Darkness Ablaze in 2026: Charizard VMAX and the Cards Still Worth Chasing
By Dexhaul Team · September 4, 2026
Darkness Ablaze is the only Sword and Shield set where you could pull a Charizard VMAX from a standard booster pack. That fact alone explains why collectors still talk about SWSH3 six years after its August 2020 release.
Released on August 14, 2020 as the third main Sword and Shield expansion, Darkness Ablaze arrived with 189 cards plus a secret rare pool. Its Japanese predecessor, released under the name Explosive Flame in June 2020, leaned heavily into Galar's Fire-type roster: Centiskorch, Charizard, and a handful of supporting Dark types set the set's identity from the start.
The set also marked a turning point in SWSH's mechanical storytelling.
VMAX cards debuted in Sword and Shield base, but Darkness Ablaze was where the format's power ceiling started to feel real. Three VMAX Pokémon headlined the set, each with HP totals that reshaped competitive play. The SWSH era would run through 2022 into early 2023, but the framework that made VMAX a defining mechanic solidified here.
The Cards That Define SWSH3
Charizard VMAX
Two versions of Charizard VMAX appear in Darkness Ablaze: a standard holographic and a rainbow rare. Both pull from the same booster pack pool, making SWSH3 the only point in the entire Sword and Shield era where the rainbow Charizard VMAX could come out of a standard retail pack without any product-specific workaround.
The rainbow rare has held sustained secondary market interest since the set rotated out of standard format. The standard VMAX remains accessible and serves as the practical entry point into SWSH-era Charizard collecting.
Charizard V
Two Charizard V cards appear in SWSH3: a standard full art and an alternate full art. The alternate art shows a more dramatic composition and has consistently attracted more collector attention than the standard version. Neither should be confused with Charizard V printings from later SWSH sets, which use different art entirely.
The presence of four distinct Charizard prints in one set (VMAX standard, VMAX rainbow, V standard full art, V alternate full art) is what separates Darkness Ablaze from any other single SWSH expansion in terms of Charizard density.
Centiskorch VMAX
Centiskorch VMAX was the set's primary competitive card. Its 320-HP ceiling and G-Max Centiferno attack, which scales damage against Benched Pokémon, made it a genuine format threat through the mid-SWSH era. A rainbow rare Centiskorch VMAX rounds out the secret rare pool.
From a collector's perspective, Centiskorch VMAX carries the set's mechanical identity more clearly than any other card. The rainbow version offers SWSH-era rainbow rare aesthetics for a significantly lower entry cost than the Charizard equivalents.
The rest of the set
Grimmsnarl VMAX represents the Dark-type side of the set's identity, appropriate given the "Darkness" framing. Galarian Slowbro V introduced status mechanics to VMAX support in an unusual way. Scizor VMAX attracted collector attention for its design, though it never developed serious competitive traction.
Two utility Energy cards, Capture Energy and Weakness Guard Energy, saw sustained competitive play well beyond the set's rotation window. Both represent the kind of card that collectors occasionally overlook in chase-card discussions but that defined actual gameplay across the era.
The Structural Fact Collectors Miss
The Sword and Shield era ran twelve main expansions. Charizard appears in several of them.
Crown Zenith, the final SWSH set, includes Charizard via the Galarian Gallery subset, but accessing that subset required specific product types rather than standard booster packs. Other SWSH-era Charizard appearances came via promotional products, collection boxes, or sets with distinct mechanics that separated them from the standard booster experience.
Darkness Ablaze is the exception. Open a standard booster pack from SWSH3, and Charizard VMAX was a legitimate pull target. No special product tier, no box-exclusive mechanics, no subset access requirements.
That structural distinction is why SWSH3 sealed product carries a different collector narrative than most of the era's other sets. Sealed Darkness Ablaze represents direct access to the era's most recognized chase card through the game's most fundamental format: opening a pack.
Darkness Ablaze in the SWSH Timeline
The Japanese set name for SWSH3, Explosive Flame, signals something about the set's design intent that the English name partially obscures. "Darkness Ablaze" gestures toward the Dark-type and Fire-type pairing, but the Japanese framing made the Fire emphasis explicit.
Darkness Ablaze arrived between the SWSH base set and Vivid Voltage, released roughly six months into the era. At that point, VMAX was new enough that competitive players were still building their understanding of how 320-HP Pokémon changed board-state math. Darkness Ablaze provided the first nationally distributed VMAX set that centered a recognizable flagship Pokémon: Charizard.
This timing matters for collectors. Sets that introduce a new mechanic with a flagship Pokémon tend to anchor the era's identity more firmly than later sets with the same mechanic. Darkness Ablaze is SWSH's foundational Charizard VMAX reference in ways that later sets simply are not.
How Collectors Approach SWSH3 Today
Darkness Ablaze sealed product is no longer in print. The TCG's move into the Scarlet and Violet era ended SWSH-era manufacturing, which means booster boxes and packs exist only through secondary market channels.
Singles access remains the most practical entry point. The standard Charizard VMAX is obtainable without paying sealed product premiums. The rainbow rare and the Charizard V alternate art represent the higher tiers.
For collectors who specifically want SWSH-era sealed product today, Crown Zenith occupies a distinct position. It is the final Sword and Shield expansion, it remains available through independent merchants at multiple price points (booster packs, Elite Trainer Boxes, and collection sets), and it contains the Galarian Gallery subset with its own collector-grade cards. As Serebii's Darkness Ablaze card list documents, the 189-card plus secret rare structure of SWSH3 is fixed, but the era it belongs to lives on through Crown Zenith's continued availability.
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The collector verdict on SWSH3
Darkness Ablaze occupies an unusual tier in the SWSH retrospective: it is not the era's most expansive set (that title belongs to Fusion Strike), nor its most competitive (Lost Origin and Silver Tempest defined the final meta). What it is, specifically, is the Charizard VMAX set.
That framing has gotten cleaner over time, not murkier. As the SWSH era recedes, the sets that anchor it in collector memory are becoming clearer. Darkness Ablaze is SWSH's foundational Charizard document.
DexHaul is an independent, unofficial Pokémon product search engine. If you are building an SWSH-era collection, you can search for Crown Zenith booster packs, Elite Trainer Boxes, and collection products from independent merchants at DexHaul, where Darkness Ablaze and related SWSH sealed products also surface when merchants list them.