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Single Card Strategy: Light Flareon
By Master Trainer-in-Training Will
 I’ve always had a soft spot for Eevee and its 3 different evolution paths. As a Colorless Pokémon, Eevee can go into any deck, and if you want some more punch, you can evolve it whether you’re playing Water, Lightning, or Fire. Being partial to Fire Pokémon, I would normally choose Flareon for my decks, and I think that the new Light Flareon in the Neo Destiny card set is the best Flareon in the game.
Look at what Light Flareon gives you. At 80 Hit Points, it’s the biggest Flareon around and tied with Vaporeon for the biggest Stage 1 Evolution Pokémon you can put on Eevee. Plus, its Burning Flame attack is a sure 30 points of damage for 3 Energy, with the possibility of 20 or 40 more with some lucky coin flips. On average, you’ll do 50 damage with Burning Flames and lose just 1 Energy card for all that damage. A couple shots of those flames can even take out Charizard.
But my favorite part about Light Flareon is its Warm Up attack. Before you’re ready to scorch Pokémon with those Burning Flames, you can use Light Flareon to help stoke the Embers on Charmander or add fuel to Arcanine’s Flamethrower. Getting Energy cards out of your deck is a great ability because it’s like a free card draw. Even better, the more Energy you take out of your deck, the less likely you will be to draw Energy cards later in the game when you really need Trainer cards or more Pokémon. But Warm Up is even better because it lets you put that Energy card right onto one of your Benched Pokémon. If you have an Energy card in hand as well, you can play 2 Energy cards every turn with this ability. That’s a great way to get a fast start in any battle and a good way to build up your Charizard for a devastating attack.
One trick I would try with Light Flareon is to try to get 2 of them into the game at the same time. You can build up to Burning Flames with 1 of them and then, if you have to discard 1 or 2 Energy cards from it, switch to the other Light Flareon on your next turn using the Switch Trainer card. Then you can use Warm Up to add 1 Fire Energy to the now-benched Flareon and maybe even add another from your hand. One turn later, you’re ready to attack with Burning Flames again.
 To make this combo work really well, you need some Switch Trainer cards in your deck or several copies of the Balloon Berry Pokémon Tool from the Neo Revelation set, because you don’t want to lose too much Energy from retreating your Light Flareon cards. You could also use the Energy Stadium from Neo Destiny and just count on making your coin flips often enough to retrieve your lost Energy. In fact, this Stadium card works very well in decks that use attacks like Burning Flame that make you discard Energy.
These are just a few uses for the Warm Up attack. Look for other Pokémon that can benefit from extra Energy early in the game, or find ways to move all that extra Energy around where it can do more good (like back onto Light Flareon). The hard part about this game is also the part that I enjoy the most -- looking for combos that turn average cards into good cards and make good cards even better. So, keep an eye out for new combos. Maybe you can teach me some new tricks as we all learn more about the Pokémon TCG together.
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