Regigigas is Way Better than You Think…

Okay, I know I’ve already written about this deck a few times before, but Regigigas is truly a different animal with access to Gift Energy (as opposed to pre-Lost Origin). Recently, both Salt Lake City and Lille Regionals took place, with Salt Lake yielding some unexpected results. Hisuian Goodra VSTAR won the event, with Flying Pikachu VMAX taking second place. Following that were four Regigigas decks in Top 8, including yours truly. My crew slightly tweaked the Peoria list, and three of the four of us were able to convert to Top 8. Unfortunately, in the face of Hisuian Goodra VSTAR and Flying Pikachu VMAX, we were never going to win that tournament. Many Origin Forme Palkia VSTAR were in Top 16, with one in Top 8.

Over in Europe, it seems many of the top players did not choose to bring Regigigas. Zero were in Top 8, though the Top 8 decks would have struggled against it. Mew VMAX ended up winning the event in a close finals set against Blissey V, of all things. Mew VMAX has always been solid, but it has to pick its spots in a meta with few Drapion V. This seems to have been the case for Lille, as even a few Mewtwo V-UNION decks were able to squeak into Day 2. Despite that, Blissey V and Mewtwo V-UNION are still poorly-positioned meme decks in the current meta, and I won’t be convinced otherwise.

Both events saw Giratina VSTAR in Top 8, which is no surprise considering that it is the most-played deck in the format. Origin Forme Palkia VSTAR performed well in Lille as well. Europe still has Warsaw Regionals coming up, which I believe is a wrap for the Lost Origin format. Sadly, Oceania and Latin America seem to be getting scammed out of events this season besides their respective International Championships.

The Meta After Silver Tempest

That said, after looking at Silver Tempest and playing a few games, I’m not convinced that the new set will change much. This means that much of the Lost Origin format data will remain relevant for the next format. There are a few interesting cards, but nothing that will obviously change the landscape of the meta. Lugia VSTAR with Archeops seems to be a strong combo for its own archetype. Serena is a replacement for Boss's Orders, which is ridiculous because Boss’s Orders is already an insane card. Grove Tablet is a huge buff for Mew VMAX, not that it needs it. I am in favor of decks becoming more consistent though. Serena should help with that slightly.

Anyway, this article is going to be about Regis — the deck is completely bananas and I am totally not biased or anything. As I mentioned in my last article, the Regi deck’s main strength comes from its favorable matchup spread. For decks that have good matchups, you typically want to focus on shoring up consistency. This is especially true for Regis, which is not exactly known as the pinnacle of consistency. So what did I do? Teched out the deck for Salt Lake! After many of the top players played Regi at Peoria, even though the deck didn’t make Top 8, we became wary of Eiscue as a hard counter to the deck.

Teching For Regigigas

Typically, one would not worry about teching for a deck that did not previously make Top 8. Eiscue is different for a few reasons; for one, it is just too free. Any deck with Mirage Gate or Palkia can easily play the card for virtually no cost. Second, it is a huge difference-maker. Eiscue is a complete auto-win card against Regigigas. Any deck that would not have a chance against Regis can easily include Eiscue to swing the matchup entirely. This is likely to make a difference of three match points at a Regional.

Regis has a few bad matchups, to begin with. We were primarily concerned with Eiscue and Hisuian Goodra VSTAR. If it was possible to counter one of those two with a single-card commitment, that would be enough value to compromise a loss to the other. Yell Horn was the best counter to Eiscue that we could come up with, though we considered and discussed several other options. Unfortunately, we also had to play the “bad” Regieleki alongside it. If you play Marnie and Yell Horn against Eiscue, and they manage to reset the confusion, it’s a lost cause. Regieleki guarantees a win by providing infinite uses of Yell Horn.

This tech takes up two spots in the deck, however, which is strange for such a niche situation. We were able to justify this because Regieleki is great in several other situations, which makes it feel like just a one-card commitment for Eiscue. Regieleki’s snipe attack can chase down damaged Pokemon such as Giratina VSTAR, or remove annoyances such as Dunsparce. It also functions as a required Regi on the board, making it a pseudo-consistency card.

We prioritized countering Eiscue because Hisuian Goodra VSTAR is somewhat winnable anyway, even though it is definitely a bad matchup. If Hisuian Goodra VSTAR did not include Big Parasol, we may have been tempted to play Yveltal to kill two birds with one stone, however, if they don’t have Big Parasol on Hisuian Goodra VSTAR, Regice can deal with it anyway. We were coping by telling ourselves that Yell Horn is also strong against Hisuian Goodra VSTAR, but I’m not convinced that is the case in reality. If the Hisuian Goodra VSTAR players ever found out that we did not play Boss’s Orders in the Salt Lake list, they could have definitely exploited that.

Another thing to keep in mind, regardless of all that, is that the bad matchups for Regi are fringe Tier 2 decks at best. The deck can handle all the popular decks with no techs required. Anyway, let’s look at the Salt Lake list, in case you have not seen it yet. From there, I’ll discuss the deck’s matchups and where it goes in the future.

This concludes the public portion of this article.

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