The Celestial Guardians expansion is out and Rare Candy is indeed ridiculous. Not only does it enhance stage 2 overall consistency, it allows you to accelerate them. What’s really interesting about Rare Candy is that it buffs stage 2 evolutions with a strong 1 energy attack, making it so that you actually prefer going first. There is so much to explore with this card, deciding what to build first can be a challenge in of itself.

Let’s start off with a brand new toy.

Incineroar EX is a monster. With 180 HP, this pokemon has access to 2 amazing attacks. For one energy, Fire Fang will deal 30 damage and burn its target. For 3 energy, Scar-Charged Smash deals 80 damage initially, unless Incineroar is damaged, which amps it up to 140. Arceus, Moltres, Articuno and Darkrai get one hit KO’ed.

Remember what I said about Rare Candy buffing 1 energy stage 2 attackers? This includes Incineroar, who can fire off a fire fang as early as your second turn while going first. How? You lead off with Litten, end turn, then rare candy onto Incineroar for that early game burn. While Incineroar is a powerhouse, it can be difficult to end games on him alone, so we call upon another EX beast who is absolutely insane with rare candy.

We go from solo to duo leveling, in a deck combining cat with dragon. Oh yeah, we’re mixing 2 stage 2 evolutions in the same deck, and yet we only have a total of 8 pokemon. Welcome to the rare candy meta. Our main attacker here is Incineroar, so we run a full set of Litten and Incineroar alongside one copy of Torracat. This way we can evolve onto Incineroar via rare candy or the good old fashioned way. And then there’s the Charizard splash. One Charmander , 2 Charizard. No Charmeleon. Charizard EX is absolutely wild with rare candy. Accelerating onto him allows us to stoke quickly, to enable a Steam Artillery often times as early as turn 3. By combining these 2 pokemon together, we work towards an end game where our opponent’s have to take down 2 EX titans in order to win. And both of them hit hard. Threatening the vast majority of pokemon with a one hit KO.

Rare Candy makes this possible, but we need more cards to make this strategy consistent. Since we run a total of 8 pokemon, pokemon communication is incredible here. And Rare Candy also happens to be an item, which means we can play it the same turn we go for Iono. But wait, there’s more. We also run a full set of the new supporter, Lillie. This card is cracked. Lillie heals a stage 2 pokemon for 60 damage. Erika who? Given our impressive bulk, Lillie makes our sweepers incredibly resilient, allowing us to heal for a potential total of 120 damage. Which equates to a high end attack. Our last 2 supporters are one copy of Sabrina and Giovanni. Sabrina works wonders with our heavy hitters, as it's very difficult for the opponent to have another pokemon on the bench who can tank us. And since we hit so hard to begin with, Giovanni makes us less matchup dependent, not only allowing our EX pokemon to take out the biggest targets, but to net us a surprise early game kill as well.

This deck is downright terrifying, and so damn fun to play. Rare Candy definitely lived up to the hype. Lead off with the young one, give em a candy, become a targaryen and burn em all.