A Bolt from the Blue — Regieleki VMAX / Vikavolt V

Hello to all PokeBeach readers! Here’s Gabriel again with another Pokémon TCG article, and this time, I’m going to talk about one of the big new cards from the Silver Tempest set, Regieleki VMAX, combined with the old well-known Vikavolt V with Item lock.

With the Latin American International Championship (LAIC) fast approaching, it’s time to try to figure out the best strategies that Silver Tempest has to offer, and one of the most promising decks, besides Lugia VSTAR, is Regieleki VMAX / Vikavolt V. The idea of ​​this deck is quite simple: try for the last time in Standard format to make Vikavolt V into an impactful Pokémon in the competitive metagame.

To this day, Seismitoad-EX is remembered by older players as one of the greatest competitive forces ever seen due to its Quaking Punch attack, which was able to put the opponent under Item lock; that is, prevent them from ever playing Item cards. Since then, whenever a Pokémon with an Item lock effect is released, players around the world try to bring back the absurd impact that Seismitoad-EX once made. Still, they never see success.

As strong as it is to leave the opponent without their Items, however, there are several other factors that contribute to this deck’s Item lock being really effective, as the Item lock without any other major threat, such as dealing relevant damage or removing the opponent’s Energy, is just a way to buy a little time. Until recently, that was the big problem with Vikavolt V, as the Paralyzing Bolt attack only does 50 damage, an insignificant amount when you consider that most relevant Pokémon have 280 HP or 320 HP.

Vikavolt V caught my attention when it was released, but the low damage of the attack made any strategy involving this Pokémon very difficult to conceive. Recently, some world-class players like Tord Reklev decided to use Vikavolt V with Ludicolo in the 2022 World Championship in order to triple Vikavolt V’s original damage, but these players ended up unsuccessful in the tournament. I believe the main factor in this is consistency, as Ludicolo is a Stage 2 Pokémon. Now, with Regieleki VMAX, you can add damage using a Stage 1 Pokémon, which takes a lot less work and saves deck space over a Stage 2 option like Ludicolo.

This concludes the public portion of this article.

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