Lost Origin Standard: Dialga VSTAR

Hi Flipside Gaming people! I have been enamored with Dialga Vstar ever since it launched! Having played a lot of Magnezone Duskmane back in the day with the one off Dialga GX for situational use of timeless GX to also cheat extra turns, you could say if it was TIME to look at Dialga again in more depth! (see what I did there)

Let's look at why we want to play Dialga. For 4 metal energy and 1 one colorless you can use the Star Chronos attack, which does 220 damage and skips your opponents next turn! This sounds exactly as bonkers as it is in practice too. This is especially true if you can combine taking two prizes with Star Chronos, then following up with another two prizes with its much more down to earth Metal Blast attack, which does 40+40 for each Metal Energy attached to this Pokemon.

Metal blast does do a crisp 280 damage however with six energy in total attached, which is fairly easy to do since you just have to attach one more from hand after your Chrono star.

The win rate of Dialga if you can KO your opponents Evolving V on T2 is astronomical, so that's what I am trying to gear the list to do more often than not hopefully!

With that all being said, Dialga Vstar has been at most though a fringe top 10 deck. With builds initially being bBonzong based, then moving to Magnezone based, then settling to be turbo Mew based build.

Turbo Mew has definitely seen the most success as of late. This engine is centered around celebrations Mew, who's Mysterious Tail ability lets you look at your top six cards of your deck and put an item card from among them into your hand. Reminiscent of Stellar Wish Jirachi from back in the day, but only for items instead of all trainers. This Mew in combination with Scoop Up Nets, switching cards, and other copies of Mew allows you to fling a ton of items into your hand at a fairly rapid rate. In Dialga it's those juicy juicy Metal Saucers we want, as they let you attach a Metal Energy from your discard pile to your benched metal Pokemon. This is how we will be getting Star Chronos off hopefully turn two.

Mew isn't the only one prize Pokemon pulling its weight though. Radiant Greninja is also a key card in this deck. With its Concealed Cards ability you can discard an Energy Card from your hand then draw two. This has insane synergy with Metal Saucer and Scoop Up Net. With that all combined it's easy to see why this engine works well with Dialga.

Four copies of Trekking Shoes are the icing on this cake. This card lets you look at the top card of your deck, and if you like it, great! Keep it! If not, discard it and draw the next one. Adding to the decks overall strategy nicely with 4 insta play dig item cards.

With that all being said the inherent inconsistencies on trying to get 5 energies T2 can never truly be ironed out completely. Although, I do think Stéphanes worlds list definitely helps a lot.

Stéphanes Revelation

So Stéphane Ivanoff debuted Pokestop Dialga at the recent world championships and it 100% caught my eye as it looked BONKERS.

4 Pokestops is the main addition that transforms the deck! Pokestop is a Stadium that allows you to discard the top 3 cards of your deck, but any items discarded in this way you can put into your hand. This allows you to do one of two things: Number one gets Metal Energy in the discard for easy Metal Saucer plays, and number two grab those Metal Saucers at the same time! Along with grabbing Scoop Up Nets, ball searches as well as some of the crazy other items below.

The first thing that jumped out at me (and I assume you too) was the Crossceivers! A card that has seen roughly zero play outside of some control rumblings that never amounted to much...Anyways! You can only play two at a time, but when you do you can grab either a Pokemon from the discard pile or a supporter from the discard pile. This works really well in tandem with the Pokestop engine helping to alleviate the downsides of painful discards such as supporters and Pokemon by being an item based way to recover both, which if needed shouldn't be too hard to with multiple Mysterious Tails and Concealed Cards in a turn, not to mention Pokestops too.

This is extremely relevant in a Pokestop deck, as by the nature of the engine Pokemon and supporter lines have to be kept as small as possible due maximize odds of hitting items so any discard of supporters, and Pokemon can be potentially game ending.

Cross switchers again make perfect additions in this item based deck. Allowing you to get the effect of Bosses o\Orders (well, Guzma technically) on an item card that you have to play two of at a time. This helps you make as much use of Star Chronos as possible by hopefully allowing you to take two prizes with it, while also allowing you to move your Mews out of the way or even in a pinch to get more uses of Mysterious Tail to find combo pieces.

Now, Stéphanes lists opted to play a one / one Aegislash line, whereas I have opted to remove it in favor of having an increased energy count. I can see why for the Worlds championships you would have wanted the Aegislash though. Since the basic V has Shred you have some outs to Miltank, and the VMAX's Max Hack attack works well in the deck since it does 160 + 30 for each prize you have taken. This is a perfect back up option if your loaded Dialga goes down after taking some prizes; your Aegislash VMAX is only an energy attachment from hand, Raihan, and metal saucer away from closing the game.

With that all being said I found myself quite often missing raw energy in the early turns, resulting in my T2 Crono star rate being much lower. The increased energy count from cutting the Vmax line really helped in creasing that rate, so I think it's a safe change. Especially when you do have the Zacian V to use in a similar late game clean up roll with its Brave Blade attack. However, without it you don't have an out to Miltank, so would have to keep that in mind.

Moving on in the Lost Origin format I don't think Dialga gains much from the set directly. However it does gain Giratina and maybe even Kyurem VMAX being in the format. Straight Giratina seems like it will faff about a lot in the early game which Dialga would love to munch, and Kyurem VMAX is weak to metal so that provides at the very least easy boss targets for metal blast and even the eye watering 3 prize Star Chronos turn.

Other options that sound like they are worth testing is potentially removing the Crossceivers for a copy of Pal Pad and a Lumunion V + two other cards (Ball search sounds like the most obvious). Lumunion V is a card that I think would have a ton of value allowing you to pluck a supporter straight from the deck. This would allow you to have more reliable Raihan plays and even Boss’s Orders plays too, however it would be a terrible lead Pokemon and would have competition from a second copy of Crobat V.

Moving forward I think Dialga is not only a killer fun deck to play, but has a very good place in the meta right now and you should definitely try it out!