeot ex.

Other Options

• Paldean Tauros (Spirited Tackle): Out to Crustle. Can also be a 1-Prize attacker against Gholdengo ex, but 3 Energy is quite a large commitment.

• Air Balloon: This lets you retreat the Eeveelutions or Noctowl for free. (Latias ex does not do that, as they are Evolved Pokémon.) However, you can't attach it to a Pokémon that already has Sparkling Crystal on it.

Tips

• This deck is OK with KOing a 1-Prizer early and going to odd Prizes, as it has Briar to make up for that later. Briar changes the Prize map to 1-2-3, and if the opponent's map is 2-2-2, you are at an advantage, since you will get there 1 turn earlier (both players win in 3 attacks, but you attacked first), and Counter Catcher will be live throughout the Prize race.

• Each of your Eevees has its strengths and weaknesses. The 50 HP one can turbo into any Eeveelution if it's Active, making it the best one to have in your deck in the mid/late game (and on turn 1 if you have Flareon ex to go with it), but if you are unable to make use of this trait, it's the most vulnerable Eevee due to its low HP. The 70 HP one survives Phantom Dive's spread if the Dragapult ex player doesn't have anything to assist, and has a relevant setup attack. The 200 HP ex is a Tera, which counts for Noctowl and Glass Trumpet, and protects it from Bench snipes. Its high HP makes it the most resistant to early Fan Rotom attacks and devolution.

• If you have the opportunity to Boosted Evolution into Flareon ex on your first turn, you should usually take it, even if you can't attack with it immediately. Often you'll want to attack with Flareon ex on T2 anyway, so this play bestows the advantage of protecting the 50 HP Eevee from attacks, and the Flareon ex from hand disruption (compared to if you couldn't or didn't evolve, and held Flareon ex in hand until T2). Getting Flareon ex down also ensures you'll have a Tera in play for Noctowl without committing a Bench slot or Nest Ball to Wellspring Mask Ogerpon ex or Terapagos ex.

• If Eevee ex's Ability is removed (e.g. with Team Rocket's Watchtower), it cannot evolve into anything.

• When you're manually attaching Energy to Eevee in preparation for next turn's attack, {W} is the best choice, since all your Eeveelutions need it for their second attacks. When you're attaching Energy to Eevee with Burning Charge, {R}{W} pays for 2/3 of Flareon/Leafeon ex, and {W}{L} pays for 2/3 of Flareon/Sylveon ex. You can check whether you have the desired Eeveelutions and third Energy/Sparkling Crystal during the Burning Charge search itself.

• You do not have to attach 2 Energy with Burning Charge every time. If you have an attacker with 2 Energy already on it, you can choose to attach just 1 Energy.

• There are several things to know if you're trying to use Glass Trumpet to charge an Eeveelution:

  • You can't charge an Eeveelution directly, as Glass Trumpet only attaches to Colorless Pokémon. You need to Glass Trumpet onto an Eevee [ex] and only then evolve it. (If you've already evolved, but only need 1 Energy accelerated, you can Glass Trumpet onto something else and Energy Switch it over.)

  • You need a Tera in play to use Glass Trumpet, which is best fulfilled by an Eevee ex that counts as the Tera for Glass Trumpet, receives one Energy, and then evolves into an attacker. If you need your opponent to KO your Flareon ex in order to get Energy into the discard pile for Glass Trumpet, but said Flareon ex also happens to be your only Tera in play, things get awkward — you either need to find Terapagos ex or Wellspring Mask Ogerpon ex, or evolve the next Eevee prematurely and not be able to Glass Trumpet Energy onto it.

  • Glass Trumpet's recipients have to be Benched, so don't send them up after a KO.

• Grass-weak ex's are 1HKOed by Leafeon ex's Verdant Force if they have 3 or more Energy on their side of the field. Usually the ex itself will have 2 for its attack, so if they put one more Energy down (often on a Munkidori), you have the one-shot secured. Charizard ex can try to avoid this by placing only 2 Energy on their Zard and no more on the rest of their field, but this leaves them open to getting punished by Sylveon ex's Angelite instead (which Mist Energy would have blocked), or simply attaching 1 more Energy or Sparkling Crystal to Leafeon ex and going for Moss Agate.