Ancient Power — Archeops’ Stranglehold on Standard

Hello PokeBeach readers! Isaiah here, and I am happy to be writing another article! Last time, I talked about the Articuno / Emergency Jelly decks that completely dominated the triple Regional weekend earlier this December, largely focusing on the development and deck list for the Radiant Alakazam build that was pioneered by myself, fellow writer Charlie Lockyer, and others. As I predicted, the deck did not do particularly well, with just once instance of the deck in the entirety of the 130 person Day 2, being outnumbered even by decks like Eternatus VMAX or the Zoroark Stage-1 tool box that I wrote about in November. While neither of those two decks are “bad” per se, I think it is safe to say that many players probably expected bigger things from Articuno this week. However, if this is your current favorite deck, do not be alarmed, as I am confident that the deck is going to be good again in the future, be it at the San Diego Regional Championships in early January or even later on down the road.

To no one’s surprise, the most popular deck in the room, both on Day 1 and on Day 2, was Lugia VSTAR / Archeops. The deck was a remarkable 35 percent of the meta share on Day 1, which has grown to be typical for Lugia VSTAR, and its meta share went up slightly on the second day of the tournament, reaching approximately 38 percent. After the cut to Top 8, this meta share jumped up to 62.5 percent, and if you decide to include the two people who “bubbled” out of Top 8, then the meta share drops a little lower, but still maintains the 50 percent mark. Not just this incredible meta share, but Lugia VSTAR was also able to take down the entire event, which also happened to be the largest Regional Championships to date, in the hands of Connor Finton. Now that we are a solid month into the Silver Tempest format, we can say for sure that the deck is not just a fad, but it is definitely here to stay as one of the most powerful decks that we have seen in years. As such, one has to wonder, what is it about this deck that puts it so far above the rest of the format that over 35 percent of players are willing to play it multiple events in a row? Well, how about we take a look at what makes Lugia VSTAR so good.

The Strength of Lugia VSTAR: Explained

Starting from the baseline of Lugia VSTAR itself, the card really is not that exceptional. Its attack does a pretty underwhelming 220 damage for four Energy, as weird as that is to say, and its VSTAR Power, Summoning Star, is very reminiscent of Ho-Oh-GX‘s GX attack, which was historically considered to be the worst part of that card. On its own, Lugia VSTAR simply was not bound to have very much potential, that is, until we saw Archeops.

For a long time, I have always claimed that fossil Pokemon, which happen to be my favorite subcategory of Pokemon, have always gotten unfair treatment in the Pokemon TCG due to the limitations of their, quite frankly, terribly designed mechanics. Whether it be having to evolve from an Item that cannot be searched with something like a Quick Ball or the bizarre concept of fishing from the bottom seven cards like we saw with Old Amber Aerodactyl, the cards are always bound to be bad, which is quite sad. However, from time to time, we are given ways to cheat some of the Pokemon in play, such as cards like Maxie's Hidden Ball Trick or Pokémon Research Lab, but these cards either end up being too broken in the case of the former or too underpowered in the case of the latter. Cards like Archeops NVI (which is fortunately now banned in Expanded) or Kabutops are huge problems for card design, as they force the efficiency of fossil Pokemon to be limited in order to make sure that their own effects are not too overpowered. This all changed finally with Archeops SIT, though. It is still hindered by a terrible gimmick, but thanks to Lugia VSTAR, we have a way to cheat it into play. To put it lightly, Archeops’ Primal Turbo is ABSURD! Throughout the Sword and Shield block, we have gotten a wide variety of Special Energy, including Aurora Energy, Capture Energy, and the nine different type-specific Special Energy cards. While there is some debate to be had over the best Special Energy card, there is no Special Energy that is as impactful to this deck as Powerful Colorless Energy. All of a sudden, thanks to Powerful Colorless Energy, Lugia VSTAR’s relatively mediocre damage output jumps up to an astounding 300 damage on the second turn of the game! There are very few, if any, decks that can compete with this level of damage this early on, and those that can are usually quite inefficient at doing so, such as Mew VMAX which requires you to play several copies of Power Tablet. Not just that, but Archeops can also attach extra Capture Energy like I mentioned earlier or other powerful Energy cards, such as V Guard Energy, for some added survivability, or Double Turbo Energy, for some extra efficiency in paying your attack cost. While the strength of these options is certainly incredible, it’s just the beginning for how absurdly good Lugia VSTAR / Archeops actually is.

This concludes the public portion of this article.

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