Pokemon Regionals are Back

Hi everyone, it’s Tate again with an article recapping a couple of tournaments from last weekend (one I played in and one on the other side of the world), and looking ahead to this weekend’s much anticipated Salt Lake City Regionals. Will Mew VMAX continue to dominate Standard or do I predict something else to take the victory? Read on to get my last-minute thoughts! 

Card Trooper $2k recap

Neglecting to attend Salt Lake City Regionals next weekend, I instead opted to head up to the $2000 cash tournament at Card Trooper Games in Richmond, Kentucky this past weekend. I chose to play a single-Prize “Dark Toolbox” deck which I wrote about briefly in my last article and which has been seeing some success in online tournaments. The trip proved to be a success as I placed third out of 111 players, but I felt that the deck was pretty weak and against stronger competition I should not have won as many games as I did. 

Below are my matchups from the event, and then I’ll go over the list and why I felt the deck was weak and would not be a good play for Salt Lake City Regionals.

Round 1: Jolteon VMAX (W)

Round 2: Mew VMAX (W)

Round 3: Ice Rider Calyrex VMAX (L)

Round 4: Arceus VSTAR/Rayquaza VMAX (W)

Round 5: Mew VMAX (W)

Round 6: Arceus VSTAR/Inteleon (W)

My round 7 opponent, Justin Bean, conceded to me, since he was guaranteed to make cut and I would be a favorable matchup for him in cut. 

Top 8: Gengar VMAX (WW)

Top 4: Arceus VSTAR/Inteleon (WLL)

With the exception of Round 1 (I hit a good player in Joshua Sutherland, but there was not much he could do against my Galarian Zapdos V), by far my strongest opponents were the two I lost to (Round 3 and Top 4). Every other player made at least one misplay that swung the game into my favor; I probably shouldn’t have won most of those games if my opponents had played more optimally. As a general rule, I don’t like to play decks that are contingent on my opponent misplaying in order for me to get an edge in the game; I’d prefer to be ahead the whole time. This Dark Box deck felt like a very reactive deck that doesn’t have foolproof strategies to beat Mew VMAX or Arceus VSTAR players who play optimally. 

Here’s the list I played: 

The list felt pretty good for what the deck is; the only card I disliked was Sableye V, which I used zero times all tournament. I discussed this recently with Isaiah Bradner and we came to the conclusion that replacing Sableye V with a Giant Cape would give our Galarian Zapdos V more survivability, allowing us to often take four Prizes with it in Arceus VSTAR matchups. Galarian Zapdos V carried me through a number of games at Card Trooper, but couldn’t quite get me through Top 4, so I like that card change a lot in theory. 

Another area of debate for this deck was whether or not to play Galarian Weezing. I covered that a bit in my last article, but to summarize my thoughts there, I think Galarian Weezing gives this deck something to do in the early game where a Weezing-less variant would just be attacking with Hoopa or passing. Weezing also has the chance to just outright win a handful of games from completely bricking your opponent. Another benefit I started to realize in the time between my last article and the Card Trooper tournament is that a Weezing line pretty much autowins any other single-Prize matchup: Malamar, Mad Party, Dark Box without their own Weezing, etc. I thought Malamar would be a deck I’d play against over the weekend, so taking a free win there and maybe stealing another game with Weezing forcing dead draws justified the inclusion of a 2-2 line to me.

In reality, I didn’t hit any single-Prize matchups, but Weezing was still pretty good in one of the Mew VMAX games and in the first round against Josh. Even in games where it didn’t really brick the opponent, it at least forced them to commit resources to KOing it and let me establish the rest of my board behind it. I didn’t regret playing the line.

I went with Tapu Koko over Castform as my “pivot” Pokemon, a Pokemon in the deck solely because it is a Basic with free Retreat Cost. (This is important in Dark Box because often your attacker will not be in play at the start of your turn, since this archetype plays out of your hand and deck so much. You simply promote the free-Retreat Pokemon after a KO, set up your attacker, and Retreat into it.) Tapu Koko has the disadvantage of not being Level Ball searchable, but it does have a usable attack which Castform lacks; I found Allure to be a pretty solid attack sometimes in my online games and I did use it once at Card Trooper.

Every other count in the list felt fine; I was criticized by a few people online for only two Scoop Up Net and two Training Court, but I didn’t have any issues with those counts. Managing your resources properly is extremely important with this deck, as even one wrong Quick Ball discard or playing a Research versus a Marnie can have huge implications later. 

Later this past week on a meta discussion video for Salt Lake City Regionals, I was asked if my deck choice for the Card Trooper tournament would be the same one I chose if I’d played in Brisbane Regionals that weekend. My answer was “absolutely not.” I planned that trip primarily to see friends and secondarily to play Pokemon, so I just wanted a fun deck that would create long, interesting games and allow me to outplay people. That ended up working out this time, but in general Dark Box is a deck I’d stay away from for Regionals where I’d be entirely focused on Pokemon for the weekend. The margin of error is too thin in most matchups and the deck is weak against certain strategies from Mew VMAX and Arceus VSTAR. Basically, the deck gets worse as the quality of your opponents increases, i.e. as you make it further and further into the top tables of a Regional. 

Brisbane Regionals

While I was scraping out wins with Dark Box in Kentucky, the first Regional Championship in two whole years was taking place across the globe in Brisbane, Australia. With over 150 players in attendance, this was a small Regional on a global scale but about average for Australia. As a region, Australia is very top heavy in terms of its playerbase, with a small number of world-class players consistently making top cut at almost every tournament, even down to the League Cup level. A number of those top Australian players also tend to test together, and we saw the group of Matthew Burris, Kaiwen Cabbabe, Christian Hasbani, Natalie Millar, and Brent Tonisson bring the same 60 cards to the event—a Mew VMAX list they’d pared down to run three Double Turbo Energy with no basic Energy, as well as only two Stadium cards. Natalie won the Regional and Kaiwen finished in Top 4, and in fact everyone who played the list was successful in earning CP. With the success of this new Mew VMAX list, the question now is whether the no-basic-Energy build will be the way the 

deck is primarily played at Salt Lake City Regionals this weekend. (I’ll get to that in a bit.)

The other noticeable trend from Brisbane was the emergence of Arceus VSTAR/Inteleon as a top-tier deck. The major notable Australian player to not run Mew VMAX was 2019 World Champion Henry Brand, who instead chose to play Arceus VSTAR/Inteleon. Henry finished outside of the Top 16, but Mitch Knuckey was successful in taking the archetype into Top 8, as did Peter Lo with a modified build including Galarian Moltres.

Some players have compared Arceus VSTAR to the beloved Zoroark-GX of circa 2018, with any Arceus VSTAR deck likely to be very consistent and the card itself able to work with a variety of partner Pokemon. We can compare the Brisbane metagame to the 2018 Buzzwole/Lycanroc-GX vs Zoroark-GX metagames, with Mew VMAX serving the BuzzRoc role of the clear best deck, and a variety of Arceus VSTAR variants playing the Zoroark role of the most played and most viable counters. But the Inteleon variant of Arceus VSTAR seems on paper to not be great against Mew VMAX— it doesn’t play Duraludon VMAX to counter Mew’s reliance on Special Energy, and it doesn’t play Dark attacker to hit the best deck for Weakness. So how were Henry, Mitch, and Peter winning?

The answer lies in the tried-and-true combination of Marnie and Path to the Peak. Combining these two disruptive cards can often be enough to brick Mew VMAX decks, which rely on Genesect V’s Fusion Strike System Ability to draw through their deck. Mitch actually took things one step further and played one copy of Judge, an inclusion I really like. Smart Mew VMAX players can play around Marnie and Path to the Peak by using Rotom Phone to stack a Stadium card to the top of their deck, ensuring that they will always draw an out to Path to the Peak after the Marnie is played. However, Judge prevents this play by actually shuffling the full deck, negating the Rotom Phone. 

While I think the Marnie plus Path to the Peak combo makes Arceus VSTAR/Inteleon the best-suited archetype to dealing with Mew VMAX aside from just slamming it with Dark-type Weakness, it’s not a foolproof strategy. In fact, I still think Mew VMAX should be favored versus Arceus VSTAR. Marnie and Path to the Peak is not a combo you are going to draw early in every game and it’s not a combo that’s going to stick for longer than one turn in many games. I did note that the top players’ Mew list from Brisbane cut down to just two Stadiums, which does make it considerably weaker against heavy Path to the Peak decks and is probably a reason this was the breakout tournament for Arceus VSTAR/Inteleon. I don’t think that will remain the case at Salt Lake City Regionals; Mew VMAX lists should be going back up to the more usual three or four Stadiums. 

Looking Ahead: Salt Lake City Regionals

While Australia got to kick off the official return to sanctioned Regional events, the first Regional over here in the States takes place this weekend in Salt Lake City, Utah. Currently we’re close to the 600-player mark in the Masters division, making Salt Lake’s attendance almost four times as large as Brisbane’s. 

I got the chance to participate in a couple of metagame discussion videos with some content creators this past week (Celio’s Network and FlowTKast), and the overwhelming consensus among the panelists on both videos was that Mew VMAX is, once again, far and away the best deck for this tournament. There was some debate over whether there’s a difference between the “best deck to earn points” and the “best deck to win the event.” Isaiah Bradner and I agreed that in this case, the answer is the same— Mew VMAX is an incredibly consistent and powerful deck that has the ability to carry less-experienced players through games via high-rolling, as well as allowing more experienced players to leverage a variety of strategies to beat counter decks. Like I mentioned above, while the Dark Box deck seems like a great counter to Mew VMAX on paper, a smart Mew VMAX player will use strategies like attacking with Psychic Leap or using Oricorio to force Hoopa to two-shot Meloetta. Mew VMAX reminds me of decks like Night March or ADPZ from years past that were “tier 0” in the sense that they had no truly unfavorable matchups in terms of actual win rate across the meta. 

I think there are three reasons not to play Mew this weekend, aside from simply not owning the cards:

1) You want to play a deck that counters Mew’s counters, to try to stay a step ahead of the metagame

2) You aren’t practiced with Mew and so might be at a disadvantage in the mirror or against counter decks; and

3) You want to play a less-known deck that might have more of a surprise factor.

I think reason #1 is a very poor approach to this Regional, as you simply are not going to dodge Mew decks during Day 1 or Day 2. I would estimate that you play against three Mew VMAX in Day 1. Having a deck that counters things like Arceus VSTAR or Gengar VMAX does not matter if you are still losing all those games to Mew.

The second and third reasons are a little more interesting. If you have a “comfort deck” you’ve been working with over the past couple of weeks, and feel very confident in its matchups and know the deck like the back of your hand, it may be worthwhile to play that rather than trying to learn Mew VMAX last-minute. This is what I did at a $1k tournament I won with Suicune V/Crushing Hammer last month, where I knew that Mew VMAX was technically the best deck into the field as Suicune lost to Jolteon VMAX and Duraludon VMAX, but I was very comfortable in the Suicune vs Mew matchup and was not super comfortable with playing Mew into the mirror or Dark matchups yet. This obviously paid off, with me taking a loss to a Jolteon and beating everything else to split finals of the $1k. That said, just because you have a comfort deck doesn’t mean you should play it if its matchup spread is truly awful. If you don’t have a particular deck you feel most comfortable on, I would suggest just playing Mew VMAX!

Lastly, Phinn Lynch of Cut or Tap mentioned that he things Salt Lake will actually be a prime tournament for one or more rogue decks to emerge and make Day 2, and potentially win the whole event. While I agree with Phinn that better deckbuilders than myself always seem to be able to “solve” a format later on, I think Salt Lake is still a bit too early for the metagame to be centralized enough for those spicy rogues to do well. I would expect the vast majority of top players to be running Mew VMAX, an Arceus VSTAR variant, or at least something established and consistent like Gengar VMAX this weekend. Phinn is a fan of Suicune V/Ludicolo, which is a deck I like, but I do not think it is favored against Mew VMAX at all. I think the best-positioned deck to consistently beat Mew this weekend is probably an Arceus VSTAR deck with a Dark package, or otherwise an Arceus VSTAR deck that abuses Path to the Peak and/or Cheren’s Care. Gengar VMAX is another deck that can beat Mew and is one of the only decks that can actually keep pace with it consistently, but it’s a deck that tends to yield occasional unplayable hands that can instantly lose games. 

My prediction is for Mew VMAX to win a second straight Regionals, taking both Brisbane and Salt Lake. I don’t think it’s too crazy to suggest an Arceus VSTAR deck could win this one, but overall, I just trust Mew VMAX in the hands of a top player against the field. The archetype truly has the tools to deal with anything.

Conclusion

I’m super excited to sit back and watch the first Regionals stream in over two years this weekend. I’ll be keeping you all updated with information on the metagame and top tables on PokeStats, so be sure to keep checking in there! Also feel free to drop me a follow on my personal Twitter, and as the season continues, if you’re interested in coaching as you prepare for Regionals or local tournaments, I offer that here. 

I’ll be back soon with an article probably recapping our next two Regionals, Salt Lake City and Liverpool. There’s bound to be a lot of interesting metagame developments at these two events, and hopefully some spicy decks emerge to the top. But we’ll just have to see what happens…

Until next time!